Sonoma, Day Two

I know I’m really far behind, but I keep thinking about blogging about this day during the day, then realize I don’t have the menu, then when I get home, I’ve been either running around doing things (or watching the ever important finale of whatever is on tv that night).  Two months is quite long enough, though, so I need to get this out post-haste.

 

The day was pretty structured, as M had made reservations for a 2-hour tour of Stags’ Leap Winery, which we were excited about, as we had seen the movie Bottleshock, and thought it would be interesting to go to the vineyard where they created the wine that beat the French wines, and also excited as you had to make a reservation for the tour, since space was limited.  Finding the winery was a little difficult, as it is down a private road and the directions included things like, take the left fork in the road.  We wound up at our destination, which turned out to be a house, a manor house, as we later found out.  The tour was very small, one other group of four (a dad, mom, and a couple) showed up.  We started with the tasting, during which we learned that we were not at the vineyard that created the winning wine – that was Stag’s Leap Cellars, which is denoted by the apostrophe-s, not the s-apostrophe, but that the winery we were at was the oldest in the stag’s leap district, which used to formulate the name, and that the owners of the two had been friendly, even while suing each other over naming rights.  During the tour, we learned all about the winery, which was only turned into a winery relatively recently, but had been the site of a resort and a speakeasy during prohibition. 

 

Despite the fact that the tour was interesting, we still felt like we had been “tricked” into going to the wrong vineyard, so we decided to stop by the “real Stag’s Leap.”  The drive to the vineyard was very short, and they had some picnic tables out front, so we pulled out our lunch supplies that we had purchased the day before (bread, cheese, and spinach artichoke dip) and had a picnic.  Since we didn’t have advance notice, we weren’t able to go on a tour, but we did taste some excellent wines.  We were feeling like we wanted to take a nap, and maybe visit the pool, so we headed back to our hotel before our big night at FRENCH LAUNDRY.

 

 

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Star Struck!

Today, I got to talk to Dennis Leary! To clarify, he lives in the building where I work, and no I won’t tell you where, because we are now BFF and that would betray his trust (ha!). We are not nearly BFF, as a matter of fact, I tried not to say anything, because we are convinced that he thinks everyone in our office is crazy and stalking him (though – is it our fault that his driver parks right outside our office and DL (see, BFF nicknames) walks right in front of our windows every time he leaves. It is a bit much that one of us (not me, really) waves at him every time - and that I may help that person by pointing out when he leaves the building.

Anywho, I saw him in the lobby as I was headed upstairs to take care of a few things (we have an office upstairs and down), so I held the elevator as he was coming up (there's construction this week, so they are particularly slow). I felt a little embarrassed, due to attention our office give him in general, so I tried to play it cool. You know, the "you're just another guy in the building, so it would be weird to speak in the elevator, so I'm going to look at the papers in my file folder" bit. Then he spoke to me.

DL: "It smells nice in here."
me: "Yes, I was just telling C (the doorman) that it smells lemony - he must have just cleaned it"
DL: "Yes, it smells like fake lemons"
me: "yes"

All in all, a very deep and memorable conversation, well, maybe not, but at least I was not a total blithering idiot, which is an accomplishment in itself.

I AM a grown-up

I really am, and while I'll bet back to posting about the Napa trip soon (note: anyone who knows me knows that I tell stories terribly, so it is no surprise that underwear should come up in the middle of a story about our vacation), I thought I should share that I finally have what my husband thinks are "appropriate" underwear, they should probably actually be called the "p word." I don't like saying it, and it makes me want to giggle when I hear it. Anyway, for the past, let's say 5 years, I've been a fan of the VS Pink line, and worn only a specific style of their underwear, unless I needed for something to not show under a dress/skirt. Needless to say, sometimes they look silly - the patterns are clearly made for people in high school/college, and I have not been in either of those for a long time, but they are comfy (though not granny-ish-- TMI warning - I don't wear a thong maybe twice a month). For whatever reason, I think that my choice in underwear really bothered (and I don't mean that it was keeping him up at night, but it certainly has been mentioned several times, casually).
Then, we were in San Francisco (oh, wait, I did tie it into the trip) Mark wanted to go to this one men's store (more later), but even though it was open, the doors were locked, so he wanted to kill some time, so we went across the way to Victoria's Secret (note 1: yes the people in the other store clearly saw us go in there to kill time and saw us come out, which I thought was weird; note 2: there is no way M would have gone into VS with or without me unless he was in desperate need of medical attention and they had the only emergency phone). We walked around and I stopped at a "panty" (see, you giggled) table, and he immediately teased me about my current selection of undergarments.
Anyway, a couple of weeks or so ago VS was having one of their "sales" online, so I went ahead and bought a whole stack of new undergarments, which means that I will have to donate my old ones to goodwill (not really, I would never do that, but when we were little, we had a neighbor who brought some hand-me-downs over to our house and there were underwear in the bag - so weird!!). I didn't replace all of the underwear, a) I have a lot of pairs and b) it is a recession, which means that I may not have all grown-up lady underwear, but at least I've increased the average age of the drawer. :)