The hazy glow of Sunday

Today, for most of the day, I still felt wrapped in the hazy, beautiful glow of Sunday. A day of lazing around in bed, homemade tortillas and blood orange mimosas for breakfast, from-scratch vegan pizza and lots of gardening.

It's true! We accomplished more in the garden today than perhaps at any other time, unless you count planting the tomatoes which may have actually taken longer, but planting seven tomato plants doesn't really seem as productive as doing a variety of different thing which INCLUDE harvesting vegetables.

Harvesting tomatoes and actually getting a second small crop of strawberries out of the season just seems so thrilling. It's a little deceptive to have so many things become ripe at once...it makes one feel as if one's garden was a BIG HUGE SUCCESS and makes one forget mistakes and neglect that made yields smaller, or all the expense that went into the garden from building the raised beds, to all the water used (we never did get the well hooked up) to the money spent on seeds (many, many of which never got used), garlic and potatoes that never got planted and eventually mummified, herbs that died...

We like to call our carrots "$10 carrots" because that's probably about how much each one cost us...although now the tomatoes are bringing down the average.

Sunday, besides watering the garden (somebody's mom is out of town for a while, so we have to *gasp* do that ourselves now, although you can get a timer for $40 that can do the same thing for you...not that I'm saying somebody's mom can be REPLACED for $40 mind you...) we took some more steps towards our winter garden.

For some reason we (oops?) forgot to plant the garlic and shallots, but the winter carrots are in (and hopefully we are remembering correctly how to sprout them under sheets of newspaper) along with some radishes.

Some thai cucumbers that I started under grow lights at my place are thriving (not sure how "wintery" those are but so far they are quite vigorous).

We installed a self-watering window-box that goes on a deck railing (ermmm....okay...a railing-box?) and, to my leafy-greens-challenged bf's dismay planted lettuce in it (LETTUCE? I charged up the drill and did all that just for LETTUCE??!?)

We also put up some blue solar powered string lights, which took quite a while and now it seems like they don't work. Quite frustrating. I hav some I got a few years ago on eBay that faithfully come on every night at dusk and stay lit until dawn for most of the year and my bf liked them very much so I thought I'd get him some and although they looked just the same in the picture, seen in person the quality isn't nearly as good and the solar panel is smaller and seems like just some cheap thing stickied onto a square battery box instead of being built into the box. I guess that would be okay if they worked, but they don't.


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So then today, as I said I was still basking in the glow of a wonderful Sunday and I still had momentum going on the whole garden thang, so I started a whole flat of Fava beans after inoculating them in rhizobium, which is some sort of bacteria which helps the fava beans not only thrive but add loads of nitrogen to the soil, which is perfect after something intense like tomatoes has been planted there...plus they can grow right up the same cages the tomatoes have been on. Then in the spring, after feasting on tasty fava beans, we can cut them down and turn them into the soil and plant right over the top of them. I'm starting lady peas, too, as soon as I find the pea pack.

Also today I was soooo excited because I was expecting my new camera and the DOORBELL RANG and there was THE CAMERA SIZED BOX being held by the UPS guy....WOOT WOOT! I tore that box open and I was like, "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?!?!?!?" and I was completely mystified by this weird box that did NOT contain my camera until I realized that it contained my DSL install package from AT&T. I've only had one measly computer connected to the Internet for over a month now, ever since I told Comcast they can go to hell (the aren't the original ones who can go to hell, though) and have been using just my tablet pc with my bf's broadband wireless card...which is mostly great but likes to hang and/or disconnect and only connects one (laptop) computer at a time unless you are some sort of super hacker geek person, which I was about to turn into if I didn't get a better connection soon.

Supposedly my install date wasn't for another three days, but I tried it and it was really quick to set up and I have Internet through my phone jack! Finally my damn phone jack is good for something. AND I don't need a home phone to get DSL, which is very cool...I remember was NOT the case 8 years ago.

The connection seems pretty zippy, too.

Comcast = 0, AT&T = 1

Now if my new camera would just arrive.....

Garden pics!

