Red Light House

Though I flirted with the edge of extremely bad taste by taking a camera-phone picture inside a bathroom, I found this extremely jarring. This stack of cups in the handicapped bathroom stall in my office. Did someone bring them in there and forget them? Where they scattered about and someone collected them into one neat stack? Should I have not screamed and run away like a frightened little girl? I’d say “Yes” for at least one of them.

Sammi and I went to the Anderson Valley wine region last weekend, yet another wonderful trip with no photo’s to prove to you that I’m not lying. We stayed in a vacation rental house with 7 other folks near the town of Philo, which is pronounced either Fee-Lo, or Fy-Lo…I was told the correct way multiple times, but kept forgetting, so I hereby dub it (when spoken) “Place where you can buy a wrist rocket slingshot in the grocery store-ville”. The rental house was a bit off the beaten path, as is the whole of Anderson Valley, and we saw a flock of wild turkeys run by the house and ample evidence (poop) that lots of other animals like to make their way through the big back field.

But we weren’t there for the wildlife, and we were especially not there for the poop. Ohhhh no, we came for the wine, and there is a lot of it in Anderson Valley. And the best place, hands down, I’ve ever been wine tasting is Esterlina Vineyards. I’m no wine snob, but these past years spent in the tender and fermented bosom of Northern California have taught me that I like wine that tastes good better than wine that does not taste good…and I’ll leave it at that. Esterlina’s wines all taste good, and they let you try about 9 of them. For free! You have to call and make an appointment to taste, but it’s not out of any hoity-toityness, they just need time to set you up for an awesome experience.

The first part of the experience is getting lost. You cannot find the place. There’s just no way. You know there’s a road you need to turn on, and you have a general idea where it’s supposed to be, but there’s no way you’re going to see it the first time or even the second time around. We asked them why they don’t have signs on the main road and we were told that there are some strange signage laws in place to keep tourists from getting around easily…whatever, just look for the Blue Moon Farms sign and turn there.

The second part of the experience is getting nauseous. Once you find the turn off the highway you wind up on a gravel road that basically starts a winding vertical climb all the way to the top of the surrounding hills. There’s lots of loose gravel, and parts of the drive are more rumble-strip than road but after about three days drive you reach the top and pull into Esterlina’s small parking area.

Finally comes the good part. There are two small buildings, both with outdoor decks on the second floor that look out over the valley. The view is truly impressive and probably the vineyard’s best sales tool. The second best sales tool is that right when you come in they hand you a bottle of water and sit you down on the deck with bowls full of snacks. I preferred the cheese doodles, but other folks liked the dark chocolate Kit-Kat’s.

We were helped by a very nice woman who was able to talk intelligently on just about every subject we broached. She had a happy smile on her face the whole time as she probably knew that shortly we were going to buy our weight in booze from her….which we did. There were nine of us and everyone bought at least one bottle, most people got more, Sammi and I got six. We couldn’t help it.

After our purchase and negotiating the controlled gravel slide all the way down the hill we went to a couple of other places. All the other wineries around there are great. There’s no traffic, they’re close together, they’re not crowded, but I was spoiled by Esterlina. Standing at a bar with strangers around me felt like an imposition and a hassle. I just kept looking around wondering why the dude pouring the wine didn’t want to talk to me, and why they kept all the dark chocolate Kit-Kat’s hidden.

It’s strange to me that I’m following all the news about the Secretary of Defense as I’m not usually fond of current events, especially political current events. I guess I’m just a groupie at heart and I like that I’m one degree of separation from someone who’s all over the news. I was telling my mom about the possibility of him getting appointed, and got her to write me another one of his funny stories, this one not a spy story, but good nonetheless:

Another one I remember from Bob Gates was when Reagan and team visited the pope. One of the cabinet members came smoking a cigar and had to be told to stop…no cigars in the Vatican during audiences apparently. During the actual time in front of the pope, the guy’s cigar started smoking from his inside jacket pocket. He’d obviously snuffed it out and put it in his pocket for later use. He started pounding his chest madly. The others in the audience, not knowing what was happening, started clapping. They didn’t know what the Pope was saying anyway.

Bob said that he often wondered what the Pontiff thought about this group of Americans who were clapping and on fire….

Good stuff. The only way it could be better is if were our current president catching on fire and then we could do some SERIOUS biblical comedy with a surprise appearance by Moses.

