Bleah. It took from 7:30a to about 1:30p before I got all my piled-up crises dealt with or moved back to “waiting on the customer” status.
Thanksgiving wrapup:
- got the family record for the 1100 miles from Denver to Lawrence, MI – 15hrs 45min
- went wine tasting with my brother, his GF and two cousins. Hit 6 wineries in one day, came back with around 12 bottles of my own. We visited:
Warner probably had the largest quantity of tasty wine and a lady working the shop who was exactly like a non-irritating version of Rachel Ray – she paid NO attention to the “6 tastes max” policy or the “icewine samples are $5″ policy. We liked her. I bought 4 bottles of their fruit wines and some mulling spices.
St. Julian had the best “budget” wines by far. Their “Simply White” is really darn good for $7/bottle. I ended up with… 3 or 4 bottles from here, including their port.
Karma Vista was nothing spectacular, but their names had the most plays-on-words. Bought a bottle of something to be polite.
Contessa was OK – best feature was a completely spherical cat sitting in front of the fireplace in the tasting room. Bought a bottle for politeness’ sake. They were also featuring some spicy cashews that I’ll have to try and duplicate.
Domaine Berrien was ok – nothing really memorable. Bought a bottle of their low-end red.
Lemon Creek had a nice selection of dipping oils along with their wine, so you got a little snack thrown in for free. Bought a bottle of Gerwutztraminer. - Thanksgiving dinner was set for 24, and that’s missing two whole branches of the family and my brother.
- Still had leftovers for the rest of the weekend.
- No fewer than 8 pies were present at Thanksgiving.
- Got peopled-out at Grandma’s 80th birthday party after an hour or so. All the “engineer-type” cousins seemed to end up the same way.