A few weeks ago, I was complaining that everyone was photo blogging but me and I wished I had a new and really cool camera. WELL, I ordered that camera last week and I am hoping it arrives tomorrow. Meanwhile, I still used my phone and my bf's camera to take some garden pics today and earlier in the week, so here they are with captions and everything...

Goofy pic of me holding some of our garden booty. My hands look like claws.

Dirty, dirty, filthy carrots!

After taking this picture, I popped one of these strawberries in my mouth. It's funny how you don't notice stuff like bird shit until you see it in a photograph but um...eyew! I could Photoshop out the bird shit I guess, but I can't undo the eating of the strawberry.

Another "fruit and birdshit" picture.



A bunch of still-green "Black from Tula" tomatoes, and a WHOLE BUNCH of dead leaves. We're gardening newbs, so we have no idea why all the leaves on our tomatoes are dying, but I do hope there are enough left to perform some photosynthesis on the remaining tomatoes.


It was sooooo thoughtful of all these leaves to shrivel up and die! It makes it soooo much easier to find and pick all the yellow tomatoes.


We have two blueberries bushes, and between the two of them they have produced exactly TWO WHOLE blueberries. They're almost ripe. I'm thinking when they finally ARE ripe, we'll go to pick them and a bird will swoop down right in front of us and snatch them up.

The absolute best gardening pics were a couple I took of my bf picking strawberries and and hammering in trellises, but he was wearing his pjs so probably he wouldn't like it if I posted those.

Mystery tomatoes identified (mostly)

We have seven kinds of tomatoes in our garden, but the tags got lost/buried and we ended up not knowing what to expect. Finally, I made the effort to look up my original tomato plant order and compare pictures of the type of tomatoes purchased with what we actually have growing. The only hitch is, a few of our plants don't seem to want to produce any tomatoes AND although I ordered six plants, they sent seven and number seven is a total mystery. But, so far as I know, this is what we have...

Black from Tula. This one is my favorite...so delicious. We have gotten several very nice sized tomatoes from this one and I hope we get about a zillion more.

Costoluto Florentino. This is my bf's favorite, and it is definitely beautiful with its fluted sides. We have gotten quite a few of these with more to come.

Elberta Peach. We have only had a few of these, but they are very pretty and cute little tomatoes. They are in one of the self watering containers, and those plants didn't grow nearly as much as the ones in the raised beds.

These two are "Hillbilly" and "Hugh's". We have tomatoes from one of these plants, but I'm not sure which one it is. Very nice but we have wasted most of these because they seem to get soft and over-ripe really fast.

Mr. Stripey. We have gotten a few of these I think. Ummm...I think. I'll have to double-check.

The seventh plant is just a mystery...whatever it was they put in our order, I don't think it's given us any tomatoes. Hmmmm....

Nader '08

Ralph Nader is going to be in the San Francisco area at the end of the month! I'm hoping to go to one of the events listed below. I've never been to a rally like these before (OR an "intimate" lunch with a presidential candidate) but I think it would be pretty cool.

What exactly does that mean, "an intimate lunch" anyway? Do you get to sit at the same table as Ralph Nader? Does he make a speech for a small room of people? Do you get to ask him questions? Is Ralph going to eat food? Would my seat at this be wasted because I don't really have any penetrating and insightful questions to ask? Is it a brown bag lunch? What if you're vegan? What kind of weirdos are going to have paid $200 to be there?

I tried googling the answers to these questions, but didn't find anything. Maybe people who have an intimate lunch with Ralph Nader are then sworn to secrecy, or mind wiped so they don't even remember they were there.

I'm scared, I think maybe the rally sounds safer (not to mention 20X cheaper!)

Tuesday, September 30th, Noon, San Francisco

Intimate Lunch with Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez, and Cindy Shehan
Minimum Contribution: $200
RSVP: Rob Socket (202) 471-5833 or events@votenader.org

Tuesday, September 30th, 2:30pm San Francisco Rally

Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez and Cindy Sheehan
SF State, McKenna Theater/ Fine Arts Building
Suggested Contribution: $10/ $5 students
More Info: (510) 705-8864 or events@votenader.org

Tuesday, September 30th, 8pm, Oakland Rally

Ralph Nader, Matt Gonzalez and Cindy Sheehan
Grandlake Theater
3200 Grand Ave. Oakland, CA 94610
Suggested Contribution: $10/ $5 students
More Info: (510) 705-8864 or events@votenader.org

Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market

Saturday we went to the Ferry Plaza Farmer's Market in San Francisco. It doesn't seem extraordinarily large until you walk from one end to the other and then realize it turns the corner and continues on to fill all the available space behind the building as well.

