What I'm Reading Now - MWF Seeking BFF

For some time now, I've been trying to force myself to get out and meet new people, which is a hard thing for an introvert like me to do.  It's no secret that many of my friends are in a different stage of life than I am. While I still love them all dearly, I am feeling rather lonely.  Hence my search for additional acquaintances who might one day become friends.

Imagine my surprise when I was working at my bookstore a couple of weeks ago and saw a book (not quite aptly) titled MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend.

I'm through the introduction and first chapter, and so far I both love and hate the author.  Love: when she lived in New York, Rachel and two of her friends started a book group.  They were each responsible for bringing two others into the group.  If anyone left, they'd bring in someone else - always nine.  Hate (and I'm paraphrasing for the sake of brevity): "I may discover at the end of this year that I don't have time for new friends.  I'm married now."  Okay homegirl, your friends coming to this same conclusion is partially how you got into this predicament, so if you're going to have that attitude, why bother?

Regardless of the inanity of that particular comment, I'm hoping for some inspiration!

Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

See you soon!

Brad Paisley!

Two Fridays ago (I know, I'm behind again), T and I went to see Brad Paisley! I've seen him before and I have so much fun every time.  He seems so adorably awkward and fun and normal!  And on top of that, he's a damn good musician, which not all rock stars are!  I thought I had mentioned his mad guitar pickin' skills before, but a look back does not reveal such a link.  The one with the best sound quality I can find is here, but the video's terrible and I've seen Brad play better.  Search around online and see if you can find a better link - I'll post it!

Further evidence of his awesomeness: I'm not much of a musical biography reader, but he wrote one called Diary of a Player about a year and a half ago that I'd like to read.

Still further evidence, as if you need it: it was Brad, live in concert, who convinced the long-time country music opponent E that it wasn't so bad after all!

The show started with Scotty McCreery, whom I heard singing "The Trouble With Girls" only from the refreshments line, but who seemed to have the crowd on his side.  We were in our seats for The Band Perry, whom we also saw last summer opening for Tim McGraw. The fun renditions of Tom Petty's "Free Fallin'" and Queen's "Fat-Bottomed Girls," and ended with what are probably their two biggest hits: "If I Die Young" and "You Lie."  Homegirl's got some lungs on her when she's singing live.

An homage to Queen

Brad played a good show, the first on the summer leg of his Virtual Reality tour.  He's a crowd-pleaser, so he played lots of old stuff mixed in with his more popular new stuff.  The set list is available here.  Kimberly Perry filled Alison Krauss's role in "Whiskey Lullaby," Scotty McCreery came back out to help with "Celebrity," and Brad was joined onstage by a great (but unfortunately virtual - get it?) Carrie Underwood for "Remind Me."

Goofing around with Scotty McCreery during "Celebrity"

Singing to the lawn seats

 

An interlude during "I'm Still a Guy," during which Brad asserts that:

"Women, you are trying to feminize us.

You find a guy who's tough, you like him,

and you march him down to the salon to get hair highlights

and you make him get a spray-on tan or something.

That's not even feminization, that not the right word.

It's castration, that's what's going on....

We can be real men.  We don't want to pluck our eyebrows.

We have certain times, they're our times and you can't interfere no matter what:

Like (?), and NFL football, and when football season's over, NASCAR season starts,

and while I'm thinking of it, we're gonna need Monday nights too.

And Saturdays - college football.

And on those days, you can do whatever you want.

Go with your girlfriends; get together and have a pillow-sleepover-pajama fight,

whatever you do.  We won't ask any questions.

And then we'll all get back together, you'll have had your time without us, and we'll have had our time without  you...

The point is, this world would be a better place

And I'm Brad Paisley and I approved this message."

Singing:

"These days there's dudes linin' up to get facials,

Manicured, waxed, and botoxed.

With deep spray-on tans and creamy lotion on your hands,

You can't grip a tackle box.

Yeah, with all of these men linin' up to get neutered,

It's hip now to be feminized.

But I don't highlight my hair, I've still got a pair,

Honey, I'm still a guy.

My eyebrows aren't plucked, there's a gun in my truck,

Thank God, I'm still a guy."

He played a two-song encore: "American Saturday Night" and that most fabulous of songs for the drunks in the crowd, "Alcohol."

I'm glad I got to go to this show,  since I missed him when he was here last summer.  Never again!

