Wine, pool and Prosser

I cannot believe that it has been three years since I last visited Prosser, WA. I went to visit my college roommates' hometown and check out the Prosser Wine and Food Fair -- probably my first large-scale wine experience (meaning that I was exposed to a lot of wineries at once, not that I necessarily drank a lot of it like Moos did). Here I am with J.Jo and Moos in 2007.

Since that time, the Prosser Wine and Food Fair has only gotten bigger and relocated to the Washington State University Experience Station (insert college experimenting jokes here). It was probably a good idea to move the intoxication-by-wine event from the local high school football field, where I had last attended. Don't want to send mixed signals to the kids, right?

This time around, the event was bigger and my group was hotter as I was joined by the Wives and my wife. Trust me, nothing looks better than rolling with three beautiful girls to a wine event. I'd rather take three dates over limo service any day. Here was the entourage.

We were impressed by the reds - Merlots, Cabernets, Sangioveses - but were dumping out the too-sweet whites - Rhubarb(?!), Viognier, Chardonnay, Petite Verdot. Yuk. Vin du Lac and Heaven's Cave Cellars and Columbia Crest were the standout winners for me. The weather was too hot for prolonged red wine drinking so we quickly transitioned to beer and enjoyed what Horse Heaven Hills Brewery had to offer, including a kickass apricot beer. We threw down two pitchers of that in no time.

We attended a post-party at one of the two "hot" bars in Prosser where you basically pay a $5 cover to sit in a restaurant featuring bright lights and loud music. God help this town. The entertainment for the night was a way-too-drunk girl sitting near us who couldn't keep the tattoos on her chest from falling out of her dress. It was sad but well worth the cover price.

During our mornings in Prosser we were able to crash at Moos' aunt's backyard pool, which was amazing. Sorry guys, but I have to abide by the no-swimsuit-photos policies enforced by wife and Wives (though anything can be bought for a price).

Amanda is a natural amphibian, so she and I spent the most time in the water while the Wives worked on their tans. I don't think we've had a chance since our honeymoon to just sit and do nothing.  It was so relaxing. We also got some more down time when traffic was delayed by 90 minutes(!) on the way home, but all-in-all it was a great weekend.

Oh my poor, inhaler-toting seed

Based upon some clear precedent, I know that my children (who will come to this world many years down the road) will be awfully nerdy and given no chance to be anything else.

When I realized that I wanted to marry Amanda, I accepted that I'd have some 2-year-old with toddler glasses that everyone would call "Harry Potter." That's cool. I like wands. Amanda and I have both worn glasses for way too long and no matter how many carrots that kid eats in utero, he/she/it is going to be half-blind.

But I didn't expect this. Amanda is in her third decade on this earth and in a sneaky, 4th quarter move, she pulled a fast one on me.

My wife has an inhaler.

All of this time I thought I dodged that bullet for me and my seed! But nope, after never using one before, Amanda came up with this weird cough over the last couple weeks and the doctor said that she had developed asthma and would need to use an inhaler.

Now she begs for it, insisting that she can't cook/clean/do laundry without it. (She's also developed a strange affinity for tea lattes - again for the cough.) Obviously this is a problem.

I'm not entirely convinced that she has asthma and she's going back to the doctor next week to see if symptoms have improved. But now that Amanda has been told that she has asthma, everything is a placebo for an asthma attack. She chokes on her food - asthma attack. She has phlegm - asthma attack. The gas tank is low - asthma attack. She needs to go shopping - to avoid an asthma attack. Apparently security stops asthma at the front of Nordstrom.

I'm glad that she's found some solace in the inhaler as she certainly does have a bad cough right now. I just wish it wouldn't so formally predict the future of our children. The poor kids are probably going to be wearing rec-specs in gym class, sucking on inhalers at lunch and struggling with dating through high school and college as they blame us for the awkward qualities of their youth, only to find love in adulthood on some online dating site.

get cash loan today

At least they'll be happy.

Goodbye new camera, farewell youth

Last week I bought a Canon 7D – a marvel of a pro-am SLR camera and one that I really wanted to purchase since its release. It offers better picture quality than my current camera and shoots high quality HD video. And not your average HD video either. TV shows have been filmed with this camera. It’s serious like that. It also came with a serious price, which is why I decided this week - after a good trial with it in Chelan over the weekend - that I should return it.

The problem isn’t that I can’t afford the camera, it’s that I can’t afford the camera AND the fence that I have to build this summer AND the new front door that I need to buy and install sooner than later. I’m not exaggerating about the urgency of these home fixes. My fence is literally falling over and looks like broken teeth. I can feel a breeze through my window-less, solid wood front door.

