UMTravels

I woke up this morning with a kiss on the forehead from Jamie — a recent other house-guest for ark and Onyx. It’s a lovely way to wake up. I wish it came with coffee — which was brewing.

By the time I got out of bed Jamie was gone, but fortunately the coffee wasn’t.

Cleaning out the in-box in the morning lead to a new assignment from E&A — if you have time, drop in on the Bay Area offices and check-in. Rational? “That should scare the hell out of them.” So ordered, I did the Santa Clara office today. Lovely traffic with the Bay Bridge closed.

Tomorrow the San Francisco office — via Bart. 15 minute walk on the front end, 5 minute walk on the back end. $7.00 round-trip… cheaper than the gas I used today.

So, the 10 Rules To Be A Good Housewife:

1. Bring a bathrobe, no matter how thin — it saves from embarrassing moments
2. Offer to purchase meal materials and cook for your hosts — they will love you
3. Remember that you are saving $50-100 a night, restock their liquor cabinet and buy the wine for dinner — they will definitely invite you back.
4. If you are meeting someone at the airport — make sure you have their mobile number — saves greif for everyone
5. Dishes. If you know how they do their dishes, do them the same way. If you don’t ask. If they are anal about them (like my father), rinse and stack.
6. Rules. As what the household rules are. Then realize that those aren’t all the rules. Watch. Learn. Get invited back.
7. Assume that your hosts have lives. Just because you are on vacation doesn’t mean they are.
8. Clean up after yourself — if there is a squeegee in the tub area, it’s there for a reason — use it.
9. If your borrow their car, wash it, return it full of cash, even it was empty. You just saved $30-50.
10. Write a thank you note. Snail mail is better than email, but both will be appreciated.

So, that’s the list that I promised you weeks ago. Maybe I should print it out and put it in some stored goods here at my host’s house.

Dinner — yes, dinner. Lovely rolled rib steaks under the broiler with basically the same salad as last night — but with the proper cheese (goat cheese). No Onyx for dinner tonight — he’s in the city watching Nightmare Before Christmas in 3D with a friend — he needed to get out of the house.

The schedule at this house is work/play/eat/work/drink/play/eat for about 18 hours a day — and we are all still working.

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Up in the air again… a 12:30pm flight to Oakland to see Mark and Onyx on one of my three cheapie tickets. How cheap? $101.20 each, and I got upgraded to first class on the way down.

I like that noon flight — in First they actually still serve you food (a light salad with chicken on the top) unlike the earlier and later flights that they just pass around a snack basket filled with fatty, salty, snacks. Let’s hope my luck holds on the return flight — won’t know that until tomorrow.

With a big tail wind the flight time was a record (for me) 1 hour and 18 minutes — hard to suck down a lot of free booze in that amount of time.

Mark met me at the airport to provide shuttle service — I, in turn, brought a bag of meat for our dinners during my visit. Tonight’s meal is lamb chops in a Bombay Curry and a simple salad of spinach, tomatoes and blue cheese.

Nothing worthy of a photo today.

No word from my Bangladeshi Hottie — guess that flame has gone out.

[219.6]

The standard Tuesday marketing meeting. Odd to think that they didn’t have these weekly meetings until I started consulting for them almost a year and a half ago. Wow, I guess it has been that long!

Dinner tonight is for five people at 6pm… though Jonathan showed up at 3:30 and Jeff more like 5:30, and Mark was already here working on getting the SOB wiring finished which he did so now I can switch easily between shore power, generator power or inverter power… and get the batteries charged as well. Kevin was the last to show, just as I was about to put the steaks on.

Menu:

• Salad
• Roasted Root Vegetables
• Fresh Baked Herb Challah
• Rib Steaks
• Wine
• Homemade (by me) Five Spice Short Bread Cookies Served With A Late Bottled 1991 Vintage Port.

Yum. And those short bread cookies — pressed into the chocolate molds that I got at a flew (or as Swanda says, flea) market in Brussels:

Makes me wish I’d gotten more of those moulds but it was at the beginning of a several week trip. Oh well. Coulda woulda shoulda.

[220.3]

Something that I figured out last night is that with those three round-trips to the Bay Area that I booked I get to Alaska MVP Status a trip earlier…. after the Orlando trip (Nov. 2 to 6th to see Dan and Lisa) rather than the one way to Flagstaff to catch the train to Santa Fe for Turkey Day.

Why is MVP Gold important? Better chance of upgrading to 1st class, 100% mileage (but not EQM) bonus, and most importantly — the Priority Line at Sea-Tac through security, right behind the airline crew.

