entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

captain_nesky was in Germany during the `06 World Cup and brought back this World Cup edition jar of Nutella for me.  It is now sadly gone, but fortunately i have more Nutella.

( so much chocolate it's all over you screen )

Kim open the bar of Valor 70% dark chocolate (from Ghana, Brazil, and Ecuador; Valor and Chocovic make me think that Spain's chocolatiers are ready to thumbwrestle with the Belgians for the title of world's best) from Paul`n'Ami's Chanyulekwanzmas basket and demanded wine.  So i cracked open the Justin 2000 petit verdot.  Absolutely perfect.

This Page Mill Winery 2000 Merlot is killer stuff.  And it's even better with some Chocovic Guaranda 71% dark chocolate from Trader Joe's.  I wonder if i'll be able to get up early tomorrow to go to work.

Chocoholics should be aware that Godiva's Belgian Dark Chocolate ice cream is bittersweet and very, very chocolatey.  I am very impressed.

Apologies to those of you who read 2wanda's report and have been eagerly awaiting mine.

On Thursday, Kim and i bailed out of San José at about 16:00, which led to some fighting with traffic on the way up to Middletown. About 3 hours later, we pulled into the Backyard Garden Oasis and checked in. It is a beautiful place that is obsessively stalked by flocks of deranged quail who are bent on extracting revenge on any humans they see. They are quick to flee if any human approaches them, lest they overhear the quails' plans for ultimate payback.

Dinner was some good brewery food at the Mt. Saint Helena Brewery, including some very excellent buffalo wings.

On Friday, we spent the morning lazing around a bit, and in the afternoon we went to Harbin Hot Springs, where we walked around naked and spent most of our time in pools of varying temperature. There was rain on and off, including one stretch when it poured rain while we were in the Warm Pool, which was a really cool experience. Then we got a deep-tissue massage ("deep-tissue" is code for "squeeze your muscles until you squeal").

After getting back and snoozing a bit, we headed out to Terra for dinner. I've held our first time at Terra as The Best Meal I'd Ever Had™, and damned if they didn't exceed themselves this time. We started out with a hamachi "carpaccio" (their quotes) with radish sprouts and ponzu sauce... hamachi tataki, essentially. Then we asked our waitress to recommend a wine to go with our main meals, black cod and shrimp dumplings in a shiso broth for Kim, scallops and lobster on mashed potatoes with saffron nage (cream sauce) for me. She thought a light pinot noir would do the job, and she went to ask the manager about a couple of new ones that had just arrived. He instead recommended a Joseph 85/15 cabernet sauvignon/merlot blend from McLaren Vale (dmw's backyard!), Australia, which was fantastic; it wasn't big and ponderous like you'd expect a California cab/merlot to be. Kim's dish was amazing; i didn't think you could make cod taste that good, and the shiso broth was a great and well delivered idea. My scallops were just as good as the ones i'd had the last time we came, utterly delicious and with the perfect texture. Then came dessert, which was sublime. Kim got a braised pear trapped inside a crème brûlée-like confection, and i got the "Fire and Ice": a thick puck of chocolate mousse with a dollop of caramel, two very tasty churros, and a cup of barely sweetened, very rich and thick hot chocolate with a dash of cinnamon and cayenne. I thought the chocolate soufflé at Roy's in San Francisco was incredible, but it was a mere brownie compared to the Fire and Ice. To top it all off, the wonderful folks at Terra brought out, as an anniversary gift, a scoop of currant sorbet with "Happy 6th Anniversary" written on the edge of the dish with chocolate. Kim and i were full (and to me, that's part of Terra's magic... the portions look small, but they're perfectly measured so you're exactly full at the end of the meal), but we made some space and ate the sorbet.

On Saturday, we went to Sonoma by way of Tubbs Lane in Calistoga, which meant a stop at Summers, where they had an amazingly different and good zinfandel with tangerine in the nose. We picked up a bottle of that and also one of our mainstay, their charbono.

We then drove on to Preston, where we overpaid for some very delicious, freshly baked bread and a bottle of their very tasty olive oil, and shared our picnic lunch with two cats, one of which was apparently starving, given the way he attacked what we gave him, including a piece of blueberry muffin. We walked out of there with a bottle each of their late harvest semillon and sangiovese.

