UMTravels

Work on the Madrona Wine Merchants website in the morning before meeting up with Jimmy at a wine tasting downtown at the Pan Pacific. Here was the line-up: 16 French Wines 23 Spanish Wines 9 Assorted Rose Wines And some nice appetizers to refresh the palate. Then it was off to Jimmy’s place to pick […]

Met up with Jimmy at the apartment where I picked up the store copy of Windows 2010, some groceries, and Jimmy. I shaved about an hour off his commute from the Madison Valley to South Park. Today’s chores for Jimmy, drill baby, drill. Many 1″ wide holes through ¾” plywood. Not an easy task at […]

A full day in the shop with Jimmie showing up at 11:30 after a REALLY long bus ride. It’s not convenient to get from the Central District to South Park. Today’s word of the day is “jig” (courtesy of Wikipedia): In metalworking and woodworking, a jig is a type of tool used to control the […]

You know you have spent too much time in front of the computer when you neck and shoulders star complaining. I’m working on a more easy to post to website for www.madronawinemerchants.com so you can see the latest and greatest. Locating photos, making static pages, doing some sample posts. The list never ends. But then […]

I can’t believe I spent most of the afternoon and into the early evening working in the garage trying to organize and improve the shop. It all started with a run to Home Depot for about $40 bucks worth of vacuum hose and adapters. By the time I had to hit the showers to head […]

Today is all about turning Big Sticks into Little Stick, and get the car back in the garage after leaving it outside last night accidentally leaving the top down. Jimmie and Chauffeur Suze arrived about 11am and off to work we went. While Jimmie chopping I’m doing things like installing a vice on the work […]

You log into your Alaska Airlines “My Trips” section and it looks like this: My Trips – Purchased About My Trips | Add a Current Flight Reservation | Book a Flight | View Alaska Airlines Vacations Reservation Purchased Reservations Departs Confirmation Code Check-In Honolulu (HNL) Tue, Sep 6, 2011 XXXXXX Â Seattle, WA (SEA) Fri, […]

H20Blanco was out before breakfast was served for a little play time with a new friend so I was on my own to run to Costco for more Alli, luckily the lines were short at 11:30 in the morning. On the way back from Costco I was about six cars from making it over the […]

A lovely sausage and fried eggs breakfast before H20Blanco set off on his errands and then to dinner with his sister-in-law. As for me, it was errands on the Eastside with a bank run (deposit), a liquor store run (Evan Williams), a Safeway run (eggs and a ton of 30-75% off meat products), and a […]

300 plus emails later, the inbox is mostly cleaned up just in time for company arriving tonight. Speaking of emails in my inbox, this one labeled “honourary canuck”: It being Monday, it must be a wine tasting. Not sure why these happen on Monday’s but 40+ swirl, sips, dumps later, I need a serious drink […]

Months of work comes down to the closing hours and the final pot of coffee on the front deck. Some kind faerie (probably my cabin mates) left me a cart to haul all the stuff back to the car: Cooler Picnic Wine Bag Two backpacks One duffle bag One briefcase And that’s after giving away […]

Off to town this morning for a dose of protein. Steak and Eggs with the toast and hash browns swapped out for a side salad, they are so good to me at The Cedars (and home of the Plywood Room according to Talent Show lore). After a lovely breakfast/lunch spent reading the New Yorkers I’m […]

The routines that we so easily slip into on holiday. Hanging around the cabin, going off for meal-times, not having to worry about cooking or cleaning up except for the cocktail parties. Before you know it, it’s time for the talent show. This a great example of some of the serious talent in our group: […]

The boys (Hummingbird and BamBam) are up and out before I’m out of bed. Apparently they actually want breakfast though I hear the eggs were good, it’s usually just gruel, fruit and muesli in the morning. Not much in the way of protein, just carbs. This morning I moved the propane coffee maker out onto […]

With the cabin to myself it was easy to sleep in past breakfast and make a pot of coffee at my leisure. Of course I should have done it on the front steps as I managed to momentarily set off the CO2/Smoke Alarm in the cabin. Being in the trees, the cabins that is, also […]

Not enough sleep. The 8:30am call from my broker’s assistant telling me how to fill out forms that I hadn’t even printed out yet was the second she had placed. Apparently I slept through the first one. Crisis number one. Non-savable encrypted PDF that I can only fill out and print, and I can’t even […]

I didn’t make too much progress on the garage organization. Two boxes and I got the chop saw platform raised into the air (minus the chop saw which is over at Jimmies for prototyping). I did finish up the bag. One broke/bent three needles in the process. It now has a shoulder strap (with reflective […]

Spent most of the afternoon buried in the garage — organizing, sorting, re-boxing, de-boxing (must have broken down 30 shipping boxes) all in an effort to get ready to build wine racks upon my return from the gathering next week. Unfortunately, there is still probably another afternoon of work to be done. By the evening […]

Really, I wasn’t planning on doing a wine tasting, it just happened. I was over at Jimmies looking at the racking prototype for the store: None of the sanding and finishing is done, and there are going to be more adjustments, but this is basically the style. So, we are sitting around playing with floor […]

This afternoon I went to my first wholesale wine tasting for folks that owe wine shops, local restaurants sommelier, etc. Something tells me they aren’t all going to be like this. Ever go to a wine tasting and sample a nice heavy red and say, this would go great with a nice juicy steak — well, […]