The rumor is that Donald Rumsfield is stepping down from his post as Secretary of Defense and Bush is going to nominate former CIA head Robert Gates to take his position. Gates’ current job is being the President of Texas A&M University. My mom was on the committee that chose the candidates for that position (I think the list of candidates included Billy Graham or some other evangelist) and by far preferred Gates. I’m sure their politics meshed not at all, but Gates is by all accounts a great story teller, and being in the CIA during the Cold War gave him no end of anecdotes about the lighter side of espionage.

The two stories that my mom related to me, and that I only half remember, are pretty classic. The first is about a cat. I forget the name so we’ll call her Toonces. Gates was trying to spy on a Russian embassy and they noticed that the embassy had a cat that seemed to have free reign to roam both outside and inside the main building. Sensing a golden opportunity they began observing Toonces and collecting data about her habits and schedule. Finally the moment arrived and they grabbed Toonces and painstakingly placed a listening device in her collar. Once everything was set they released Toonces so she could run back inside the embassy and they could hear all the evil plots being hatched inside. Unfortunately they released Toonces on the opposite side of the street to the Embassy and when Toonces ran into the road she was immediately hit by a car and killed.

Maybe I’ll save the other story for tomorrow.

One of the advantages of having a sweetie-pie in high places is that your band gets featured on her website. Sammi picked some Porkchop Express pictures to be the featured album in the Entertainment section of Photosite…what a gal, huh? She’s lookin’ out for her man like a good woman should. That and the pictures were actually taken by a real photographer and not some chachi with a bunch of costumes for his pug.

A couple of days ago she told me about some user testing they were doing, and when they navigated to the page showing that small picture of me screaming into the microphone the test subject laughed and pointed at me, saying, “Who the heck is that? George Bush?”

No good.

Every year our street hosts a Halloween street fair that is the polar opposite of the Castro Halloween fair. While the Castro is filled with drunken adults pushing through crowds and stabbing each other, the Fair Oaks Halloween party is four or five blocks of families walking their children door to door for safe trick-or-treating. The street is blocked off so there are no cars driving around and some of the houses go all out with decorations and candy giving. It’s pretty neat.

Sammi and I used the street party last night as an excuse to have some folks over to hang out and watch the fun from our elevated front porch area (our building is nestled into the side of a hill so it’s one of those bastard San Francisco houses that require 2 flights of stairs to get to the first level). We put our stereo speakers in our window, put Michael Jackson’s Thriller album on repeat, brought down some chairs, a cooler of wine and beer, three bowls of candy and got ready for the fun.

I had forgotten how much I enjoyed interacting with trick-or-treaters. I had soooooo much fun giving out candy and talking to them. I think the last time I’d really done that was back in Nebraska, when I was in high school and too old to go out candy hunting. The street fair set up made for a non-stop barrage of kids walking up our stairs, getting candy and then walking down the stairs. It was a blast, I saw tons of little princesses, power rangers, Batmen, Rastafarians, zombies and one 11 year old boy in a French maid’s outfit. On the whole all the kids were happy and laughing and a lot of fun to talk to. Some of them were a little more hesitant to interact…I can’t imagine why. And one kid reportedly said “Treat or Die!” which is less than charming.

Some of the other folks who live in our building came down and took over handing out candy for a while. They actually went down to the street level to give out treats, which made me feel bad for a minute as I had made all the previous kids walk up the stairs…but I chalked it up to fighting the childhood obesity epidemic and felt much better. Another thing that made me feel slightly guilty was that we were drinking wine and beer while giving out candy. I didn’t know how appropriate that was, but I got no disapproving looks from parents, if anything they looked at the booze longingly. Soon enough, however, our neighbor’s candy supply ran out, and ours ran out soon after. Then began the heartbreaking portion of the night where we had to start telling all the kids that we were out of candy. Some of them took the news well, with a “Thanks anyway! Happy Halloween!” but others hung their heads and walked away morosely.

The most notable incident with a trick-or-treater was when a tall, skinny boy in a cape came up the stairs. When I told him we were out of candy, his face fell and he started scouring the ground around us. “Sometimes people drop a piece,” he said. We assured him that all the candy was gone and he slowly shambled away. Once he was gone we all had a good laugh at his expense, thinking about him searching through the gutters and going from house to house looking for dropped candy. Soon after the night was coming to a close so we starting taking everything back inside. When we were cleaning up someone found a lone peanut butter cup laying on the ground.

“Son of a bitch, the kid was right!”