entombed in the shrine of zeroes and ones

My barber is well off.  He bought himself this little flivver a few months ago.  But he loves cutting hair, so he comes in four days a week bright and early (and on three of those days, he stays very late).  He's been cutting hair for some guys for decades.  We bring him wine, especially near the end of the year.  I brought him a modest zinfandel from Magito that i picked up on my last trip to Sonoma; i left it on his counter today, right next to the Beaulieu Vineyard 1985 cabernet sauvignon that another client dropped off yesterday.

I'm a little envious.

A simple invocation of lynx -dump http://ronebofh.livejournal.com/tag/ | grep ' use' | sort -nr -t - -k 2 | head' yields my 10 most used tags:

• music - 192 uses
• friends - 136 uses
• politics - 131 uses
• soccer report - 128 uses
• fuckheads - 122 uses
• random stuff - 69 uses
• wine - 67 uses
• meme - 66 uses
• food porn - 65 uses
• pop culture - 64 uses

butterflygenius

The task will be to coalesce actual writing out of the inchoate sputtering i inflict upon Facebook and Twitter.

I got up at 05:10 on Saturday to go to Los Altos Hills and pick grapes for Hallcrest, along with eight high schoolers who were raising money for their soccer academy.  We harvested about 2 tons of chardonnay and a half-ton of pinot noir.  After a midday break, i headed to the winery to experience the first crush of the season.  The chardonnay fruit was dumped straight into the press, and while that was being processed, the pinot noir fruit was crushed and destemmed, then packed away with a CO₂ blanket.  I was exhausted by the end of the day, and a full night's sleep wasn't enough to restore me.

On Sunday, after going to the garden and picking about a bajillion tomatoes, 2wanda, her mom, and i headed to Hollister to buy our pinot noir for this year's wine.  We bought it from the same folks from whom we bought it last year.  After that, we headed down the road to taste at DeRose, whose wine is notably higher in alcohol than average, but you wouldn't know it from its flavor.  I've been a fan of their négrette, but their late harvest viognier was a revelation; it was subtle and far from the sweetness you'd expect in a dessert wine.

It's been a rough few weeks, interviewing for jobs, getting turned down by some, waiting for contact from others, and dealing with family shit.  Once we finished moving butterflygenius to her new digs yesterday, 2wanda and i finally got to unwind and went to Hallcrest Vineyards for a barrel tasting which toropeza kindly paid for.  While there, i spoke to the winemaker, and knowing that it's getting pretty close to harvest time, asked him if there was anything i could do for him, so that i could get practical experience in commercial wine production to go with my fancy book larnin'.  He told me that, in fact, he'd be giving some training today on using the equipment involved in the crush, such as the crusher/destemmer and the bladder press, as well as other equipment and steps.  I jumped at the opportunity and not only did i learn a lot this morning, he fed us all some very tasty baby back ribs for lunch.  I need to look at my schedule so i can send it to him so he can let me know when he can use me next; they'll be bottling tomorrow, but i have an interview, so i'll be sadly missing that.  Nonetheless, today was very encouraging and educational.

Two weekends ago, Kim and i ran away to Calistoga for restoration via mud bath and massage at Golden Haven Hot Springs.  On our way there, we stopped at our favorite wineries, Summers and Ehlers Estate; on the way back, we stopped at Heitz, whose Grignolino wine and port i've admired for some time.

Last weekend, i nerded it up, as ever, at DunDraCon, but i did not neglect my sweet Kimmy on Valentine's Day, and brought her flowers and a card, and then took her out to sushi. DDC was fun as always; although i missed seeing some of the usual suspects, i did get to see vanmojo and dr_strych9, albeit in passing through the LARP in which they were participating (not judging you, guys... well, not too much).

Tonight, Kim and i drove to San Francisco to spend a little time with old Macromedia coworkers.  It's obvious that we're a bunch of nostalgic romantics, and that's fine with me.  I wish we'd've been able to get there earlier and stay later, but an hour-long drive home is always rough.

There's been a ton of shit i've been meaning to mention.  Let's see if i can remember most of it...

Just over a year ago, i got a T-shirt addressed to 'rone'.  Then about a year after that, i received an envelope addressed to Ron 'Tron Guy' Echeverri, with a PO Box in San Luis Obispo as its return address, containing a ten-dollar bill.  The "Tron Guy" is an amusing touch given my antipathy towards jmaynard.  I don't mind getting random stuff, although i suppose i would prefer getting stuff off my Amazon wishlist.

Speaking of Maynard, lammah mentioned that Maynard James Keenan and his winemaker, Eric Glomski, would be signing bottles of their wine at the Whole Foods in Cupertino.  Kim and i showed up about 75 minutes early and there were already about 100 people in front of us (Kim heard someone inside mention that some clowns got in line at 06:00, eight hours early).  Keenan isn't very comfortable as a celebrity, which showed as he barely looked at us when we came up, but Glomski was engaging and while they signed our bottles, i got to talk to him about the pinot noir that Kim, Kim's mom, and i are making.  If you feel like you missed out, he'll be at Fresno's Whole Foods on February 17, Petaluma the 18th, and Sacramento the 19th, all starting at 16:30.

