No New Year's Plans?? Now You Do!

Be there or be square...

Kirsten and I, along with 6 or so other friends will be celebrating New Year's Eve at the Lakefront Brewery just down the river from our place. They are hosting an event that starts at 10:00 PM for the bargain basement price of $35 per person which includes their delicious beers (and soda), appetizers and a champagne toast at midnight. The price is pretty comparable to other establishments that are having events.

If you don't have plans and are looking for something to do...see you there! You can find more information here.

Happy Holidays!

This is going to be a quick post because Santa Derek had about 14 cocktails too many last night but I did want to take the time to wish you all a Happy Holidays.

For Christmas, Kirsten and I made the trip up to St. Cloud, MN to spend a few days with her family. It was a really nice time (thanks again, Nelsons, I know some of you are readers) filled with food, gifts and fun...except for the Nelson Family Talent Show. ;)

I hope you all are enjoying the holidays.

Derek

Bottoms Up!

So as my week of work in San Francisco came to close, my trip west was far from over. Friday afternoon Kirsten flew out to San Francisco and from the airport we rented a car (nothing flashy, just a Hyundai for what we save in money there will be spent on wine) and immediately headed north to one of the major wine regions in California, Sonoma Valley.

As some of you know, I am a big wine drinker so next to Lambeau Field, a place like Sonoma is a top destination for me and it didn't disappoint regardless of the spotty weather. All week in San Francisco the weather was good. Not great, but not bad...50's. Friday night it began to rain and it let up only for about 8 hours on Saturday, which was JUST enough time for us to get our wine tasting in!

We started our day at the winery farthest from the town square in "downtown" Sonoma, Ledson Winery. Of course we had to start with the farthest and work our way back. Can't to the opposite and drive farther with the more we drink! I think Kirsten would agree with me that Ledson ultimately was the winery we enjoyed the most. The others were great, but Ledson was definitely memorable from the minute you roll up to the castle (pictured). We made our way to the tasting room with our 2-for-1 tasting coupon (they were available for most wineries) which was good for a five wine tasting. We happened to be the first ones there (at 10:45 AM) but what was great about that was that we had ALL the attention of the wine guys. We ended up tasting 8-9 wines there for a grand total of $5 (plus a $5 tip) which was a great deal.

Another one I'd like to highlight is SL Cellars which was recommended to us by Mike, our tasting dude at Ledson. SL Cellars is primarily known as a sparkling wine boutique winery which, like Ledson, only sells their wine either A) At the winery or 2) Over the phone/internet. Can't find it in stores. They also made a pretty stellar Pinot Noir that I enjoyed while Kirsten went nuts with their sparkling wines. She liked them so much that she joined their Wine Club so she'll be expecting 2 bottles every 6 months from there. I tasted one sparkling wine and three Pinot Noirs and Kirsten had about the same, except in reverse types and we paid a grand total of $0 ($5 tip) since we came from Ledson.

The friendly, generous people out there was definitely a trend and the fun we had was too good for words. We're definitely going back, hopfully sooner than later since we only hit about 10% of the wineries in Sonoma alone. I'd highly recommend it.

If you'd like to see more pictures, I've got them up on the website so enjoy. The site is still in it's very early stages so forgive me.

A Machine

A quick story from last week in San Francisco...

On Monday night I went out to have dinner (alone, again) at the famous John's Grill downtown. It's famous because it was the setting for author Dashiell Hammett's novel The Maltese Falcon. It's also well known because it supposedly has some of the best steaks in town. While it was fairly tasty, it was a far cry from the delicious flesh that gets served up in this region of the country.

After dinner, I stopped in at a bar called "Dave's" across the street from my hotel for a couple of beers and to watch the Monday Night Football game. I had a couple and chatted with a few people when in walks this guy. If you've ever seen Legally Blonde which yes, I'm admitting to right now, then picture the tall clumsy, geeky guy named David, that Reese befriends. This guy looked just like him.

He sits down next to me and places a $20 bill on the bar and asks for a glass of Wild Turkey 101 on the rocks in a water glass! That's 101 proof, as if the 80 proof Turkey wasn't gross enough. He receives his drink, surveys it, and begins his machine-like movements.

In this order: 1) take a sip - 2) put down glass - 3) fold hands on the bar - 4) pick up glass - repeat steps 1-4

He did this every 2-3 seconds I kid you not. Just a machine. I stared at him just like Marty McFly did when he realized he was sitting next to his father in the diner in Back to the Future. Only this guy didn't look over. Just kept repeating those same 4 steps until his glass was empty. Then the robo-man then leaves a $1 bill on the bar and walks out. This whole scene took less than 4 minutes. It was incredible.

A Christmas Carol

[I know I have more posts to write about San Francisco and Sonoma but in the meantime...]

