It’s cash only for 2010!!!

Things I’ve been up to over the last couple of months:

• Flew out to Baltimore for a few days to meet a bunch of people I work with.  The crab cakes at Gunning’s (corporate Staple / Dive bar) in Maryland are definitely not as good as the ones in Seattle
• Drove up to Friday Harbor for a weekend stay at the Friday Harbor house.  I had a craving for Mexican Food in the middle of the night and ended up in a torrential downpour walking back to the hotel.  I would highly recommend this place if you’re looking for a hotel in Friday Harbor
• I Became a wine member for the very first time in my life and we received our first shipment.
• Took a few days off from work and drove to Eastern Washington with Shanelyn.  We stayed at a winery called Cave B inn.  When we took a bike ride and I accidentally rode into a swarm of about 100,000 bee’s.  Some local farmers were cross-pollinizing a crop and I was totally unaware of what was going on until getting caught in the thick of it.
• I finally set the date, and we’re getting married at a beach house in Maui this October, more details to come

I Went to see The Watchmen this weekend with a few friends at the Cinerama in Seattle. Aside from the Vodka continually passed around (Thanks Tom), the movie was confusing and dragged out, 2 hours 43minutes. It all started with the multiple characters that were hard to side or identify with, so I didn’t really care if one charater died or another survived. It was hard to follow because the plot went back and forth so many times I couldn’t understand why this one guy was glowing and naked. I’m not talking about the “after sex” glowing, he was literally glowing. In all fairness, I never read the comic book that was based on the movie before watching it, so that may have been a good start. If you’re into the movies that are based on comic books this one is for you, otherwise I’d say pass.

Ceasar ready to be dried off

After work today I went out with some of my friends and co-workers for Happy Hour at The Melting Pot in Bellevue.  I visited this place before with Shanelyn and was not really impressed.  So tonight I wanted to give it one more try.  I sat down with everyone and decided to order a bottle of wine for the crew.  After pouring the wine ordered, the waiter asked me if I wanted to try another wine that was much more smooth than the bottle I just ordered.  I told him I’d try it a little later, so after 15 minutes he showed up at our table and corked another bottle of wine and poured a little in my glass.  After tasting it he asked me what I thought.  I was a little confused since I just ordered a bottle of wine not to long ago, so I told him it was okay.  He set the new bottle of wine down and said, “I knew you’d like it”.  A while later we started drinking wine from that bottle only to learn it was really $100.00 for that wine, plus 33% gratuity.  When I asked the manager about this he told me the waiter doesn’t say how much the wine is because he would never want to down-sell the wine or make anyone feel cheap by telling someone how much the wine cost.  This was happy hour, not a wedding anniversary dinner and this restaurant is located in the ground floor of an apartment complex…

The icing on the cake came when the waiter brought our table the other half of the check, charging extra for items ordered during happy hour but delivered after happy hour.  I checked the reviews on this place and wasn’t really shocked to see the poor reviews. I don’t think I was being unreasonable. Overall, this place is manufactured romance, trendy pop culture, and way overpriced.

After putting Ewanme.net on the back-burner last year I’ve decided to get back to blogging and giving my unsolicited opinion.  Let me catch everyone up to speed since my last post:

1. Moved from technical recruiting to business operations within the Workforce Management arm of our parent company.  My job is balls-to-the-wall crazy, but I work with some great people and I love what I do, which is really all that matters.
2. Shanelyn and I bought a place in Issaquah. I’m so proud that we’re realizing the goals we made together three years ago.  We have a great place in a quiet neighborhood close to where I work, now we just have to get married.
3. I Hurt my knee pretty bad last year, but after some physical therapy I’m running between 1.6-2.0 miles per day.  When I hurt my knee I was so scared that I wouldn’t get to run ever again, I love running!  When did humans start to love running anyway, versus running only when being chased?  I guess the fear of the big animal jumping out of the bush is gone.
4. Saw O.A.R. while they were in Seattle.  The concert was excellent but I drank way too much tequila, still remember the headache. 
5. I finally caught-up to the year 2009 and signed up for a Facebook account, meh it’s okay.
6. I jumped on the iPhone Band Wagon, best phone I ever bought especially when you can download apps like iPity, the Mr T application with a bunch of sound bytes from The A-Team.
7. Just got back from a week in Napa Valley with Shanelyn.  I read a book, went wine tasting all over northern California, learned the difference between a good Zinfandel and a crappy one, got lost in wine country, and found out the toll to get over the Golden Gate Bridge is $6.00 cash only when I only had $4.00 at the toll gate, I’ll explain that one later.
8. Went hiking with Shanelyn this weekend and got frustrated with all of the other people being so loud and obnoxious in the wilderness.  Next weekend we’re going off the grid.

Until next time…

Yes, you can actually spend a week in Wine country without spending a ton of money and this is how we did it: Having known nothing at all about the wine region of California except that we had 7 days to spend together and we knew where a few of our favorite wines are from. We started by researching the two major regions, Sonoma and Napa.  From there we looked at the average hotel and wine tour prices for each region.  We actually found that Hotel prices were around 25% higher in Napa, so we opted for Sonoma because we could not only save 25% on the hotel, but visit two different wine regions because they’re about 1 hour apart by car.  I used Trip Advisor and started looking at the top rated (3.5 Star+) hotels in Sonoma. I found the top 3 hotels that had consistent ratings and went on this site called Biddingfortravel.com to see if any of the hotels we wanted were featured on Priceline or Hotwire. We found one hotel Fountainegrove Inn that lots of people booked through Priceline, so we chose that one. The great bidding information site is that frequent users will post how much the winning bid was for the hotel, so you kind of have a price guide or a sort. We paid $42 per night for Fountainegrove in which was an incredible deal and ended up really liking the hotel. Next I searched the reviews on Trip Advisor for wine tours. I found a wine tour company called Platypus tours who had the highest reviews, yet they were the least expensive. The company kept it simple, they pick you up anywhere in Napa or Sonoma and drive you around to wineries they have relationships with. This is a win-win for everyone, the smaller family-owned wineries get the business. Sure, we could’ve had a limo or towncar drive us around for wine tasting, but we didn’t need that crap, it’s a waste of money. So we paid 75 per person for a full day of wine touring. A little insider tip I learned, we got free wine tastings for the most part and a discount on the wine we bought. Oh I forgot to mention the rental car. I bid 25.99 per day for a full size car, you always want to get a full size, because it’s usually 5-10 more per day to upgrade to something like a Lincoln towncar in our case. I really don’t care what I get for a rental, but paid 32 per day for a towncar. We visiting quite a few wineries, most were smaller producers (less than 10,000 cases per year). We stayed away from the mass producers of Napa like Mondavi and stuff because they’re tourist traps. We visited a few like Silver Oak, Grgich, and Duckhorn for the experience, we loved it. We will make Napa an annual thing and make sure to do it on a budget, it’s always more fun that way because you don’t feel guilty when you bring back a case or two of great wines.