wasted away...

i so did absolutely nothing this weekend. napped and olympics. oh and ate. nothing house/job/hobby related. was nice but feel like a bit of a blob.
was the first downtime weekend we've had in a while.
hoping to spend next weekend in michigan with nick's dad and his girlfriend.
decided that we are doing some remodeling around here. bye, bye carpet in the dining and living room. hello new wall, hardwood floors and rearranged space! will definitely need some before and after pics.
looking forward to our olympic impromptu gathering this week. had planned on stealing carrie's idea of a party, but that changed quickly! were discussing our dinner plans with friends at a benefit for one of our friends who has leukemia. some other friends overheard, so we decided to invite everyone. however, some of our friends are a bit snarky and made a comment about 'we don't really have to watch the olympics do we?' so we decided nope. we're having a wii olympics. gotta figure out if we're gonna do brackets or what. nick will win. might have to work out handicaps or something. should be fun. looking forward to planning our menu. except that smartass friend said he was bringing fried bugs. blech. not sure i'll let him in if he does! ;o)
guinness has been a pain. has some sort of rash/allergy. now he's on steroids and benadryl. the steroids are making him mr. growly again. oy. bless nick for taking care of him when he gets all mean. and to think mr. guinness had been doing so well. hoping this is temporary and the nice dog returns soon...

stuck to my couch.

engrossed in the olympics.
still lots on the plate and maybe one freaking day, i'll upload the final batch of california pics. seriously, i suck.
the olympics are my favorite. love just lounging with nick and fat dog and doing nothing but staring at the tv. nice change of pace from the crazy schedule we've been keeping.
laughing my patooty off at the previews for this new tv show.
so gonna tivo this one.
kath and kim
think it appeals to me in the same way that my name is earl does!

decapitated lamp post.

um, so i get a phone call from nick today. {we were having some killer storms}
he tells me we have no power, the house is okay, but our lamp post cracked in half? wha? how does that work? well, silly shan forgot pics. but thinks this is a totally blog worthy topic.
everyone in our neighborhood has a lamp post in their yard. all in the same spot. you know, the ones that dumbledore used the puter outer on in harry potter? well, the lamp part just cracked right off. exposed wires and all. lots of shattered glass in the grass. fun times.
our neighbors had their trampoline take out their uber expensive fence. the storm snapped another neighbor's swing set in half. down the road it looks like some tree took off some gutters and part of a house. crazy. i hope everyone is okay. nick took a walk with guinness before i got home and said most of the houses were fine, just lots of damaged trees and shrubs.
rumor has it there were serious pieces of hall as well.
we were powerless for a few hours which is crazy because this is the first time in the 5+ years that we have lived here that we have lost power.
thankful that it's back on before the heat comes back. no thank you 90 degrees and humid with no heat.
{thinking i'll have that vacation recap finished up this weekend... i hope!}

an excuse

as for why i've been mia.

Red Alert !!!

This is Puzzo Regional head of the FARC NETWORK. I wish to let you
know that i have been paid by a client to assassinate you at
convenience, and i have signed a contract for this yesterday. I have
never met you before, but they gave me the full description of your
identity and contact which my boys have used to trace you.

The reason why they want you Dead was not disclosed to me as i was not
allowed to know, but you are now not better that the dead ok.

My GUYS are now constantly watching you, they are following everywhere
they are waiting for my instruction to terminate you and they will strike at
convenience.

THIS IS MY MESSAGE-
LISTEN VERY WELL !!!, the Police cannot do much to help you and don't
even bother to inform them cos it will only worsen and complicate things
because you are being watched, any such attempt is very risky cause
you will push us to terminate your life without option.

Note****** Your calls are not still safe.

FARC NETWORK!!!

kidding. but don't you just love spam. ;o)
i swear, i've had like 30 birthdays in 30 days not to mention a few weddings and some other random events.
hoping august slows down a bit for us!!

vacation recap. part three.

k. sorry for the delay.
june 8, 2008. sunday. all photos here.
headed to jack in the box for breakfast. planned the day while we ate and enjoyed the sunshine. ended up at lots of wineries! and shockingly, lots were free!
kendall jackson was our number one visit of the day. their gardens were amazing. were almost tempted to go on the garden tour. maybe next time.



might be the favoritest picture i've ever taken...

had some awesome late harvest chardonnay. seriously. yum. the late harvest just means it's sweeter so it almost tastes like a grape juice instead of wine. sooo good. i think you can only buy it through them, which we just may do.
stopped to smell the flowers on the way out... har, har, har.
what's with the roses everywhere? apparently, they get the same fungus as grapes. but the fungus appears on the roses first. so back in the day, they planted roses at the end of each row to keep an eye on the grapes. nowadays, there is no need. they do it for tradition and pretties!
then we stopped at martinelli. not sure if it was suggested or if we just decided to stop in.

if you look closely, you can see nick and i reflected in the door in the picture above. not too impressed with their wines. loved that they harvested on a hill called 'jackass hill.' hilarious. apparently, one of the owner's wives wasn't a big outdoor person and made some comment on how only a jackass would plant on that hill and it stuck. good times.
arista.