I noticed there were a lot of people there taking pictures...they didn't look like tourists, though, they looked like bloggers. Dang, and me without my camera. While others are posting their pictures to blogger and Flickr, welcome to my photo-free post! How refreshing!

Okay, I lie...it's not refreshing. I want a new camera...something cool that will take pictures that show up all those OTHER bloggers.

There is certainly a huge selection here, although I must say it seemed quite expensive. Not everything maybe. I'm sure a careful bargain shopper could find some great deals, but for instance we bought a ten pound bag of oranges for ten dollars and it would have been five dollars at my local RWC farmer's market. They also had UNPASTEURIZED raw almonds, so of course we got some of those but they are $14 a pound! If we'd have arrived in the San Joaquin Valley at the right time, they would have cost half that much. They had unpasteurized pomegranate juice, so that was cool although now I think I know what the guy at the Santana Row farmer's market was saying about people that press the seeds too much to try and get the last few drops of juice out and end up making it taste bitter.

We also got some lavender salt scrub from Eatwell Farm, which is the CSA I had joined earlier this year. The one I don't think I blogged about. Oops. Maybe later. Like, after I tell you who can go to hell.

And what else? Several peaches. My bf is either a genius at picking perfect peaches or else maybe it's really easy and I'm just ripe peach picking challenged.

They also had a few booths serving up raw food. By the time we sampled our way over to them with peaches and plums, bread dipped in various olive oils and strange exotic fruits I've forgotten the names of already, we weren't that motivated to take advantage of them. Plus we had been eying the Slanted Door for lunch. I did get a container of live/raw/vegan chocolate mousse topped with raspberry cheesecake which piggy me ate in its entirety the next afternoon and which I suspect is full of all sorts of high fat stuff like coconut oil and avocado because it was extremely delicious. Next time I'm there I think I'll try a smoothie or something instead.

I've read that in about two years time almost every cell in your body is replaced. I have this fantasy that no animal product will pass my lips in all that time. I despair of that ever happening in reality, though, thanks to people like this guy who forced a sample on me at one booth and I asked him what it was and he said "just a samosa with potato and peas". He forgot to tell me he dunked it in a yogurt sauce before giving it to me. Ugh. Trying to be vegan is SOOOOO hard sometimes (like any time I leave home.) We had lunch at the Slanted Door and the first time they brought our spring rolls we could see big fat shrimp bulging out against the rice paper wrappers. After we sent THOSE back, they brought us a rice noodle dish that had egg in it. So we sent that back, and next time it came back it had...I forget...shrimp or something on it...so we had to send it back TWICE. Who knows what else it might have had in it? Maybe some fish sauce or something? very frustrating.

Oh and OF COURSE we waited in line for Blue Bottle coffee, because I think that's just what you're supposed to do. I suggested to my bf that he buy a half pound of beans because if he likes the coffee it would be a shame if he had to wait in the line ALL OVER AGAIN. I don't think he really believes he will find a coffee he likes better than Peet's, but after I suggested it about a half dozen times (we were in line for a while) he finally said he would. He got a cafe latte and I got the New Orleans style iced coffee with chicory, and while I enjoyed them, I couldn't really tell you if it's great coffee or not because my main impression was that the soy milk was particularly beany tasting and I couldn't get past that. Why doesn't anybody use ALMOND milk? That would be sooooo much better. Next time we go there (someday) I imagine we'll just go to Peet's since it's right there and probably has a much shorter line if any. I'll even bring my Peet's travel mug!