But on with my day…

Or maybe it’s on with Raphael’s day of not working for Mick because of weather, instead, painting my front and back door. Back door featured here:

It’s only been primed steel for two years now. I haven’t a clue for the front door — guessing Wonderful put it in, so that would be five plus years of a primed front door.

Work in the afternoon — kicking things off the To-Do list.

Dinner was Chicken Florentine with Raf — damn, room and board is good here.

[221.7]

Wow — and I thought Saturday was lazy… Sunday beats it hands down.

I read twelve chapters of Aaron Elkin’s A Creative Clarity, and tried to figure out if I can get to Santa Fe for Christmas (as well as Thanksgiving) for something under $500. At the moment, it’s $400 to ABQ (which I hate flying into) and $600 to SAF (which is Santa Fe’s tiny airport).

Looked at other alternatives… like the routing I’m doing for Turkey Day which is flying Alaska into Flagstaff and then taking the train to Lamy (station stop for Santa Fe and 5 miles from my parents house), or flying to Kansas City and doing the rail (in a sleeper) in the opposite direction.

In the end, with all that looking at travel sites….. noticed that SEA-OAK was $101.20 round-trip — so I booked three of them. One for Wednesday to Saturday, one for after Orlando, and one for mid-December. It will be nice to see the boys again. And hopefully (speaking of boys) my Bangladeshi Hottie is is still up to hanging out.

As for Santa Fe for Christmas, the colonels are going to be there and I’d love to see them… if I can find a deal.

Other than that it’s been a quiet day at the house with Raf returning late last night after I was crashed and leaving before I got up working at Mick’s place and staying out tonight for date number two with a “hottie” from CraigsList.

For me, dinner tonight is sauteed chicken breast chunks over a bed of salad — which I need after last nights steak and baked potatoes where both Jonathan and I passed on salad.

[219.6]

Shouldn’t Saturdays be slow?

For some reason I was up at 7:45 this morning… and decided to print the Winter Call Envelopes which I couldn’t get to print last night. It’s amazing what a lack of whiskey in my system does to getting a cranky job to print.

Then some laying around reading the morning paper and finishing the latest (for me) New Yorker.

Noonish saw me slowly (traffic was bad, but it’s a sunny day, so who cares) running to Costco for drugs (Ambian and Cialis), then Amtrak to pickup train tickets for Turkey Day, then to Home Depot for Weed Barrier for under the gravel going in by the back gate. Guess I should find someone to deliver some gravel!

A little more reading (Out and Wired) and a short nap. A little work. Prep for dinner… beautiful shot of the fall colors in my neighborhood:

And speaking of dinner. I’m baking some bread because Jonathan is coming to dinner and will typically eat an entire 1lb. loaf. Add a pound plus steak, a baked spud and a salad, and I might be able to fill him up.

Who knows — might even get my tiny travel netbook fixed while he’s here.

[219.6]

Today is lots of cleaning up/finishing up of projects for E&A. Mostly pushed through the pipeline. Should have my to-do list pretty well cleaned up before the end of the month.

Speaking of the end of the month, time to pay quarterlies to the state. Damn it.

I don’t know what’s in the air, but today I saw two new video produced by my friends. This one is from BamBam up in Vancouver:

And this one is the trailer from a new film on the life of James Broughton (poet) called Big Joy:

Mick and Raf for a lamb dinner with roasted potatoes and salad. Tried and failed to print the envelopes for the winter call, guess I’ll do that in the morning. At least I got the call printed before he came over.

[220.9]

Woke up late. It was a long night last night.

But lots to do. Got posters to finalize, got proofs to pick up and deliver, got more work to do…. like making a Purchase Order form for my client.

Things to order:

• Generic Cards for Vancouver
• Event Manager Card for Vancouver
• Sales Manager for Vancouver
• Asian Centric Poster for most branches
• Calendars for all offices

On the upside – the front garden is cleaned out, and only a small run to the dump. Now if Raf wouldn’t spend all his money they day he gets it.

Dinner for Filet Mignon, roasted potatoes, salad, and wine for me — no wine for Raf, he had three days worth last night.

For me, a quiet night at home.

[219.

While I am inside all nice and warm and clean, Raf is out stripping the front garden of all the weeds and grass — basically taking the top 2″ off and putting it into the trailer for a dump run.

This, on top of the couple of inches he took off the area where the gate swings open which with any luck will get covered with ground cloth and gravelled — well, maybe only gravelled.

Of course, nothing is without drama — the trailer weighed so much that we had to use the jack out of the van to get the tongue up. Add 45 minutes to the job.