had some mark david wine. cab franc, i think. was some small label product. not bad.
were lucky enough to stumble upon a food pairing too. so we got some yummy lamb.

another fun flower picture...

and i still love trees.

tried to go here. no luck. closed.

were told to go to c. donatelli. a newcomer. eh.
can't find a website. could be the wrong name. ha!
hopkiln was a cute little place.

lots of food items.


picked up lunch. yes, it was way healthy and balanced.

then it was off to korbel. trying that bubbly again!

my kind of bottle.

couldn't believe they have a cookbook. ate there when we were in los angeles last time we visited california.

nick found an all crab book. looked for grilling ideas. he makes some stellar grilled crab. so i hear. i don't eat it...

a fun brick wall.

then it's off to the ocean!
we, ahem, i really wanted to have some ocean time. wasn't sure what san fran's beach front area would be like {and it turns out, we didn't see any!}. so i thought it would be fun to head to bodega bay.
not sure if that's really where we ended up. but we had fun nonetheless.
this is the first picture of ocean.

for some strange reason, nick actually thought the water would be warm. ha!

don't mind the exposure. i couldn't really see the pictures in the display after taking them...
and i knew it would be cold. but it seemed way colder! and the darn water got my pants and i had sand everywhere. not fun!

playing with the pretty scenery. one of these might need to be framed. i took a bunch i just love.


tried to get nick to jump off the rocks. he said that boys don't jump 'cute' that this is what i was getting!

nick overlooking a bluff. dude, i thought he was being so adventurous when he was at the ledge. apparently, there's a little cliff there, so it's not just a straight drop off.

another fun scenery one.

me pouting. there was this little part that jutted out that nick walked over to. i was chicken. not climbing a ravine in flips. i have a history of falling off of rocks/cliffs in california. wasn't giving anyone any more fodder for funny shannon stories.

also played around with the tripod when we were at the beach. won't bore you with them. not exactly the greatest but glad to have them!
traveled down pch for some time. the views were awesome. then it was on to san fran.
the golden gate bridge...

took it easy our first night there. weren't really sure what we were going to do. walked around to a few seafood places but they were extremely crowded.
saw some dude walking his cat. yes, cat. tried to be all incognito when taking this!

got some pretty sunset pictures.

found pier 39 and the sea lions. awesome, awesome, awesome. totally my favorite free part of our trip... i think!
we spent some time every day there. even flipped them barking to one another. that's another post. when i figure out how to share that stuff!


froze our asses off. can't believe how chilly it was. i thought my toes were going to crack off! amazing what a temperature difference there is between napa and san fran considering how close they are! darn winds!
finally decided to eat at wipe out. no wait and decent prices sealed the deal!

phew that was a long day!
final days of vacation recap soon...

brain dead.

lots and lots on the plate. things should be slower soon.
just to share our braindeadness...
nick calls me this morning on his way to work. first thing out of his mouth, 'you wanna laugh?' silly boy was driving to work in his convertable with his top down. it started to rain. and what does he do/think... 'crap, i forgot my umbrella!' seriously!?! not let's put the top up? no, the first instinct to to hold an umbrella over his head while driving!
so back to regularly scheduled postings soon... with the rest of the vacation recaps too!

vacation recap. part two.

back again! nick and his dad are outside finishing up the deck... and here i am, bloggin away.

thursday june 5.
check out all the photos from this day here.
another early morning. fingers crossed we would be able to do the hot air balloon. was not going to get up early on our anniversary and saturday we were checking out and moving on...
got the okay for lift off! exciting!
took a zillion pictures. my silly self deleted half of them though. sigh. i cannot believe i did that. wish it was any other day. but seriously, the one thing i wanted to do and was hoping to have 38745 pictures from. oh well. we were reluctant to pay their photographer for pictures but decided to do it any way. so glad that we did otherwise we would have no pictures from the beginning of our trip. had some really cool ones too. wah...
k. enough whining. onto the fun pictures.
really glad we paid the guy. i mean, i can't imagine not having something like this and there would be no other way to have this view. so fun.
i had some reservations about this flight. thought it would be uber scary. but it wasn't. was more quiet than i expected and really quite peaceful.




the one picture that i deleted, that i miss the most is the one with the balloon next to a building. it just showed it's size. i never really realized how huge they were!

so how did i delete all the pictures? because i'm blonde at heart. so we came back to the hotel after the flight and i uploaded everything to the computer. when we came back to the hotel after going out again, i uploaded again and clicked replace instead of add {regarding the duplicate numbers} and poof, the beginning of the hot air balloon pictures were deleted.
nick tried and tried to find them. no such luck. and once i realized why they weren't there, all hope was lost. my mom's theory is that we just need to go on another hot air balloon ride.
after the balloon ride, we hit the wineries again! had to stop for lunch first. stopped at taylor's. i loved that every where we went was so earth friendly. i swear, i've never seen more hybrids in my life. a lot of the restaurants had recycling which was so cool. taylor's had this nifty little cups.