I was impressed with the huge selection of stuff to be found here compared to my local farmer's market. They had EVERYTHING from Rancho Gordo beans to grass fed organic beef, and of course all the truly raw and unpasteurized stuff. Not sure when we'll be back, though...there are plenty of other markets still to be checked out, and there are two Farmer's Market's right here in RWC, plus Sigona's Farmers Market (not exactly a farmers market, but a gourmet grocery that features huge amounts of seasonal, locally grown produce.) Maybe once winter is here and some of the markets are shut down for the season we'll be back. With a credit card. And a stop at the cash machine.

Wavy Sphynx

Saturday my bf and I went out to admire our tomatoes. I'm not always there, so I am lucky to get to see them once a week. He's not always there, either, and his mom is the one who normally turns on the soaker hose for a while each day.

While looking at the tomatoes in the raised beds, we were noticing the plant that has always looked a little drier than the others, with the leaves a bit curled up and almost crispy looking, had some rather yellow small tomatoes on it This led to some debate because we had some little tags in there telling us which plant was which, but they are now buried beneath a bunch of straw and tomato leaves, so we don't really know how big the tomatoes should be or what color they will ultimately be.

While examining this plant, we noticed it also had a few even smaller green tomatoes that looked half eaten. My eyes followed a trail of them up and...my heart stopped and I just froze. There was a big-ass, huge, gigantic caterpillar munching on the next tomato up. My heart started beating super fast and my mind was racing...were there more of them? Are there a hundred of them all over the plant and they just blend in and we didn't notice? We brushed by a branch on the side of the bed, was there one on there? IS IT ON ME NOW??? Am I about to bump into another one? The thing was HUGE.

My bf was facing me and mostly away from the plant, so he didn't see what I was looking at, only my reaction as I grabbed his shoulders to use him as a sort of human shield. "What? What is it?" he said. I made a little motion with my head in the direction of the 4+ inch caterpillar and at first he didn't see it, but he was looking for a big bug or something and not a green caterpillar. That's because it's the same reaction he would have had if it'd been a big bug or a spider. When he saw it, he started laughing at me. I guess that's for all the times he's seen an itsy bitsy spider and panicked and I laughed at him.

We didn't see any more of these things, and we weren't sure what to do other than go around the tomato bed the OTHER direction on the way back to the house so we didn't brush into that one low outstretched branch JUST IN CASE.

I was saying we should find a big jar and put it in there with the branch it was on and the tomatoes it had been eating and then give it to one of his customers who had said to us once if we ever found a caterpillar in our garden, please save it in a jar for her along with some of whatever we find it eating. I think my bf wanted to cut off the branch and throw it into the neighbors yard (like they're not going to know where the big tomato branch came from when our tomatoes stick up about 7-8 feet in the air!) but he was amenable to saving it for his customer if we could figure out what to put it in.

We made dinner, which was sort of a practice for Thanksgiving. Last year I made a whole vegetarian dinner for his family on T-day and I was amazed that he let me do that, but it was a rather over-ambitious menu that included a fake turkey that wasn't very tasty and was still cold in the middle when we served, and this time we want to make sure things are both simpler and tastier, so I was previewing this loaf thing that is filled with soysage stuffing that they sell at Whole Foods for him, with some Punk Rock Chickpea Gravy from Vegan With A Vengeance while he made mashed potatoes for the first time ever I think with no butter or even Earth Balance in them.

His mom wandered in so we used her as our Thanksgiving guinea pig offered her some dinner and then were telling her about the HUGE GINORMOUS caterpillar on the tomatoes. She kind of shivered. She said she doesn't want to water the tomatoes for us any more. She thought we should kill it (she also wanted to kill the first ladybug we ever saw in the garden.) Then she wanted to see it. So, it was dark by this time but we went out with a flashlight, a scissors and a bucket. My bf had the scissors and the bucket and his mom had the flashlight. I had a glass of wine and was trying to keep far away from the plant, but my bf needed someone to hold the bucket.

Sooo...I took the flashlight from my bf's mom so she could hold the bucket for him. She didn't want to hold the bucket, so she tried to take the flashlight back from me. That was quite futile because I have a very strong grip and she is rather small and frail and sick. I know, I know...I should have been "nice" and let her have the flashlight but heck, she was the one who wanted to go out in the dark and poke around looking for the darn thing anyway! I didn't even want to go back outside, and I for sure didn't sign up to hold the bucket!

