instead, i guess i'll tell you a little bit about what's been going on with us.
last week i was in california (blue voting state!) for a mix of work activities. i flew out there on monday and spent a day in LA to help present a study that i helped my ad agency work on with yahoo (which i believe i've mentionned before). anyway, i was somehow magically upgraded to one of the penthouses at the W hotel in westwood that monday night. i just wish you all could have been there -- it was quite lonely having two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a swanky living area and now peeps to share it with.
after less than 18 hours in LA, i flew up to san francisco (really one of the blue-est areas of that lovely blue state). we presented there and then i drove up to napa valley for a series of client meetings (which went really well, thank you!). surprisingly enough, the resort we stayed at wasn't all that swank. it was a golf community (complete with cheesy huge golf community houses) that also had condos built sometime in the late 70s/early 80s (and decorated then too!) that they rented out. it was really strange to be in a condo very far from the main resort building, and i felt like it would have been a good setting for a horror movie if there had been something other than a golf course outside my condo (woods, maybe? or a windswept part of the carolina coast?) luckily we did have two lovely dinners, including one at the winery Clos Pegase where we ate in a wine cave (a very BIG wine cave, since there were probably 40 of us). we also had dinner one night at the lovely French Bistro Jeanty in Yountville (and no, i didn't even see French Laundry, since we were taken there by bus and it was dark).
anyhow, napa valley is beautiful. i had only about a day there with my co-workers, and i'd love to say that we made the most of it, but we really made the most of the night before, and didn't really get going until the afternoon on our day off. we made it to only two wineries, which was probably best for our livers. the view from sterling vineyards was beautiful, but it was somewhat too corporate for my tastes, with a self-guided tour made up of plasma screen tvs showing videos about wine making. plus, something about the fortress-like location (see below) seems slightly foreboding to me:
so then we went to Hall Winery, which was just lovely if i do say so myself:
we called to make sure they weren't going to be irritated by us arriving right at closing time, and they were sooooo wonderful. they gave us a few different pours than were listed, and let us stay quite awhile. it worked in their favor too: each of us (there were four) bought something there. and i just got my shipment yesterday, which was a case of mixed wines called "Study Hall" -- cute, eh?
after only a day in wine country (i'm not going to count the time that was spent in the dark conference room at the weird golf resort) i headed down to san francisco again, to spend a day hanging out with my old friend melissa, who i worked with in NYC. she's at berkeley b-school now, but was a great sport about going boutique shopping with me, despite her current student budget. we also had some yummy peruvian tapas and spent the night wandering around the castro admiring the lovely women all dressed up for halloween. i think one of the highlights for me was when we went into a walgreens to get melissa some cheap, garish nailpolish (she's engaged, so she was dressing up as bridezilla for halloween) and ended up comparing colors with some of the drag queens that came in. believe me, they have an amazing cosmetics selection at the walgreens there in the heart of the castro. we noticed that they have an amazing selection of lubricants too, but i won't say any more than that.
so that was my week in cali. this week was also full of amusing anecdotes, but i've been typing far too long...
No comments:
Post a Comment