[I have another Band Perry video and another Brad Paisley video, but I can't get them formatted properly.  If I can make that happen, I'll upload them also.]

What I Watched -- The Artist

The Artist got lots of critical acclaim during its first theater run, but I just never got my butt out to see it.  Then it won Oscars for best picture, best actor, best director, costume design, and best original score, as well as being nominated for best supporting actress, cinematography, original screenplay, art direction, and editing.

When they did another two-week theater run last month, I finally managed to get there.  Unfortunately, I did not manage to get this post written.

The plot is pretty simple: George Valentin (Jean Dujardin) is a great silent film actor at a time when silent movies are going the way of the dodo.  Peppy Miller (the lovely Berenice Bejo) is a fan who auditions her way into one of his last movies.  She becomes a star in her own right, adapting to the talkies in a way that George cannot.  Despite their differences in fortune, they can't seem to escape each other.

I'm not much of an old movie buff, so the whole silent film experience is fairly new to me, but for the most part I enjoyed it.  Silent acting seems to take one of two forms: the energetic or angry or funny scenes are overly dramatic, with big gestures and bold facial expressions; the quiet scenes were 180-degrees opposite, with lots of extreme close-ups of subtle changes in expression.

The film also stars John Goodman as a studio exec, and of course Uggie!

Bottom line: cute and enjoyable, but I don't know if it deserved all those awards.

Goal #22

Goal #22:clean the living room.

T's putting in the new front door this week, so I have to do my part and clear out some of the stuff that has been sitting idly around for a few weeks: papers, stuff that needs to go to storage, etc.  By the end of this week, it'll be organized and/or gone.

Recap of Goal #21: brilliant!  Love the two-minute rule.  I'm going to try to stick with that one.

What I Watched -- The Avengers

I'm sort of hit or miss with superhero movies.  I've really liked the latest installments in the Batman series (anyone else excited for The Dark Knight Rises?), but I can't say the same for the X-Men films. I did, however, see The Avengers (or, as it is properly titled, Marvel's The Avengers, since it's based on their comic book series).

Aaaaannnnd, it was awesome.  There were of course the obligatory action scenes and things blowing up, but it was also really funny!  The timing was great, like when Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) identifies himself as "genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist," or when Hulk crushes Loki (MINOR SPOILER ALERT - this is late in the movie, but it doesn't really give anything away).  There were several points when the audience erupted in laughter and spontaneous applause.

Strictly speaking, I guess all the Avengers aren't really superheroes at all.  Iron Man is a regular dude (albeit a genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist) with a really cool high-tech suit.  Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) is a super spy with mad acrobatic skills, but no super powers per say.  Captain America (Chris Evans) is a tough guy and a fighter, and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) has wicked skills with a bow and arrow, but no magical skills to speak of.  So that leaves us with Thor (Chris Hemsworth) and the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) as our bona fide supers.  And I guess Loki (Tom Hiddleston, recently of War Horse and Midnight in Paris fame), though he's a bad guy.  But why quibble about the details about who's super when it all comes together so nicely?

Bottom line: hooray for superheroes!

What I'm Reading Now -- The Night Circus

I first heard about The Night Circus (by Erin Morgenstern) on a podcast I listen to, Books on the Nightstand, which I've mentioned recently.  It is early in the awards season for this book, but it won an Alex Award and expected to at least be nominated for others.

I'm listening to this one on audio as well.  The first thing I noticed about it is that the introduction portion (at least, what seems to be the introduction - more on that later) is in the second person, which is something you don't see very often.

Morgenstern's sentences are well-crafted and her words appear carefully chosen.  Sometimes they can be a little bit overly-flowery though, which is perhaps appropriate for a book about the circus but can be a little tiresome.

Happy Birthday, E!

Great to see you!  I hope your massage goes better than George's!

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest -- Take 2

I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest a few days ago, and it was definitely different from the first two.  Not really worse or better.

This one was more legal drama than the previous books, although there still was a healthy (or unhealthy) dose of sneaking around, spying, and hacking computers.

Our final installment brings to a close the investigation into the complicated history of The Girl, Lisbeth Salander.  The sweeping, conspiracy theorist's dream involves secret police, international spies, corrupt bureaucrats, pedophiles, and even more secret police.  The pacing is good; it builds to a crescendo, but ends with a predictably unsatisfying but mandatory denouement.