And then off to the dump before they closed.

• Weight in: 6980
• Weight out: 5080
• Load of weight: 1900 lbs.
• Rating on the trailer: 950 lbs.

Ouch. But the yard is looking better:

Dinner was a stir fry of hot peppers from the deck, onions, zucchini, Portuguese sausage and shrimp in a black bean sauce. Not bad, need to figure out how to make the black bean sauce better.

[222.9]

Wake-up

Meeting Prep

Meeting

Errands

Work

Dinner

TV

Bed

My day in a nut shell.

[222.9]

Not the day I expected… but it’s my own fault.

Nothing like getting a call from the Front Desk at 12:30pm asking when we were planning on checking out. Tomorrow? No — today, and we are past due.

Yes, I read the reservation wrong. And the boys were on a cheesecake run, thank goodness Rich had his mother’s cell phone with him so I could turn them around.

In 35 minutes we got the place packed up and cleaned up (well, at least the dishes in the dishwasher). Whew!

New plan. A service call followed by dinner with Raf instead of the boys. Nice lamb chops (the same ones we were planning on at Birch Bay) followed by a mellow evening of trying to catch up the work I was going to do in the afternoon, and a little mindless TV watching.

At least now I’ll be in town for tomorrow’s marketing meeting.

And joy of joys — I didn’t have to drive in either direction!

[? ? ?]

Amazing — the house (condo?) is up early today … all out drinking coffee by 10am. It certainly beats yesterday when it was noon.

I could get used to Bloody Marys in the morning (made by someone else). Now I know why I don’t keep the ingredients in my house. Slippery slope that.

Breakfast? Eggs Benedict, fresh cantaloupe, Granny Smith apple chunks carved out and filed with caviar and cream cheese.Thanks Rich! Damn fine:

Any you wonder why I can’t find the motivation to work — every one is on vacation but me. I had to take a nap after than breakfast.

Afternoon snack… Curt made nachos. Made me want another nap.

Dinner?  Can you do down-market as up-market? Hot German potato salad, various sausages on the grill, sauerkraut cooked in white wine, bread, a couple of bottles of wine.

And tomorrow I have to catch up on all the work I’ve been putting off for days — I think I’ll set up the computer on the make-up counter in the master bedroom to get away from the chaos (and to have some privacy for tomorrow and Tuesday’s conference calls).

Life is hard.

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I said I wouldn’t do it again… but the temptation of American Express gift cards was too great. $75 for 45 minutes. I went in with — this WILL be 45 minutes. And it must have showed. Guessing they assumed I wasn’t going to buy anymore points even though this is the resort that I purchased my last chunk at.

All this after a wonderful scramble breakfast with the bulk italian sausage I brought. Always good to go into a conflict on a full stomach.

Nothing like lounging around all afternoon — not working — not even napping, just reading, watching videos, tv.

The booze plan for the evening was to have these big boys for appetizers and dinner (yes, with food):

In reality we realized that five people would have a problem finishing 4.5 liters of wine. The 1996 Tattinger Rose is going to have to wait for the morning with the Eggs Benedict.

Hard life here at the beach. Miss you Jonathan — hope you are feeling better.

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Today’s big (and only) adventure after our 11am brunch is a trip to visit the Mount Baker Winery where Rich’s father works in sales.

The interesting thing about this winery is that they are working with a lot of “minor” grapes like Tempranillo, Malbec, Viognier,Muller Thurgau and some white varieties suited to Western Washington.

We ended up tasting well over a half a dozen of their 25+ varieties — after a nice walking tour of the operation. It was nice to have a private tour with someone who really knew the wines and the history of their grape choices.

Here is a shot of the winery:

And here is the one bottle that I bought:

Dinner tonight was pork chops on the grill… after a visit from maintenance to put a new ignitor in our BBQ. Add a salad, some wine, some good conversation.

Ross got here around nine for leftovers.

A little hottub time and off to bed.

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Work in the morning, plus a trip to the eastside to get a replacement check since it is apparently lost in the mail someplace…. was mailed Saturday, and Monday was a mail holiday, and by today it still wasn’t across town. Who knows, maybe it got sent to the Lopez Island address, but that isn’t what was on the check. Oh well.