Last night Kirsten and I went to see the play A Christmas Carol at the very cool Pabst Theater with our good friends with child, Emmett and Julie. Before going to the performance, we started with dinner at Cafe Vecchio Mondo, which is now having their grand re-opening as part of celebrating their 10th anniversary. Not sure how that works. It didn't seem to change to much from the last time I was there except they have a new sign out front.

Anyway, I don't want to take anything away from the place because I really like it. I like the atmosphere, the food, and the oversized martinis. (I know I'm not the only one who likes those!). We all really enjoyed our food (I had the Chicken Tortellini). Oh, one other thing that is new about the place is that they offer a fondue menu. Not really up my alley but one cool thing that we heard about last night was the meat fondue. Sounds gross until she mentioned all what comes with it which is pretty much every type of delicious flesh there is (for $39 a person).

Off to the show. Since it was a Wednesday night, the ticket sales were somewhat slow so we were moved down to third row center (with no one in rows 1 & 2) so that was pretty sweet. Well, it was good and bad. The good part is obvious but the bad part was you were so close you could see the oodles of makeup the people had on as well as things like the beard tape. It didn't really take anything away from the show, just something I noticed from time to time.

The performance was fantastic and for some reason choked me up a little at the end so I had a hard time singing along with the closing carol. After the show, some of the actors were hanging out in the lobby collecting money for the poor so, after depositing some cash in one of the actor's hat, we chatted a bit. Nice guy who played a few different characters in the play. We asked some questions that people not in the industry would ask like "is this a full time gig" and things like that. He let us know that they rehearse all day for other plays and then perform this one. Turned out to be 12-hour days. Brutal.

Anyway, the show was terrific and I'd highly recommend going to see it. It'll definitely get you in the holiday spirit!

On Location: Part 1

What up peeps...I'm writing to you live from San Francisco, Cali where I am out here for the week running up the expense account, er, working feverishly. While I love living in Milwaukee, something about leaving that foot of snow and barely double-digit temperatures behind and coming out here is awfully nice.

One thing I will say though, as nice as it is, these people out here are wimps. So, the morning time temperatures have been about 50 degrees. Pretty darn nice right? The answer is 'yes.' My hotel is about 3 fairly good size blocks away from the office. These past couple mornings I've worn a long-sleeve shirt and walked to work. Now for the wimpy part...most of the people that actually live here, the natives as I've been calling them which apparently isn't scoring me any free drinks or anything, are wearing what only can be described as winter coats. Come on people. Toughen up.

Oh, and listen to this. Many people downtown here are such wimps that they can't even make it to the office without curling up in a ball and catching some shut eye, blankets and all, in the cut out entrance ways to Sprint or T-Mobile storefronts. And what's up with the shopping carts? Get a backpack man!

[I'm pretty sure I'm going to hell for that last paragraph]

One great thing that makes me happy in the morning, other than my Starbucks coffee, is walking to work, through the crowded streets, listening to my iPod. I swear it feels like I'm in a commercial with my own soundtrack. This morning, in honor of the show "Lost," I walked to work listening to Damien Rice in honor of Hurley listening to it on his Discman when his batteries finally died.

(By the way, if any of the "Lost" writers are reading this, I owned a Discman and the batteries died in like an hour, not 5 episodes. I mean come on, the rest of the show is so realistic, with all those people surviving a plane crash and such, don't ruin it with those obvious things.)

Stay tuned for the next "on location" post...I have a good story...until then.

Let It Snow

Milwaukee's first major snowfall of 2006 is upon us. It was so bad in fact, that I pulled the ever so famous move of "working from home." Normally that's cause for ridicule, but in this case I believe it's warranted. It appeared that I was in the majority on that based on the emails that were flying around work yesterday.

It not only marked the first snowfall of '06 but the first snowfall overall for Olive. Needless to say, she was quite confused when we went outside in the morning. She wanted none of it and walked cautiously around surveying the area. "Where did my dumping ground go?!" (pun intended) I could almost hear her saying out loud.Of course after going outside a few times she was quite used to it and managed to get back into her routine. We did have a nice father-daughterpug day though. While working, of course, we watched Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Bourne Supremacy and even pulled out the old dusty Playstation. Yea, that's right, Playstation ONE because that's how we do..old school baby.

After our bonding time, which ended abruptly when Kirsten got home from work. She can't do the whole "work from home" thing when it snows since the clinic she works at is literally two blocks away. Anyway, the snow had stopped so we put our pre-planned, um, plan into action and went and picked up the 2006 version of the DeGroot Christmas Tree.

Another surprise for Olive. "What are you doing bringing one of those in the house?! Oh wait, nevermind, I like it. Another thing for me to chew on just to annoye you. Nice"

So we survived the first major snowfall and the holiday season is upon us. Enjoy it and I hope you all get lots of nice stuff since that's what Christmas is all about.