I enjoyed listening to this on audio because I didn't have to stumble over the complicated Swedish names, although I think the fact that I didn't have to sound them out a few times before I got rolling also made it easier to get the characters mixed up in my head.

As with the others, it's compelling reading but mediocre writing.

Goal #21

Goal #21: follow the two minute rule

I haven't read David Allen's book Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, but I did come to learn about one thing he has in it, so I picked up a copy and read those few pages.

It's the two minute rule, and it goes like this: if there's something you need to do which will take a maximum of two minutes, do it now.  His theory is that, at more than two minutes, the amount of time and energy you spend adding the thing to your to-do list, worrying about it later, and so on, exceeds the amount of time you would just spend doing it now.

Allen does acknowledge that the selection of two minutes as the time limit is somewhat arbitrary but seems to work well on a regular day.  If you have a longer stretch of time, maybe you can go as high as 10 minutes, or if you're super busy you can cut it down to 30 or 60 seconds.

I learned all this a couple weeks ago; it's been percolating and I've said to myself a few times, "Oh, it won't take long, just do it now."  But this week I'm really going to try to be good about it!

Recap of Goal #20:
- Sunday night: 7.5 hours
- Monday night: 6 hours.  I barely eked this one out, and I did it at the cost of a workout (although if you factor in the time it took me to fall asleep, I probably just missed my goal).  But here's my question: both sleep and exercise are good for you.  Which is more important?  In order to get my workout in, I would have had to cut it down to 5:15 of sleep at most, probably more like 5 hours even.  Is that worth it?
- Tuesday night: 5.5 hours.  So close, but...UGH!  The most annoying part of this is that I could have had my six hours (or I could have gotten a quick jog in).  I was meeting some people on Wednesday morning, and the e-mail said "5:30." To me, that meant "be there at 5:30."  But they were all meeting and driving together and I was coming from elsewhere, so their plan was to meet at 5:30, be there at 6:00.  So many possibilities for that extra 30 minutes, but instead I just sat around twiddling my thumbs.
- Wednesday night: 6.25 hours
- Thursday night: 7 hours
- Friday night: 7 hours
- Saturday night: 7 hours

So, all in all, not bad!

A Note to Graduates

For those of you who are graduating and have yet to figure out what you’re going to do with yourselves this year or for the rest of your lives, you are in good company.  (And I'm not talking about mine, although that's also true!)

Last year, Stephen Colbert, now proudly sporting a diploma from Northwestern University, addressed the graduates with some hard-earned and slightly tardy wisdom regarding practical selection of a major (full address available here).  After explaining how his diploma box contained a ripped-off piece of legal paper saying, “See me. Dean Cathy Martin.” He goes on:

“So remember, just by graduating today on your graduation day, you are starting your career way ahead of me – be proud of that.  Because Northwestern is a school to be proud of – in academics, athletics, science, public service.  It represents humanity at its best.

And on Dillo Day, it represents humanity at its worst.

Now, for you parents, Dillo Day is a festival that started in 1972 to honor the armadillo.  That is the best explanation I can offer, I’m sorry. [Parental applause.]

Today, evidently armadillos are honored by drinking Four Loko out of a Super Soaker while dancing to the New Pornographers in a drunken mosh pit filled mostly with National Merit Finalists. [Student cheers and laughter.]

Northwestern's alumni list is truly impressive.  This university has graduated bestselling authors, Olympians, presidential candidates, Grammy winners, Peabody winners, Emmy winners, and that's just me!  And I loved, I loved my time at Northwestern.  I was a transfer student ... [transfer student cheers] ... wow ... I was a transfer student from a small all-male college in Virginia where I had been a philosophy major.  But I decided to switch to something with stronger job prospects: theater major."

There's hope!

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 35

Otherwise titled: France and a Home Kitchen

Wednesday was a day of delicious food and long conversation!  First I had lunch with S at Cafe Provencal (where I went about a year ago for lunch with T).  S and I missed out on some of the cute French-ness of the place because we sat outside, but it was such a lovely day, it just couldn't be helped!  I had the very predictable choice of French onion soup, with their quiche du jour, which was bacon. (Can you go wrong with that?)

And dinner was a treat too!  Dad is in town for some stuff, so we went to dinner at a fairly new restaurant called Home Wine Kitchen.  Their menu changes weekly, and last night I had the chef's menu: an appetizer of pork belly, chicken cassoulet main course, and dessert of lemon and olive oil bread pudding.  It was delicious!