hess was our first stop of the day.
nick was excited because they had dragons on their flags! if only we were as impressed with the wines. maybe it was just that we killed our taste buds! who knows. they did have some super cool displays. that funky little tree? an old vine.
loved the brick walls they had. made nick stop for a photo op! just have to edit out that right side of the photo....
had a koi pond with some lily pads. and i, apparently, was in macro mode for this vacation...

second stop was artesa.
not sure how we heard about this place. think it was in most of the brochures we had picked up along the way. had some super neat architecture. was built into a mountain!

were not impressed with the service. oy. the guy sucked. so i'm sure even if the wines were good, we would have been put off on the place anyway.
had the tripod in the car with us {thanks colleen!} and decided to use it for the first time this trip! oh and yay remotes!

then it was off to domaine carneros.
had some questionable service here too. the dude was more focused on the bimbos at the table next to us. we almost got up and left. it was that bad.
had a little visitor while we were waiting on the patio...
even though we had some bad service, we decided to give them more of our money and order a cheese tray. it was sooo good! nick was even a fan of the goat cheese which he swears he doesn't like. ;o)
the rest of our evening was spent in the hotel room. nick passed out while i watched some mindless tv {food network, nba finals}. once nick woke up, we ordered a pizza and then watched national treasure two. kinda. i fell asleep so it was to be continued!

friday june 6. our 5 year anniversary! see all the photos here.
woke up at our leisure. ate breakfast downstairs. just had a nice, lazy morning. weren't really sure what we wanted to do. were shockingly not in the mood for wine...
hit up cosentino first.

came highly recommended from one of nick's doctors. were really impressed. and they had a reasonably priced wine club. decisions, decisions. thought we should head off and could always come back if we needed to.
what says romantic anniversary date? jelly belly of course! ha.
headed over there and took their free tour. was pretty neat. had some awesome jelly belly artwork. check out george clooney.

after the tour we thought we should hit up some more wineries. st. supery it was.

they had some learning tools above the tasting room. it was about smells you would find in certain wines.

we decided that we did want to join cosentino's club, so we went back. and once we signed up, that meant more tastings. and no, nick cannot spit or pour out the rest of his wine if he doesn't like it. i, however, had no problem doing so. which is why most days i because the designated driver! see below:
and guess what? nick went back to the hotel and took a nap. then we walked to our anniversary dinner. ate at cuvee. way yummy!

saturday june 7. see all the pictures here.
our last day in napa. so sad. went by so quickly.
started the day off at sterling.

were told that it was a must stop. had to take a tram to get to the tasting area. pretty nifty!

there was a self guided tour and there were random areas where you could do some tastings. the views were insane. maybe it's just that we are impressed with anything hilly and non cornfield-y. ;o)
had some pretty good wine. our favorite was the malvasia bianca.
the nice tram lady took our picture.

were hoping to take one on the way up to the tasting room but these two crazy ladies sat opposite of one another. what is that? i mean, you came together. i assume you like one another. so sit next to each other dagnabit.
right next door was clos pegase. i guess it could be considered next door...
had some really strange artwork throughout the grounds.
see this ninja tree...

yeah, not really a ninja tree. just some strangely placed wind thingies... still funny though.
and how about these guys?!


is a thumb really artwork?
but they did have a cute dog inside. his owner painted amongst the barrels. the dog, luke, was super friendly and made us miss guinnea pig a bit.


as we were leaving, nick thought it would be a good idea to taste a grape fresh off the vine. which is so not close to being ripe. but whatever. it's his mouth!




next stop: clos du bois.

crowded. darn wine tasting festival. however, the lady was super generous with sharing her labels. side note: if you ever head to a winery, you can ask for old labels. my coworker is now making me a serving dish with all the labels we collected. k. back to the regularly scheduled topic.
stopped at geyser peak.

blech. darn taste of the valley. only had a select few wines out if you weren't with the tour.
best part of that stop... this picture. yes, it's me in the bathroom!

left that place in record time.
then hit bear republic for lunch.
don't remember the beers we had. i'm sure mine was a stout. nick was kinda miffed. our waitress didn't tell us that there were flights available. um, hello, that is seriously pertinent info!
food wasn't too bad.
our next stop. gas. the first purchase of the trip.

almost $65 later, we were ready to roll.
nick saw a billboard when we were driving around for a dessert winery. found it. and were sooo glad we stopped.
trentadue = yum.

didn't taste anything other than dessert wines. they have a chocolate, cherry port that was absolutely delicious!
then we stumbled across these funny glasses!


went to our next hotel. which was such a downgrade compared to our kick ass one.
the dude at the front desk offered us their 'best' room. um, no thanks. so glad we were only there for one evening.
got situated and then headed to one of guy fieri's restaurants. tex wasabi.

loud atmosphere. can totally see it being a crazy fun night spot. nick had real sushi. i had the gringo stuff. i don't like cooked fish. not sure i would be a fan of raw fish!

that's the end of part two. stay tunned for part three....