The camera, on the other hand, can wait. I have a camera that works fine, but I just wanted the next best thing that takes superkillersweet video. It’s the same feeling I had before I purchased the Macbook Pro or my current camera or those two external hard drives on Black Friday. The geek needs to be fed.

What really strikes me as different and (gasp!) mature about this camera decision is that I’m prioritizing and seeing necessities over shiny objects. Before today, if I had needed to pay for a major dental procedure or fix my car, I would have most definitely bought and kept the camera, rationalizing that I needed to document those serious circumstances at the highest fidelity – not for me but for future generations so that they could understand where they came from. I’ve always been thoughtful about the future of America like that.

This fundamental reprioritization is monumental. Like the previous sentence crammed a lot of syllables into few words, I suddenly feel like I need to pack my many, growing financial responsibilities into neat, manageable categories. For now “Saving for camera” isn’t one of them.

With that, some rebellious, spontaneous part of my youth must have died. No amount of clapping brings that back. I don’t know if it’s the copious amounts of wine that replaced PBR or a job where I work with grown-up adults, but part of me that “invested” in baseball cards and CDs and spent thousands of dollars with a Best Buy discount in college has been laid to rest like Ken Griffey Jr.’s baseball career – without much celebration and far too late.

Speedos: The Next Generation

I write to you now with the sun shining bright upon the shores of Lake Chelan, just 10 feet in front of me. The weather is too beautiful and the scene too serene for any regular board shorts. I had to step up my game. The title of this blog post intends to make no metaphor. I am wearing Speedos. Speedos have a long tradition in my family. Here's a photo of Nonno (my Dad's father) in a Speedo in (I'm guessing) Sorrento, Italy.

Gramps wore Speedos non-stop through the Reagan administration if I recall correctly, but I'll spare you to two total Speedo images for this post.

Why Speedos now, you ask...First, less resistance in the water. Board shorts are heavy and create a lot of drag. Michael Phelps wasn't rocking the equivalent of cargo shorts when he was swimming for gold medals. Second, Speedos aren't all cut like women's bikini bottoms anymore. Men's Speedos can be worn more like boxer briefs.

Finally, I wear Speedos because I can! I probably don't look like I did was I was 20, and I'm not going to look like this when I'm 40, so why the hell not? Amanda thought I looked hilarious when I tried on the pair she bought me (can't imagine why) and took this picture before we left for the weekend. Here you go, ladies!

I can see your Facebook updates...in Outlook?

Microsoft today launched Facebook integration for Outlook via a new social plug-in. See the story a http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/outlook-facebook/. What does this mean for you?

Your personal Facebook information and activity will be more closely tied to your business network. Period.

If you are “friends” with someone on Facebook and exchange email with them in Outlook, this plug-in will show that person’s Facebook activity in the Outlook experience. Even if you don’t have this plug-in on Outlook, your information will still appear in Outlook for anyone who has the Outlook plug-in and is your Facebook friend.

I unfortunately cannot provide a screenshot of my business inbox, but I can show you how I see Facebook status updates when I am composing mail to my boss, Kristen. She I are Facebook friends, and even though she doesn’t have the plug-in, I do so I can see her Facebook updates in the New Mail Message window.

Outlook also provides similar plug-ins for MySpace and LinkedIn, but considering the nearly half-billion Facebook users and dominance of Outlook for business email, this is probably the most impactful social integration for business yet.

Of course, this isn’t all bad. You have immediate access to information about people in your business network if you choose to use the plug-in, and that could create for better working relationships. You can skip those office parties and team offsites to get to know your coworkers. You've got a Facebook plug-in for that!

On the other hand, you will want to be sure that you do not post photos, status updates or other content that you wouldn’t want your colleagues or business network to see in their inboxes. Likewise, you may want to delete unflattering messages that friends have left on your wall. They, too, will appear in front of your colleagues.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, folks. If/when Outlook integrates more robust features like Facebook photos, movies, calendar, friends, mutual friends, location updates,  etc., then we've got a whole new privacy issue at hand, which affects businesses -- and their legal and HR departments. When Facebook and Outlook start to look the same, that'll be a tough transition for employees to figure out. Things could get ugly. At least this go around Facebook will be able to share some of the legal costs with Microsoft.

I assume that Facebook will continue to create more intelligent filters so that you can determine who in your network can see your content through a plug-in like this, but until then I would assume that anyone in your Facebook network is eligible to see your personal information and activity on Outlook.

On that note, I have some toga pictures to de-tag.