I'd like to go back there for No Menu Monday, where you can give a few pointers about what you like and don't like, and the rest is up to the chef.  They have one more interesting quirk: wine pricing.  Aside from their reserve list, all bottles are $30 and all glasses are $8.

What I Watched -- Breaking Dawn, Part I

Ugh, why?  It's like a train wreck and I just can't look away.  Every movie I see, I hate Bella more and more, although in Breaking Dawn, Part I, Kristen Stewart does manage to do a stellar job of looking like she's just seconds from death through most of this installment.

On top of that, I have to say that they got one thing just perfect.  The fact that they call it The Twilight Saga, emphasis on the "saga," hits the nail on the head.  It implies a certain amount of unnecessary melodrama, and if that's what you're looking for, you won't be let down.

Bottom line: getting worse, not better.  So why do I feel a compulsive need to finish the series?

What I Watched -- War Horse

I'm a sucker for movies about animals, especially dogs and horses.

It's for that reason that I decided to see War Horse, the film/play/book which has gotten so much press in the last year or so.  And I'm happy to say that the horse does not disappoint.  As for the rest of the movie?  It's pretty blah Disney stuff.

After the horse, my next favorite character is probably the other horse, followed by the Grandpa (played by longtime French actor Niels Arestrup), and then all the people who take care of the horse (including Tom Hiddleston).  (Are we noticing a theme here?)  Benedict Cumberbatch, who has a fabulous name but only a bit part which he handles as well as could be expected, has drawn attention lately as Sherlock Holmes in a new BBC series I'd like to check out.

Bottom line: no surprises - it's exactly the story you'd expect.

An 11th Ring, and a Loss

Boo hiss.  It stinks when we lose.  I met T downtown for the game last night, and somehow we managed to have fun despite a loss to our North Side rivals.

The loss was annoying because our record was so much better going into the game (20-14, to the Cubs's 14-20), but it is what it is.  The Cubbies capitalized on our many errors to take a 6-4 win, although they made a number of on-field gaffes themselves, and stranded 24 men on base.  We didn't do so well either, leaving 13.  It was just bad ball all around (summary).

Also, what kind of hot dog stand are you if you run out of hot dogs?  We went to get our dinner 'round about the 4th inning, and our favorite stand announced, not 30 seconds after we jumped in line, that they had run out of dogs.  What?  How does that happen?  You serve one thing!  The woman at the hot dog stand had said it would be 20 minutes before she had more ready for purchase.  We were hungry, so headed across the way to one of the regular concession stands.  Slowest line in history.  Seriously.  It took so long that eventually we just gave up and went back over to wait out the last 5 minutes before our delicious dogs with grilled onions were sizzling away.  After all that waiting, they sure were good!

Super bonus!  Remember how last summer, I got to fondle a World Series ring? (Although that day, the Cards won.)  Well, there's another one now!

On the inside, all the series counts are engraved...

...and an extreme close up of one side of the ring reveals the rally squirrel!

What I Watched -- The Space Between

The Space Between is the story of a wise-beyond-his years but irritating Muslim boy and an angry, disillusioned flight attendant who drinks too much.

Melissa Leo plays Montine.  She's put in charge of the Omar, an unaccompanied minor travelling on a flight from New York to LA on the morning of 9/11.  When they land in California and discover all that's happened in the several hours since they left New York, they are left on their own.  The entire airline industry is in crisis mode and in no position to supervise the boy.

Montine isn't really in any position to supervise him either, but she has no choice when she discovers that Omar's dad worked in one of the towers.  She takes it upon herself to return him to New York, and what follows is a road trip movie with unconventional characters but very conventional sentiments.

Bottom line: cute story, but contains no surprises.

Goal #20

Goal #20: get at least six hours of sleep a night.

What with two regattas in one weekend, and one of them in Philadelphia, I didn't get much sleep the last several days.  So this week it's my goat to get at least six hours per night.  And with that in mind, I'm off to bed!