We moved on down the road to Bella, where they have caves built into the hillside and they had four different zins, all very big; we picked up a bottle of the Lily Hill zin. The fellow behind the counter mentioned that they'd had Lavay Smith and Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers over for a recent party; it must've been a lot of fun with the amplification the caves provide, with a lot of wine in the middle of the country.

We then headed back towards Middletown, making a stop at Murphy-Goode for our final winery of the day. We picked up a bottle of their Tin Roof (their screw-cap line, which features inexpensive wines; in my opinion, this is a bad way to do screw caps, because it perpetuates the myth that screw cap wine is cheap) pinot noir rosé for my mother-in-law, as well as a bottle each of their Goode-Ready pinot noir (its light color belies the intense flavor) and their Adams Ranch cabernet sauvignon.

Dinner was tacos at the local carnicería.

On Sunday, we checked out (after some excellent breakfast, and it was excellent every morning) and started heading back home, first stopping at the Bale Grist Mill, then visiting Charles Krug, where it was complimentary port tasting day (of which we took a bottle, as well as their `01 cab sauv), and at Whitehall, which was jammed with yapping bourgeoisie (but their merlot was good as always, so we took a bottle of that). We picked up some Alsatian muenster at that tourist trap known as the Oakville Grocery (they do have an amazing array of cheeses and meats and other food, but their prices are brutal — $7/lb for cherries?) and headed to a park in Yountville to have lunch (i picked up some chicken noodle soup in a grocery store in Calistoga, and Kim had a half-bagel with smoked salmon left over from breakfast).

The stalwart palecur gave me some of this as a birthday gift, and it is the best dark chocolate i've ever had. The fact that it was made exclusively with Ecuadorian chocolate is but a bonus. He claims he found it at Trader Joe's, so go forth and seek it.

OAK-JFK on JetBlue: TV on an airplane is a good thing.  You just get sucked into whatever you're watching and the time just flies by, just like at home, except on a plane, that's exactly what you want to have happen.  I heartily endorse this service and/or product.

Watching Mets-Cubs, hoping to see Sammy Sosa's 500th home run.  Cliff Floyd steps up to the plate, and waves his bat just so, saying, "Put it here."  So Matt Clement winds up... and puts it there.  Floyd puts it out of the park.

Getting out of JFK is a trip in itself.  Mostly a bad one.

Carnegie Hall is... impressive. Awesome ("Remember what 'awesome' meant before it applied to pizza?"). Belleville High School starts us off with the Overture to Candide, one of my favorite pieces, and one that, due to its difficulty, i didn't expect high schoolers to perform. They also played Ives' "Country Band March", which sounds like a Sousa march arranged by a drunk Bill Bruford. The Leigh kids play damn well (they came away with a gold rating, so the judges must've agreed); Whitacre's "October" was especially impressive. Concord High School played Copland's "Danzón Cubano", which felt like a flat, sterile version of Gershwin's "Cuban Overture", except captain_nesky tells me that Copland's piece came first. The Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music's wind ensemble was the best group of the night, playing a wonderful selection (including a Wagner piece which i found very enjoyable[!]) at a high level of talent and emotion; they also added an unlisted encore, a piece that was based on "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" and resembled those cringeworthy Christmas medleys in structure except it didn't suck, as a tribute to the troops in Iraq.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is very nice. The medieval arms and armor display is my favorite; their array of various polearms is the coolest part. Afterwards, Kim, elmuchacho, and i had dinner with Ed and Elena at Jacques Brasserie, which was superb, especially their ale and chocolate soufflé.

Envision a busy Grand Central Station hallway. On one side, a corridor leads to the restrooms; the line to the ladies' room snakes out into the hallway. On the other side, a gathering of men placidly await their women.

Note: if you are as allergic to the Bee Gees' music as i am, do NOT eat at Ben Ash on 7th Av. Yeah, the food's good —a bit pricey for a deli, but the portions are huge— but godDAMN, how can you enjoy your meal when it's all motherfucking Bee Gees, all the motherfucking time?