Jeff showed up at 1:45 to pick me and all my crap for the long weekend. Nothing like a ton of meat:

Dinner meats:

• Thursday: Steaks (4)
• Friday: Pork chops (5)
• Saturday: Marinated Flank Steak (6) I’ll pre-make the marinate
• Sunday: Bratwursts and Kraut  (5) I’ll pack a jar of kraut
• Monday: Lamb chops (3)

Breakfast meats:

• Friday: Jimmy Dean (4)
• Saturday: Bulk Italian sausage (6)
• Sunday: Canadian Bacon (6) (I have six pieces) – eggs Benedict?
• Monday: Bacon (4)
• Tuesday: Portuguese Sausage (3)

The plan is that I’ll continue working while I’m up at Birch Bay. Still catching up on lots of stuff that slid off the plate while I was in Europe.

Here is what the place looks like:

This must be computer hell day… I can’t wait to leave town tomorrow.

New computer:

• delete all the crapware with www.pcdecrapifer.com
• delete Office Student and Home edition
• upgrade to Windows 7 from the party pack
• install AVG 8.5 anti-virus software
• scan the system
• remove Norton 60-day trial from the system
• install Ad-Aware
• scan the system
• install Microsoft Office 2007
• install Adobe Creative Suite 4
• install Microsoft Trips and Streets
• configure Outlook to pull me GMail accounts
• try and get some work done on the other computer during all this.

At least the computer is nice and pretty. If you want the specs on it, here they are: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?Sku=G180-14100 but it’s no longer in stock. When it was it was $449 plus $1.99 shipping if I hadn’t wanted it in two days.

Salmon and Raf for dinner tonight. Better feed him before I leave for five days.

[221.6]

If it’s Tuesday it must be time for a marketing meeting and a paycheck.

The check is in the mail. Damn. And it was mailed Saturday, but Monday was a holiday and by the end of today it still hadn’t come. Damn. Oh well, there is always tomorrow — it wasn’t that large because of my birthday holiday.

It also changed my after meeting routine. Out was Safeway, the bank, Trader Joes. In was Swanda’s place to see if my new laptop arrived, and to put a load of laundry in.

Why laundry — Swanda’s equipment is bigger. I can get the sheets, pillow cases and the duvet cover all in one load. It would be more like three loads in my little Italian number.

But why Red Tuesday — the new laptop that I picked up this afternoon.

Spot it on the couch:

OK, I’ll make it easier:

Now I just have to put the day+ into stripping it of unwanted software and putting on what I need. Yikes. It really is a full day with install time.

Dinner tonight was a quiet night at home with a steak and a salad. Rent Boy/Live In was off packing his ex-wife’s house. We’ve set up SOB as an apartment as I can’t have the hound in the house.

Looking forward to 6AM.

[221.3]

It seems that I’m still playing catch up from my two weeks out of town.

A big chunk of my day was soaked up by work.

A big chunk of the evening was soaked up by dinner with Raf.

And tomorrow we are supposed to get soaked, by rain.

Until then a silly picture from my last trip:

Yes, now I’m licensed.

[222.2]

What is a really good Sunday? Laying around reading magazines in peace and quiet.

It was almost like that, but with Raf and Curt snoring.

The big event for the day: ribs at Jimmies with the Tres Dindon (Three Turkeys) crew who were crushing several different varieties of grapes all afternoon. Me? I just showed up for the food. I’m no Turkey.

But the meal was good, and I passed along some books for Jim and Suze, and got a really nice shirt in return — one that’s a wee too large for Jimmie. His bad luck, my good — it’s a shirt worthy of Tommy Bahama in quality.

So that’s it — just a quiet day. Guess I’d better start planning some more trips to keep the blog interesting.

[221.7]

Slept in until 9, played around with email and whatnot til 10:30, packed up and left Curts and headed to Jack in the Box for that rare combo meal.

Yes, I know it isn’t on my diet routine, but after a long poker evening a little grease was just the way to get me going.

Made good time home. Spent the afternoon futzing around with various computer configurations — with the main computer dead it meant moving the tablet into the office and the netbook into the living room, each of them with an extra monitors, and both when you “extend screen to cover both monitors” are set up so that you go to the far right hand side of the small monitor to get to the monitor that is on your left.

Not ideal, but the new notebook is being delivered on Tuesday and will be configured at or by the wine tasting weekend that starts next Thursday.

Curt arrived at 4 (hey, wasn’t I just down there?)

By 5:30 we are out the door with time to swing by and check out the new SODO liquor store (newer but more boring than the old) and still make it to the Brooklyn for our 6:15 reservation.

A dozen and a half oysters were split three ways, lots of cross-sampling of the other appetizers, and three different mains:

• Pork Chop for Swanda
• Carpetbagger for Curt
• Bouillabaisse for Me

Thought about taking some phone pictures of the presentation, but was too busy making a mess of the plates.

Amazingly enough we were back home by 9pm. And Curt was basically out by 10.

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