Recap of Goal #19: here's what I read:
Sunday: oops (turns out Sunday is a bad day to start these goals, because usually I don't think about them until Monday)
Monday: Charles Monroe Dickenson, Abraham Lincoln (found here rather by accident)
Tuesday: selections from Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney
Wednesday: oops again
Thursday: Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost
Friday: The Sunrise Ruby by Rumi
Saturday: The Necklace by Osip Madelstam, trans. Christian Wiman (from the April 2012 Atlantic)

Quote of the Day

It's like Potter Stewart's quote about pornography (which has its own Wikipedia page!) in Jacobellis v. Ohio:

"There is a limit to the amount of misery and disarray you will put up with, for love, just as there is a limit to the amount of mess you can stand around the house.  You can't know the limit beforehand, but you will know it when you've reached it.  I believe this."
-- Alice Munro

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 34

Otherwise titled: Food, food everywhere!

Sunday was a very busy day!  I had brunch with E at First Watch, visited with G&G for a bit, when to the team's end-of-season banquet.  And last but not least, it was finally time for T's (quite belated) birthday dinner!  And we waited so long for that to happen that we were also celebrating two other birthdays - quite a party!

By the end of the day, I was exhausted!

What I Watched -- Battle Royale

I heard some press that Suzanne Collins had ripped off her idea for The Hunger Games from an earlier Japanese book and film called Battle Royale.  I decided to check it out, see what this was all about.

There are definitely similarities. As in The Hunger Games, Battle Royale involves a dystopian society in which a group of kids must fight each other to the death in order for the government to maintain control (or at least the illusion of control) over the people.

There is less overt, America-is-damned political commentary in Battle Royale (probably because it's Japanese), but there are definitely the same questions regarding the lengths to which oppressive government regimes will go to make their point. 

In some ways, Battle Royale was more frustrating to watch, because the kids try to fight the system.  In The Hunger Games, everything is from Katniss's point of view, so you get only very rare glimpses of other kids in the game (at least in the first book) who also see the futility of it all.  In Battle Royale, though, there are lots of kids like that.  It's frustrating because they each have their own idea of how to survive the game; sometimes they get close to making progress, but then they collapse on themselves.  What does that say about our chances as a society?

Parting words of wisdom from the film: "No matter how far, run for all you're worth."

Bottom line: probably the original source material for THG, but more gruesome.  Interesting commentary, but certainly not for the faint of heart.

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 33

Otherwise titled: Hod Dogs and Wedding Cake

On Friday night, T and I attended a wedding of some people I don't know - a friend of a friend of T's.  Their wedding was at a church, and sharing a parking lot with the church were a couple of little league baseball fields.  The wedding ended and we still had 45 minutes before the reception hall opened, so T and I did what good, red-blooded Americans should do: we got some nachos and hot dogs.

Hopscotch in the parking lot

Aside from our attire, we fit right in with the baseball crowd.

Random Links

Dogs, balls, and an underwater camera.

NYC Dept. of Records released almost 900,000 historical photographs of the city on their website.

I have been on exactly zero of these.  All of the sudden, my life has no meaning.

Part 1: Flying bear.  Part 2: Flying bear dies :-(

Remove yourself from the internet.  It's pretty much impossible, but if you want to try, here's how.

Need to get a horse to London?  Call FedEx.

Newsflash: despite the fact that it seems like a mathematical impossibility, most of us are below average.

Cheetahs in a petting zoo?  Pictures of the mauling?  What?  So many things wrong with this story.

Goal #19

Goal #19: Read a poem every day.

Everyone who knows me knows I'm not much for poetry, but I'm going to try!  Even if I read something I've already read, at least it'll be something.

Recap of Goal #18:
Sunday: dog walking, 45 minutes (fairly typical for spring; we walk longer in the winter, very little in the summer).
Monday: dog walking, 35 minutes; running, 20 minutes.
Tuesday: walk to library, 10 minutes; dog walking, 15 minutes (thunderstorm today, so we missed our long morning walk); bike ride, 40 minutes.
Wednesday: dog walking, 35 minutes; running, 25 minutes.
Thursday: dog walking, 35 minutes.
Friday: dog walking, 30 minutes; erging, 22 minutes (hard!).
Saturday: running: 25 minutes (interesting run - I found a lost dog and jogged alongside her to make sure she didn't get hit; eventually she ran up on a porch and rang the doorbell to make sure she was home).

Bonus!  Remember how I kind of failed at polishing my jewelery?  Well, this week I finished up with the bracelets (which weren't bad) and the earrings (atrocious!).

Clapton: the Autobiography -- Take 2

I finished listening to this a couple days ago, and it was great! 

