Adventures of an Urban Jungleboy

This weekend bovil and I are, as is our wont, joining the merry crew at vintacon.

We'll be checking into the Hilton Garden Inn Gilroy on Thursday Night so we can be rested and fresh for tasting on Friday morning.

hurray! A weekend where the only running around is in search of another glass of wine.

Yup, I'm doing it again.

Susan and Greg Russi of Vin Santo Ristorante in Willow Glen are helping me do another "Wine and Cheese for Charity" event at their restaurant.

The idea is simple: Susan chooses 4 wines from their astonishingly well-stocked cellar. Greg prepares appetizers. Guests can choose to get 2 glasses of wine for $30 or 4 for $50.
We drink fabulous wine, chat, and gossip with fabulous people, and enjoy fabulous appetizers from Greg's kitchen until we're done.

See, isn't that simple? And it raises a little money for charity, too!

We'll be starting at 7PM on Wednesday, January 18. For those of you following the Stupid Hair Tricks conspiracy, you'll get a preview of my zebra-striped hair if Belinda can do it all on Tuesday night.

There is one catch: we can only accomodate 30 people. 5 spaces have already been reserved...

Email me at my Imperial address (emperor34 at irlm.org) if you want to join the fun...

Kevin

This weekend we finally made it to Vino Cellars & Accessories to order a 480-500 bottle wine storage cabinet for the garage. This means that all the wine we've been storing on the slab in the garage (and praying for no really extended hot spell) will finally have a safe place to live.

Of course, I couldn't find the equity line checkbook to pay for said cabinet before we left for Livermore, but the charming proprietor said I could mail it Monday.

From there, we proceeded to Bent Creek Winery to pick up our club selection and taste the new 2003 Livermore Zinfandel. Plus of course, everything else they were pouring in the tasting room, and to schmooze with the owners and volunteers in the tasting room. Plus we got a very fun ancient astronomical sun blinkie which I affixed to my straw cowboy hat.

Then off to Cedar Mountain Winery for a little selective tasting and a chat with owners Earl and Linda Ault. Always fun.

Then we went to Steven Kent, where there was a big sign saying "private party" on the tasting room door. Poo! I'd wanted to pick up my club selection. Fortunately, the Tamas Estates tasting room hosted on the same property, so we decided to taste there. While tasting, we found out the "private party" was the club release party for a wonderful blend called Radius, so off we went to claim my club selection. We ended up talking to Steven himself, and I ended up buying a case of Radius. Yum!

By this point, it was too late to make our traditional last tasting stop at Thomas Coyne, so we wobbled home and grabbed a few minutes quite before going to a farewell party for my coworker Christian. Fortunately, we left there *before* they plugged in the karaoke machine :-)

Sunday, I set out to find the missing checkbook. This entailed sorting through all the junk mail and ephemera that had accumulated in the living room while we got ready for Interaction and Leather-Levi Weekend 2005. Several hours later, it still hadn't turned up, but I *did* find the living room floor. Hoorah!

Of course, as I was organizing my stuff to get to the gym and to work on Monday morning, I looked in my backpack and what was there in plain sight (where I had looked 4 times previously)... you guessed it. The prodigal equity-line checkbook. So off to Vino Cellars went the all-important check today.

So in 6-8 weeks we should be the proud owners of a wine cabinet begging to be filled. Plus, I have a living room floor again!

Oh -- this week I hope I'll be setting the Wabac machine for Clear Lake, Glasgow, Calgary and Natural Bridges this week to try and catch up on many overdue LJ entries.