Speaking of wine, i passed Viticulture for Winemakers, which was the final class towards my Certificate in Winemaking from UC Davis Extension.  So as soon as i cough up the certificate fee, i should be receiving my first academic certificate since my high school diploma in a week or two.  I'm a bit excited about it, but i'm only getting started with figuring out if i can make this wine thing go.

peglegpete moved from Dallas to Seattle, and stopped by our humble home for room and board.

I got to go back to playing soccer last month.  This Thursday marked the first time i won a game while on the field since... i dunno, last summer.  A last minute squeaker, too, thanks to my teammates losing their minds in the final minutes of the game and leaving me defenseless.  It felt good to win, and i feel like i've finally gotten back into playing shape.

I picked out a bottle of shochu at our local sushi joint, but it turned out to be not shochu, but awamori.  It smelled like tequila a bit, and was quite tasty.

• Time's Joel Stein drinks 50 wines from 50 states and offers a quick review of each.  There are a few surprises, and a few hilariously scathing reviews.
• I'd never heard of Davey Graham (although i'd guess that tronpublic and pdcawley had), but he was a seminal figure in English folk music in the `60s.  He was also one hell of a guitarist, doing stuff people wouldn't catch up to for another 10 years.  Ben Myers at the Guardian posted a retrospective out of YouTube clips.  Graham passed away on December 15.

"If you care about the exact lot your wine grew in, the terroirists have already won!"
        — vatine

• Via iayork, an interview with Judge John E. Jones III, who presided over the Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District case, and whose judgement was a thorough and scathing indictment of Intelligent Design. mmcirvin does this much better than i do. If i were king, i'd swap out Scalia from the Supreme Court for Jones right now.
• Via wolffire, an article about Biodynamics; i was under the impression that it was merely an alternative version of organic farming. I was stunned to find out just how insanely ludicrous it actually is. Needless to say, when i run a vineyard, i will not be calling any of these clowns for certification.
• Via someone i can't recall, climate scientists correct data that indicated that the oceans were cooling. This is a clinic in how science works. Feel free to print this out, roll it up, and whack the next global warming denier across the nose with it.

The menu says, PROPER ATTIRE ENCOURAGED.  I wish the dude in the frayed jeans and the "I LOVE MY GIRLFRIEND" T-shirt had read it.

We considered the omakase, but i really didn't see myself eating that much.  I went in with the firm idea that, given the high level of culinary art on display, i would try everything i was served, even if it's not to my normal taste.  So i tried the blue cheese dressing with my iceberg wedges salad and enjoyed it; i got the beef and reef, and ate all the mushrooms, which went well with the filet mignon; and for dessert, i ordered the Ooh!, and ate the black olive ice cream.  I generally abhor olives, but the waiter explained that the saltiness of the ice cream was there to cut the richness of the various chocolates; i figured i had nothing to lose.  I don't know if i would have liked it on its own, but the ice cream fulfilled its duty as a richness buffer with flying colors, uh, flavors.

Kimmy had the baby lettuce salad and the filet mignon, and the Pearadise for dessert; we also ordered the haricot verts, and a couple of hamachi shots, which were simply delicious.  The amuse-bouche were also very good.

As for the wine, i opened with a glass of the aged riesling (not the one listed; it was a 1989 Dr. Heyden Oppenheimer Kruez Auslese from Germany), which was a highlight for me; it was quite complex for a white wine, it showed its age very well, and it adapted well to everything i had before my entrée.  We then ordered the Barbaresco half-bottle to go with our filets, which did an admirable job despite my initial skepticism (it tasted like a pinot noir trying to impersonate a merlot).  For dessert, Kimmy got a glass of their muscat, which was excellent, not too sweet, and paired perfectly with the Pearadise, and i asked for a glass of 1968 madeira.  Sadly, they were out, so the server upsold me to a glass of 1983 vintage port and one of the 10-year madeiras (the latter came at no charge).

I have to showcase my dessert.

It is as described in the dessert menu, except that the bits you see surrounding the black olive ice cream on the right are minced cacao nibs.  The chocolate sphere was not precisely filled with fudge; rather, it was a dollop of fudge about the same size as the ice cream.

When the dish was brought out, the sphere was complete; hot melted chocolate was poured upon it until it melted through and fell upon the fudge within the sphere, leaving the jagged edges you see above.

They brought this out as their gift, purportedly some sort of apple crème brûlée, but Kimmy thought it tasted more like pumpkin.  It tasted more like apple pie to me, with a definite cinnamon flavor which i did not care for.  The other freebies we got were two flutes of Cristalino Brut, which were the first things to arrive at the table.

When our server pulled the cork from our bottle of Barbaresco, he put it in this weird contraption, clearly intending to display the cork, but the next time he came by our table, he took it away.

Our meal, overall, was fantastic.  But i have some complaints:

• Their online menu wasn't updated, so a few dishes we wanted were missing.  The omission i found most puzzling was the Divinity, the chocolate soufflé, which was inexplicably replaced by the Rise ‘n’ Shine, a banana soufflé.
• We were amused by patrons receiving cotton candy as the sweet that comes with the bill; we were looking forward to ours, but the blasted machine broke just before we received our bill.  We received some odd ultra-French toast-like squares instead, which weren't all that and really were too sweet for that point in the evening.
• There's no other way to put this: the men's room smelled like tinkle.  If i'm going to a ballgame, fine.  If i'm going to a fancy restaurant, unacceptable.
• Kimmy found the chairs almost too uncomfortable.  Again, not what you'd expect at a high-end restaurant.