wine tastings

This day has been so full of events and planning that I almost forgot to blog. First, I made a quick trip to town to accomplish some necessary tasks before my big trip to Ethiopia starts in two weeks. In fact, two weeks from this moment I will be on Emirate Airlines flying for 14 hours and 45 minutes to Dubai. With a long layover there, we get a hotel room and a tour. Then on to Ethiopia for two and one half weeks. Since only wifi is available there and only in a few places, you will hear from me but not all that often.

I bought an iPAD mini to take photos (in addition to a camera) and keep a log of my daily adventures–maybe I will turn it into some sort of small travel book or my friends with whom I am going and I will make a book. When I returned home, I tried to figure out some things on the mini myself, but alas, it is not the same at all as this iMAC. Finally, I gave up and called my ten year old grandson (he has a mini). Of course, he knew exactly what to do and walked me through everything.

About that time the wine guy at Market Street showed up with this huge cooker–it is really large, bigger than my Mini Cooper. Tomorrow night they will have a wine tasting at my house, but with a different twist. Market Street is providing the food: hamburgers, hotdogs, brats, and all the trimmings. My garage has boxes of buns, chips, and I am not sure what all stacked up. In my great room boxes containing 100 wine glasses are stacked. The guests are supposed to bring their favorite bottle of wine to share. I have told several friends to not bother because I have about five bottles of white wine I want to get rid of–I am not a white wine drinker. We expect approximately 100 they told me. They predict thunderstorms. I am hoping the storms, if they come, hold off of until late. Here on the canyon edge storms provide incredible drama including waterfalls. And mud.

While in town, I stopped by Hastings, a chain that sells books, movies, CDs, that sort of thing. This Saturday, the 21st at 3, they are hosting a book signing for me for my new book On the Rim of Wonder. We have everything all set and ready to go. They already have fliers posted, gave me one to display during the wine tasting and said I could bring chocolate brownies to share with buyers. Yesterday, I was in a minor panic because they had spelled my name incorrectly on the flier. Kudos to Crystal at Hastings, she got it fixed quickly.

Now I am going to vacuum even if it is ten at night.

Arrived home from work and fed Rosie. Looked at the dry native grass around my house and decided to water a bit of it even though I loathe wasting water. Green is probably safer than winter brown. The recent giant wildfire raised my concerns about the fire danger in this drought. I cannot remember when it rained and the next ten days show no rain in sight. As soon as I finish writing this or shortly thereafter, I get to run back to town and join probably 100 plus other people at friends’ house to taste the wine and food brought by Market Street. These friends run a bed and breakfast with a spectacular garden complete with koi pond and just about every kind of flower you can grow in this area. It’s cool, nearly froze last night, so I will wear the black turtle neck and slacks I wore to work. It’s hard to believe that it was just above freezing last night and is supposed to hit 100 next Monday–the desert has now reached here apparently.

Thinking about this leads me to think about some of my favorites, especially when it comes to wine: zinfandels, especially from Lodi, California. The moderately priced one I buy most often is OVZ. It frequently goes on sale here which is even better. I also like Seven Deadly Zins–unfortunately I have never seen it on sale. Basically, I love red wines and almost never drink white. A moderately priced nice blend is Apothic Red. Market Street had a super sale so I bought several–ten percent off if you buy six at a time. The best malbec I ever drank came directly in baggage from Argentina, a present to me from my Argentinian exchange student when he arrived. You can’t get it here and when his mom tried to ship me some, she was not allowed.

The students at school kept commenting on my black attire today. They asked if I was going to a funeral or something. I laughed. I like black; I look good in black. It also shows off my turquoise jewelry. My most favorite color is orange. Turquoise looks good with it too. Red and green are ok. Finally after decades I have learned to like hot pink, but really I am not a pink person–see my poem about Hot Pink Toenails–on an old blog. It remains one of my blog posts that people look at most–I have no clue why. The one color I really do not like is blue, especially pale blue. Perhaps tomorrow I will post about favorite books. I really would like readers to comment about their favorites. It fascinates me what people perceive and feel about this and that. Often I am the only person I know who reads what I read.

Off to taste some new wines and maybe find a new favorite.