The branch got cut, went into the bucket, and another tomato that had been gnawed on already went in there. Then we took it inside and looked at it in the kitchen light. It is actually quite pretty for a big scary squishy thing with a horn on it and a giant face/mouth aperture that gnaws on our tomatoes. We put a thin flour sack towel over the bucket and fastened it on tightly!

My bf was convinced this thing must have arrived in the vermiculture that contained the earthworms we added to our garden a few months ago. That was a disconcerting thought...what exactly did we have shipped to us....and what state did it come from exactly??? Later when I was home, I thought I would try to look this creature up in "Peterson Field Guides Western Butterflies". That book doesn't show caterpillars for all of its butterflies, however, and it doesn't show any moths.

Finally I remembered that I live in the 21st century and I went to my computer and googled "caterpillar identification" and found a site that helped me figure out that this is probably a Wavy Sphynx, which will turn into a Sphynx moth and they don't normally eat tomato plants, they like the leaves from a few different trees and they like lilac bushes. So, just in case there are any more there, I ordered my bf a lilac bush. Next time, if he finds one on the tomato plants he can just throw the big, giant, creepy, squishy green monster thingy on the lilac.

Therebucks: what the heck?

I was just wondering if my Twitter page comes up in a search of Google or not so I checked it out. What I found was this article. At first I didn't even remember it, but after reading the whole thing, which tells people to visit the tbux website to buy discounted ThereBucks I realized that at the top it says "Idea for article by Jinx_tv".

What???

The "article" is from 2004, and I do seem to remember giving some eager young There reporter the idea to write something about where to get Therebucks. Who knew a few years later I'd be off selling tbux on my own and the article would still be up and directing people somewhere using MY NAME? Yeesh!

I did finally find my twitter URL. On page five.

Tomato Crazy

We finally got the first tomato out of our garden. Let's see, I guess we officially picked it on the 1st, so our first tomato wasn't until September! Next year we plan to get them in the ground before June, although of course we are also handicapped by the fact that the plants don't get full sun...there are trees and houses and fences and stuff that block them from getting as long a day of sun as they might want to ripen some tomatoes.

Of course my goal was to get the tomatoes up higher than the houses...since it's the leaves that need the sun and not the tomato fruits, I figured that would work great. My bf didn't quite see things the same way, though...he basically nixed the idea of putting up a second level to our cages, which would give them support up to ten feet into the air. Drat! Next year, I don't think he'll have a choice, though...it's not like they stop growing just because you don't provide a support.

We asked my bf's mom to stand by the tomato plants with the first tomato in her hand. I'm not sure what she's doing, trying to make it look like the tomato is still on the vine maybe? That first tomato actually came from one of the self watering planters, not the raised bed! We didn't want to try to tell her to do something else, though, since the real reason we wanted her to stand beside the tomatoes is she's so short we figured she'd make them look really tall. I don't know if it really worked, though. Next time maybe I'll get on the ground and take a picture of them reaching up towards the sky...that ought to do the trick.

In appreciation for her watering the tomatoes faithfully every day, we gave my bf's mom that first tomato. I think she was pretty happy about that, because she'd been going on and on about how some of them seemed ripe to her and I think she really wanted one. Did she eat it though? No! She stuck it in the refrigerator to chill it and then eat it later.

WHO REFRIGERATES A VINE RIPENED, JUICY, BEAUTIFUL, PERFECT TOMATO THAT IS READY TO EAT?????

Okay, my bf's mom, that's who. I kinda wish we'd eaten the first one now, since *ARGH* refrigerating a tomato causes it to lose flavor and develop a mealy texture.

Speaking of moms...we were going to FedEx my mom a few carrots from the garden, but we're running a bit low now and my bf gave a few big 'uns to his gardener's eight year old son the other day...I guess the boy was really impressed to see these huge carrots get pulled up out of the ground. Probably more impressed than my mom, who wouldn't actually be there to see them come up out of the ground anyway, but we are definitely looking forward to planting some more for our "winter garden" since we just attended a lecture on winter gardening in this area last week. Maybe we'll send my mom some "winter garden carrots".

