UMTravels

Me with the Swiss German CouchSurfers Fabian and his younger brother Jonas: They left in the morning for a little more sightseeing downtown before heading to Portland as their next destination – tried (but failed) to convince them to stay another night to have dinner with my Swiss German buddy Graf. Rest of the day […]

Weird, wild day. A little before 10 the notary shows up (early, me in the middle making eggs and sausage) to sign papers to refinance my house and lower the interest rate to 4.25% — not quite the lowest, but no inspection, no appraisal, no income verification (guess that 815 credit score helped). New payment? […]

Today’s big excitement at the shop is the closing reception for the current artist at the show. Not much of a wine drinking crowd, so I bugged out at 4:30 since Jim and Suze would be taking down the show after closing. Let’s hope they at least bought some wine on the way out (the […]

My weekend to open the shop today – on the upside, means I’m out of there at 4:30 with plenty of time for evening activities. Today’s humorous shot… what happens when you get a really inky cork: And that would be from a professional pulling the cork – out wine rep from the distributor Click. […]

Up at 7… OK, the coffee arrived at 7, 7:30 was more like it after a sip, snore, sip, snore routine. OF course, Swanda had been up for hours. By 9 we were out the door, and checked out – and a quick stop at the mini-mart for some diet ice tea (to drink and […]

Lazy morning with Swanda up hours before me. Nothing new there. Apparently I’ve missed an 8:45am phone call – will look into after coffee 2x and breakfast. I can do email on coffee alone, but not talking to people. When I finally get to voicemail (ponying up the $ per minute fee since I’m in […]

It was an alarm morning… need to be at Swanda’s place at 10am, or a little after 9 if I want to catch Air Force One taking off to the North right in front of Swanda’s picture window. As it turns out… the President didn’t take off at 9:30, but he did snarl traffic getting […]

Odd day today… thrift shopping for a basket, helmet, lock… found the helmet ($3.99), and the basket ($1.99) – plus a board game for a friend ($5.99) at Goodwill. Salvation Army only yielded a bunch of marked down wine glasses for the shop. For the lock I had to go to Home Depot and get […]

Everyone slept in this morning… and by the time I got breakfast fixed for the crew they didn’t get packed up and out the door until noon. Here is the final shot: For the rest of the shots of the visit, try this link: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zd63jf1cx4kk7ux/c48DNvC5HR?m A quick trip to the store for soda, mark down […]

A slight correction… 20, 20 and 24. The Germans ages that is. And OK day at the shop which is good because Wednesday, Thursday, Friday weren’t so good. The boys were waiting for me on the porch when I got home from the office. Jim and Suze are showing up for dinner as well, so […]

The morning was a bit overcast – Jim even wore his jacket to open the shop fearing a repeat of Friday’s morning downpour. By the time I arrived at 1:30 the sun was out and it stayed out. Slow morning at the shop for Jim, just $130 or so in sales – luckily when the […]

Great – a morning downpour of rain – just what the lawn needs to get growing again when I was hoping that it would just turn brown. Today’s humorous photo from today: Children’s sized toilets at EarthWise Salvage, my second set of kids toilets spotted this year. Only $65. By the afternoon the rain had […]

The day of errands. Got new bolts and lock-tite for the portable picnic table – it seems that with all the travelling it’s done (flying from Santa Fe and then strapped to the back rack of the Miata) seems nuts and bolts were working themselves loose. One chore down before starting the next one… tackling […]

Today I actually made it to the dentist with so much time to spare that I started exploring Redmond – stopped at Safeway to see what non-perishables were on the shelves (sewing machine needles and iron-on patch material), then found a Trader Joe’s so I thought I’d see if they were carrying liquor yet (yes) […]

I can’t believe I screwed up and didn’t get the notice for my dentist appointment until 15 minutes before – totally thought it was Wednesday – which it is now that I cancelled to tell them no way could I make the appointment since they are a minimum of 45 minutes away. Reset for tomorrow […]

The morning picture – why, yes, that is the Wall Street Journal on my front walk, now approaching the two month mark since my subscription ended: Yes, the lawn needs mowing. And two shots while running errands: Humorous shot from the apartment parking lot (above), and Seattle’s newest attraction, a London Eye-style Ferris Wheel below: […]

Slow day at the shop. It gave me time to standardize all the Ch. into Château on the wine cards (and finish Popular Mechanics and Out Magazine’s Olympics issue which I’ll pass onto Swanda). I would have rather been selling wine. Swung by Safeway for staples (toilet paper, dish detergent, laundry detergent) and a couple […]

Opened the shop today for a fairly slow “odd-weather” day. By the end of the day the sales were OK, and yesterday’s good as well so it wasn’t a total bust. Stopped at Safeway to hit the bargain racks – scored some marked down cans of Asian vegetables, then off to the bank. Bad day […]

Happy Friday the 13th. I wonder if Bowman still holds his parties every Friday the 13th in the Haight (at Ashby) in San Francisco. Noon finds me at “the office” unlocking the front door and preparing for a day of receiving shipments from our distributors, pricing bottles and finding places for them in the racks […]

Having looked at the map, I’ve located a couple of more wineries that the shop carries (Milbrandt and Airfield Estates). Prosser is a 50 minute drive east from Yakima which had me arriving at a little after ten after not having a real map and just wandering around Prosser. Airfield Estates didn’t open until 11 […]