Moving Toward Something

Brrr!

It's cold and snowy.  I don't know why it surprises me every year, but it does.  I have this little initial reaction of outrage when the first decent snow hits.  Then I become resigned.  Then I start wondering how fast we can get to April.

Speaking of snow, my flight was delayed getting into Philadelphia (where I was attending a family wedding) last Friday and I was momentarily shocked:  What do you MEAN "delayed because of snow?"  Well duh, we aren't in the Upper Midwest anymore, Toto.  Unlike MSP, MSN, etc., most airports don't have the equipment or staff to deal with snow well enough that it won't affect flight schedules.

The wedding was nice.  Churches make me squirm, but the ceremony on Saturday was brief and the reception was fun.  It was good to catch up with people I hadn't seen in a long time. 

The next day, I made the error in judgment of trying to make a trip to the Philadelphia Museum of Art while a marathon was running right in front of it.  Oops.  Police barricades, thousands of dazed marathoners, and a guy with an amazingly piercing loudspeaker hollering the names of each runner as they crossed the finish line.  Good grief.  We did finally get in to the museum and see the Gee's Bend quilt exhibit, which I thought was fantastic.  Then we had a quick lunch and Dad walked me across town to find a cab to the airport for my flight back to Wisconsin.

I arrived back in WI on Sunday night and didn't bother unpacking; on Monday I worked, then took off by car toward Minnesota, where a) I was going to close the sale of my house and b) I was going to spend Thanksgiving with friends.  The house sale did not close, because the buyer's lender made a booboo and couldn't actually get her the loan she needed.  That was a bit of a disappointment, but I'm taking it in stride.  I'll go into more detail when the situation isn't in flux.  I did, however, get to spend the week with Jen and Anders.  We all went over to Reb and Dave's house for Thanksgiving and there ended up being 22 of us there. 

We had nine pies.  Nine pies.  That picture to the left shows the nine pies we had.  There were nine of them.  That's almost one for each finger.  There was a chocolate pie, a blood orange tart, a raspberry pie, two pumpkin pies, a pear chiffon tart, a cherry pie, a chocolate pecan tart, and an apple pie.  Reb makes good pies.  This was a ridiculous amount of good pie.

The Friday after Thanksgiving, Jen and Anders and I loafed around (well, and did some work), went up to the Minneapolis Central Library to see the PostSecret exhibit there, and then had dinner at the Red Stag Supperclub.  If you get a chance to go to the Red Stag, GO.  I miss having easy access to it.

Saturday, I drove back to WI.  I had been scheduled to go back on Sunday, but as luck would have it, it was going to snow on Sunday (today), so I left early. 

Tomorrow I return to some semblance of a normal daily routine for a few weeks.  Wish me luck.

Wine Descriptions: UR DOIN IT RONG

I was at a coffee shop tonight getting some work done.  They can sell liquor in coffee shops in Wisconsin, or at least this coffee shop can.  It was wine tasting night, but I stuck to the coffees.  While I was waiting for my coffee, I noticed a case of Prosecco with a sign on it that went on about its merits:  "Slight apple flavor, oak finish," blah blah blah.  And then it ends with, "Very nice in the glass."

...What is THAT supposed to mean?  I would hope it would be nice in the glass, since that's where one traditionally pours wine.  Why would you specify that a wine is "very nice in the glass?" 

"This wine is very nice in the glass, but for the love of little green apples, don't drink it out of a mug.  It really sucks in a mug.  Now it burns when I pee."

I'm missing something.  Maybe that's their subtle hint that you're not supposed to swill Prosecco directly from the bottle.

November is National Crazy Month

Well, for me it is.  Got back from a work trip to San Francisco this week, next week I'm off to a family wedding in Philadelphia, and then less than 24 hours after getting back from that, I'm driving to the Twin Cities to attend the closing of the sale of my house.  Then there will be Thanksgiving, followed by the drive home a few days later, and then three weeks of reprieve before I fly out to Portland.  So maybe December is slightly crazy too.

San Francisco was fun as always, and productive.  Working remotely has a lot of benefits, but sometimes it's just more efficient to do business face to face.  That way I can see when something I've said gives another team member involuntary facial twitching.  We also had a party to celebrate our new site being open for business.  The cake is pictured here.  Only the top three layers are actually cake.  The bottom three layers are buttercream-frosted styrofoam.  The cake itself was chocolate orange.  I don't like to talk much about work in public, as blogging about work has been proven time and again to be bad juju, but I really wanted to show you that cake!

Also while in California, I took a trip with a group of friends down to the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz.  Basically it's a shack on a very steep hill, jacked up at an even steeper angle so that your inner ear decides it's not really tipped over as far as it is, and it looks like balls roll upward, etc.  But it was really fun!  Even more amusing were the oohs and ahs from the tourists who really believed that gravity was doing strange things.  Good times.

On the topic of food items:  I made spaghetti sauce with that grass fed beef I bought a while back at the farmers' market, and wow.  I am not used to beef in my spaghetti sauce anymore, I guess.  It was so rich!  Tasty, but I prefer bison now.  Good to know.