Winter garden for us = fava beans...lettuce...garlic...onions...and carrots!

 

Yes, in case you didn't catch that before, I said my bf's gardener. His mom waters our tomatoes and he has a gardener come take care of his yard. When I described the raised beds I thought we should use in his yard, he had me take pictures of the plans and then printed them out for his gardener, and had his gardener build them and get the soil and compost for them. That's pretty funny if you ask me.

Monday holidays and white table wine

I'm not the biggest fan of holidays, generally. You will never find me wearing a sweater with a christmas tree knitted or appliqued onto it, with one of those plastic santa claus pins with the nose that lights up, with an elf hat on my head and a dish of red, green and silver hershey's kisses on my desk. You are not likely to find me waving a flag at a parade on July 4th. You are also not likely to find me coloring eggs in the spring. You MIGHT find me at a New Year's Eve party or cooking a big dinner in November or wearing a costume in October. Maybe.

And then there are the Monday holidays. I swear they were put there on the calendar just to annoy me. Rarely have I ever had a job where I got the day off, or if I did I probably wasn't getting paid for it. Or maybe everyone at work but me got that day off. I think those holidays just exist so that I can show up at the bank and find out it's closed, then open my mailbox to find it empty while whatever I'm expecting from UPS or FedEx is delayed by a day...AND shows up later the next day, since the extra day seems to get them a bit backed up on packages. It means the gym may be closed or close early, and restaurants are either closed or much busier than a normal Monday.

Still, I did enjoy my three day weekend this weekend!

I've been a bit handicapped wrt creating new models or working on any vMTV stuff because I got so fed up with Comcast I canceled my service with them and have been connecting to the Internet through my bf's Verizon Hi Speed Wireless card...which is pretty good although not as fast as Comcast (WHEN AND IF Comcast is actually working, because they suck and I have found their service extremely unreliable - but hey, who wants to watch the Olympics or maybe go online to earn a living anyway?) and the card does sometimes come disconnected in the middle of the night, forcing me to do my ThereBucks sales remotely while I sleep just in case. The thing is, I can only connect one laptop to the wireless card which leaves my two desktops unconnected right now, and it's pretty difficult to do anything developer-wise on them without the connection. I've toyed with the idea of trying to connect with my desktops to the Internet THROUGH the tablet pc, but I think I'll just have to suck it up and get satellite Internet ASAP.

The good news there is that when I first moved into my building 3 1/2 years ago, we weren't allowed to have a satellite dish on our balcony, and now there are FIVE of them on my side of the building (I don't think the other side of the building gets the necessary southern exposure, poor bastards.

Okay, this is getting really long and I haven't even gushed about my weekend yet!

Sunday my bf picked me up in the morning and we went to the Santana Row farmer's market. I thought it would be bigger but it was cool, we got some peaches and olive oil and walnut bread and fresh figs. Oh, and heirloom tomatoes! And one guy had the first pomegranate juice of the season but it was pasteurized so we didn't get any...he said during the peak of the season just let him know and he keeps some unpasteurized stuff in an ice chest behind the counter for regular customers that promise not to sue him for I dunno...if their juice ferments or something (he makes it sound like fermentation is a bad thing!) After that we went to a wine bar there that was pretty good and they were sort of advertising the movie "Bottle Shock", which it turns out was playing right at the theater in Santana Row, so we decided to see it, but first we did a little shopping (although all we bought was some chocolate and some $12 a tube lip balm) and we had lunch at some asian restaurant that I don't know the name of. The service was a bit off but most of the food was pretty darn good. We had cocktails and both got headaches later...probably should have brought our own bottle of wine instead, like maybe a bottle of the Luchador Shiraz we liked.

The movie was okay, not great but it was entertaining and I would recommend it to anyone interested in California wines/wine history. Actually, I enjoyed it more than Sideways. I mean, at least it's based on a true story.