There was so much I didn't know about Eric Clapton, and I very much enjoyed learning it.  I did know he had long career, trouble with addiction (but what rock star doesn't?), and that his son died a tragic death.  It was really interesting to hear hear all of it in own words, if not own voice.  (The audio is read by Bill Nighy.)

There's a lot about his time in his earlier bands: The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos, and his relationships with his fellow band members and other musicians.  Much of the book is devoted to his obsessive love of Pattie Boyd (George Harrison's wife at the time Eric met her), their eventual marriage, and divorce.

While Clapton is probably the best guitarist alive, and among the best of all time, I didn't actually expect to be as intrigued by his story as I was.  It was a wonderful surprise.

What I'm Reading Now -- The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

It's finally that time!  I'm finishing the trilogy!  (Book 1, Book 2.)  I'm trying something different and listening to this book rather than reading it, so we'll see which I like better.  And I'm excited to finally get caught up on the movies too; must read this book first though!

52 Weeks of Dresses -- Week 32

Otherwise titled: Symphony Day!

Due to some unfortunate events involving a sick dog early on Sunday morning, the opportunity arose for me to attend the Sunday afternoon symphony with Grandpa.  It was splendid.

The musicians performed three pieces, and I liked each one better than the last.  We started with Rimsky-Korsakov's piece Skazka (Fairy Tale), Opus 29 (snippets available here), then moved to Shostakovich's Symphony No. 1 in F minor, Opus 10 (first movement of four available here).  After the intermission, we came back to Rachmaninoff's 2nd Piano Concerto in C minor, op. 18 (here).  Stephen Hough was on piano, and Grandpa and I discussed during intermission whether he would live up to his reputation.  He did.

Everyone else agreed; he got so much applause that he came out and played a solo encore for us: Chopin's Nocturne in E flat (here).  Beautiful.

P.S. Sorry about the not-very-illustrative picture.  Normally that dress looks like this:

And I look like her.  Or I would if I were wearing a hat :-)

What I Watched -- Drive

T and I watched Drive while putzing around at home one night.  I liked it; he did not.  But this is my blog, so:

This movie is an odd mash-up of things.  The cars are new, but it has a distinctly 1980s feel to it - pink script and Europop.  It's an action movie with fast driving and cringe-worthy violence, but many scenes in the film are nearly silent or at least devoid of dialogue.  Ryan Gosling plays a man known only as Driver, a film stuntman by day and getaway driver by night.  Despite the breakneck speeds and grisly scenes in which he finds himself, he's so very still and controlled all the time.  There's a sense of loneliness about it, but also it makes you wonder what he's up to.  (T thought it was bad acting.  I disagree.)

Carey Mulligan , whom I've liked ever since An Education (and I'm sure I'll like Never Let Me Go when I get around to it), seems like an odd choice as his neighbor.  She just seems too adorable and honest to be married to a man who's locked up when we meet her.  Nonetheless she and Gosling are good together, in an odd couple sort of way.

Also has excellent turns by Christina Hendricks and Albert Brooks, among others.

Bottom line: the volume of violence is lower than Kill Bill, but it's just as nasty and a little bit less pseudo-comically Japanese anime style.  If you can stomach that, it's worth it.

Also, on this version of the movie cover, is it just me or does Ryan Gosling look a lot like longer-haired Daniel Craig?

Mt. Pleasant Winery

On Saturday, my alumni group took a trip out to Mt. Pleasant Estates in Augusta.  Our day started with a lovely tour of the old cellars with the owner:

"Only the Germans are stubborn enough to build a cellar like this."

Apparently they dug out the cellar, laid the hand-hewn limestone walls, refilled the cellar with dirt, laid the stones across the sloped mound to form the ceiling, then re-dug all the dirt.

 

Barrels are dated with the year they were first put into use, as well as an R or W for the wine that's inside.  Barrels are used twice for wine, once for port, then sold for scrap, mostly to landscapers.

A glass siphon, called a thief for obvious reasons, is used to steal some tawny port out of the barrel for sampling.

After our tour, we visited the Plein Air Art Event.  It's put on at Mount Pleasant and this was its 10th year.  Artists come to Augusta and paint landscapes, people, buildings, and other scenery around the town, then display their work for sale and awards.  I did find one series I liked a lot - three white canvases each painted with poppies - but I have nowhere to put that right now, and really no business investing in art.

Lunch at the Appellation Cafe was a pepper bacon Boursin burger, followed by great conversation and entertainment watching people try to figure out the trick to a game of washers.