big blog

Have you ever been wine tasting?  Many people go to Napa, California to try wines, but Portland is a great place, too.

This weekend my friend took me on a tour of some of the vineyards around Portland.  She knew exactly which ones to visit and taught me about each wine.

It will be a while before I have a good understanding of wine, but after this trip I know this:

- the worse the soil, the harder the plant has to try to produce a grape, and the better the wine tastes

- i like spicy wines

- be ready for some of the wine to taste bad and drink those quickly

- wink at your server and you might get wine for free 

- some vineyards are laid-back and fun and others are stuffy and serious

- darker wines can mean they're dirtier, giving them more flavor

- swirl your wine using only your fingers, not your wrist

- don't spill your wine on your shirt 

- lots of old people go wine tasting

- if you want to impress someone at dinner, order a 2002 oregon pinot - it's the best year ever

Planes are fascinating to me.  Everything about air travel from the engineering of the machines to the business behind them to the purpose of having them is interesting.

Boeing and Airbus have been competing to design the world's most popular plane.  In what has become a battle of two geographic regions, the U.S. and Boeing have developed the 787 Dreamliner.  The E.U. and Airbus have their double-decker behemoth.

Boeing has gone small, lightweight and fuel-efficient, while Airbus has gone BIG.  With Airbus experiencing many delays on their plane and Boeing setting records with the number of pre-orders, it appears Boeing is leading this race.

I can't wait to fly in both of them... 

I've spent the past couple months working on my house.  There are lots of projects to do, but I've focused on the kitchen and the new bedroom.

The new bedroom is nice because it used to be two little rooms.  I took the wall out between the two and now it's one big space.  It has the most windows in the whole house, making it very light.  Refinishing the wood floors has really helped brighten it as well.

I'm painting it right now, but it's almost finished.  The next step will be to move my furniture in and enjoy the biggest bedroom I've ever had.