So Monday morning...it was SO GREAT that it was a holiday. Not because of MY schedule, I'm basically always working and yet almost never working at the same time, as paradoxical as that may sound. No, it was because my bf didn't have to be anywhere. So we lounged around until we decided we wanted to have peaches for breakfast. Well, that was my bf's healthful suggestion which I somehow morphed into "let's mix some orange juice and peaches together in the blender and then add them to champagne", but we didn't have any champagne so my bf started digging through his wine stash for something white...there is always something white hanging around because we prefer red. He says "how about this White Table Wine from someplace in Napa" and I'm like "sure, whatever". So he opens the bottle and I'm like "should we try just the wine by itself first?" We both tried it and OMG...this white wine, served at room temperature, was sooooooo good. Like, the best white wine EVAR!!!

So we drank all our peach/orange/white table wine with some walnut baguette and took pictures of our garden, pulled a few carrots and picked our very first tomato. I'll tell you about that tomorrow or something because my bf has to send me the pictures first. While doing all this we decided "let's go to Napa RIGHT NOW and get some more of this white table wine!" "Right now" is a little relative though, because first my bf has to do soooooo much stuff like shave and spend an hour styling his hair.

That gave me time to check my business transactions, look up the winery that has this amazing wine and have a conversation with my bf's mom about how her nurse speaks very good spanish but english is much harder to learn because you have words like "glasses" which could mean drinking glasses or eye glasses but it's confusing that the one word can mean two things. I don't think she was really listening when I pointed out that they are both made of the material "glass", but one is for "drinking" and one is for your "eyes" and the proper thing to say would be "eyeglasses" and "drinking glasses" and that means you really just need to learn three words and then you can put them together and you know at least five words...and she already knows drink and eyes. The reason I don't think she was listening is because we've actually had the same conversation before. What I was really hoping was that she'd bring up jesus christ or church or something because I recently got the book "What the Bible Says about Healthy Living" and I wanted to quote her some juicy bible passages. Oh well, I don't have them memorized yet anyway.

Anyway, back to the winery...I looked up the Van Der Heyden Vinyards website and one page listing wines available didn't show the white table wine, but an ordering page DID show it, so I gave my bf the phone number and he called and asked them if they were open and they were, so we drove to Napa! I wondered if maybe we should have asked if that wine was still available, but my bf preferred to simply go look.

He said "we're lucky we can just drive to Napa and visit a few wineries any time."

I said "yes, somos afortunados!"

Well, actually I said something more like "nosotros suertemos", but now I know that was wrong.

So anyway, we got to the winery and we walk in and the guy is like "I hope you're not here for the white table wine because we've been sold out for a month and a half." Then he relented and let us know there were exactly two magnums left of the object of our affections. My bf said we'd take one but I bruised his ribs with my elbow until he said we'd take two. We'll probably serve them for Thanksgiving or xmas, so whomever is with us on that day will be muy afortunado! The winery has some other great wines as well...we had a fabulous, fabulous amazing dessert wine that I can't remember the name of but it was $125 for a small bottle so we didn't get any :( The guy, who not only works in the tasting room of Van Der Heyden but also cuts meat at Safeway, said he was giving us a taste of it because the owner was out cleaning some vats or something so he could get away with tasting us on it without charging us $10. I think he really just did it because he thought "here are two people that will probably spend $125 on a bottle of wine." Nice try, dude.

So then we went to some other winery that wasn't as good, then to a great coffee shop right in the center of Napa that appears to supply all the coffee blends for all the best Napa restaurants, and then to "Tuscany", the restaurant we reluctantly left on another occasion because we had reservations at Ubuntu. It was a bit of a challenge eating there this time...but I'll have to leave that for a Yelp review.

Oh...oh...and then we stopped at the outlet mall which was open late because IT WAS A HOLIDAY (so another reason Monday holidays are sometimes okay) and went shopping and I came home with some cute tank tops and a bunch of undergarments that my adorable bf bought me. Thank goodness Napa is so much closer than the San Joaquin Valley, because by this time we'd had a very long day and it was just "gps take us home." Okay actually it was more like I programmed the gps and then my bf ignored everything it said to do.