UMTravels

A fine breakfast of leftover pork products from last nights dinner. Oh, and coffee that I brought.

Next up was an “owner re-education” $50 AMEX meeting in the morning. Looks like if I want “TravelShare” which gives me a 3-week (rather than 2) for Bonus Time (4.4 cents per credit) and “Fun Time” (6 cents a credit for last minute booking, not using points) is to sign on for another 5,000 points — but the better deal is 6,000 points which gives you another 6000 bonus points in March, plus another useless RCI exchange week — though that would give me two weeks for some massive holiday off season somewhere. Tempting, and I got them to hold it until tomorrow — will have to look at the numbers again. Want the benefits, don’t want the added liability — of course, considering I sold Microsoft stock at the height of the market for my original points (and then the stock market crashed) — it’s like they were free, or at least 50% off.

Winery tours for the afternoon. First Tulip Vineyards, just down the road. Then Ceago — almost across the street (and recommended by the front desk, but no free tasting coupon), and then, my favorite — Steele. God, I love Jed’s wine — and his son’s (Writer’s Block branded) aren’t bad either. Signed up for there club (which I used to belong to) and got the 20% discount on their wines — and think I talked the tasting room into signing up for the WorldMark discount program — since the three people tasting when I was first there, we were all staying at the WorldMark Clear Lake.

Here is the wine list:

• Tulip — a Magnum of 2002 Cabernet for dinner at Mark and Onyx’s
• Ceago (where there were two really cute organic farmer boys from Hood River, OR — see picture link) — a bottle of Savignon Blanc for Onyx to have (loves whites)
• Steele — a Barbera, a Aligot, a Franc, and a strange, but lovely Sparkling Syrah. One or two of them will die in Berkeley as well.

The afternoon snack was a couple of tacos from Jack In The Crack — 99 cents plus tax — and what I realized is that they are incredibly close in composition to my mother’s recipe which is half inch of oil in cast iron pan — pat half moon of beef in corn tortilla, pop in the grease, fold over the top, then turn over, pull out and put on paper towels, personally fill your own from bowls of cheese, shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and salsa. Mind you Jack has preformed pockets that they quickly (a minute, maybe) drop in the vat of oil, then stuff with the fresh stuff — OK for takeout — much better than those pre-formed hard shells.

Dinner will be a total repeat of last nights dinner. Boring, but it’s what’s in the fridge.