Can You Keep a Secret?

I loved wine touring in the Shenandoah Valley. It was so relaxed, and talking to the owners and vintners was really interesting. Plus they actually provide decent pours. Before we left Sacramento, we bought some gourmet goodies for a hillside picnic at Amador with a bottle of their Rosato. We had so much, by the time we hit Noceto, my palate was so burnt.

I hope the masses don't find these places. My fear is that they will become as snotty and overrun as Napa and Sonoma...

Time to go home. No upgrade :(

California Dreamin'

Headed out to Frisco for a conference, hope to catch up with some friends as well.

Mental note: If you have liquids and need to check your bag, arrive at least 45-50 minutes before your flight. I learned that the hard way, especially since Airtrain stopped and did not move for 10 minutes. Had to take the flight after it and miss a (mediocre) free dinner. ARGH!

I'm Against It

I'm still in the middle of reading Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon. SHould have listened to J when he wished me luck (he gave up after a few pages of Gravity's Rainbow)This tome is over 1000 pages long, and it could kill someone if I threw it at their head. It's a real pain in the neck to read while standing on the subway, not to mention the space it takes up in my attache.

Michiko Kakutani really hit the nail on the head with her review, that it "reads like the sort of imitation of a Thomas Pynchon novel that a dogged but ungainly fan of this author’s might have written on quaaludes. It is a humongous, bloated jigsaw puzzle of a story, pretentious without being provocative, elliptical without being illuminating, complicated without being rewardingly complex." However, it still puzzles me how this book made the Top 100 Notable Books of 2006.


As much as I hate putting down books in the middle, I'm very tempted. This book is too convoluted, has too many characters, and just seems too outrageous and fictional to be even remotely possible. Its historical-science fiction bent reminds me of Neal Stephenson, without the adherence to a central theme and the quality of writing that I'm used to with Stephenson.

Will I make it to the end???

The Fun Continues

Today my company closed on the deal to acquire Giuliani Capital Advisors. This is public knowledge so I'm allowed to post it. The next 60 days are going to be delightful, as that's how long we have to integrate them into our business.

I'm still full from Easter dinner at my cousin's house...

Nazdrovye!

For lunch I decided to treat myself to the Russian Tea Room. Having never been, I figured I should get there before it closes again. The chicken Kiev was very decadent, the foie gras in the center making it especially decadent. Service was impeccable. No snootiness, thank God. The only smudge on an otherwise pleasant treat was the French family with three small children who came in toward the tail end of my dessert and tea service. Would definitely go back, especially if someone else is paying :)

Pre-Seder Sighting

Saw Ed Koch chowing down at Tang Pavilion today. Guess he was getting the carbs in before the chometz has to go away for a week! Tonight we go to Jason's parents' house for dinner. I managed to find kosher prosecco from northern Italy.

Chag Sameach Pesach to all my Jewish friends.

Well-read

Found this meme on the blog of a friend from college/former work colleague. It's questionable to me how some of these books made the top 100 of all time, but I guess it's all relative (sales? hype? newspaper article? amount of watercooler/blog chatter it generates?) Bold means I've read it; italics means that I have it on my bookshelf. Here goes...

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling)
17. Fall on Your Knees(Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. The Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela's Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She's Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender's Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones' Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. Tigana (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte's Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard's First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Tag, J or M, you're it!

Update: Dump Delta

After a month, I finally received a response from Delta customer service on their horrendous performance during my New Orleans trip. My nastygram to their customer service website got me 5000 SkyMiles. The angry fax to their VP of Customer Service at HQ got me 100 bucks off a future flight (although I can't book it on Delta.com - meaning more fees).

Lesson learned, boys and girls? If you get treated like crap, bitch right back.

Nazdravy na Praha

My sorority sister K and I have headed to Prague for a few days. I like it very much because :

• It's very walkable
  
• It's much cheaper than the Euro zone countries
  
• Food is very edible and beer is very quaffable
  
• There is a lot of culture
  
• My good friend Y from college is our personal tour guide (although I happened to catch him while he struggles with his separation and decision to divorce)
  

The flight over here on Czech Airlines was a little scary. They have Airbus 310s crossing the Atlantic. They especially look like dwarves at JFK Terminal 4 next to the South African and Emirates behemoths. There is zero leg room in coach, and the @$$hole in front of K insisted on leaning all the way back so that his head was in her crotch. The service and the food are passable.

Our hotel (The Holiday Inn Express) is right near the main train station, within striking distance of most major attractions, and has free breakfast. The radiant heating on the bathroom floor is a little weird, and of course the double room has twin beds, but it's uberclean and is perfect for sleeping.

I've noticed that there are tons of Italians here. If you knocked me out and dropped me on the Charles Bridge, I would think I were in Rome with all of the teenagers five-deep smoking, making out, and talking about life.

Shameless Plug

I have a new writing gig. Check it out!

O Canada

Headed to Vancouver Thursday night for one action-packed day of work on Friday. Returned tonight. Was denied from getting biz class tickets (wah!), but Cathay Pacific has quality service in economy, probably better than some American airlines' first class. We also got upgraded to business class on the way home since economy was full. The color scheme is a little jarring - several shades of teal and turquoise upholstery, red/purple/red and white uniforms, disco-brothel mood lighting.

Vancouver is breathtakingly beautiful. The late-night lights on the ski mountains unnerved me a little, but the Hyatt was fantastic. Despite arriving at 2am local time, I slept like a baby. Unfortunately we did not have too much time to wander around, but we will be heading back soon for a longer period of time. The city is being built up, I'm sure partially for the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the view of Coal Harbour from the Imperial Chinese restaurant was already gone. Luckily, the crab with ginger and green onion made it worthwhile.

Stupid Yalie

Do undergrads really think this masturbatory, self-serving, obnoxious self-promotion will actually get them a job?

V-Day

Tonight's menu was

Chicken Veronique (J's recipe)
Wild Rice
(slightly over)Steam Broccoli
a fantastic German Riesling (thanks Tony!)

Subtly Spicy Chili Brownies cut into hearts with Haagen Dazs Vanilla Ice Cream (courtesy of Rachael Ray)

I Got Bourbon-Faced on Sh*t St.

Despite the air travel debacle, I managed to eke out a good 36 hours in New Orleans. J didn't react too well to the mid-afternoon hurricanes at Pat O'Brien, but the muffaletta seemed to cushion my stomach enough to run around into the wee hours. Our hotel was at the end of the parade route, so float occupiers proceeded to chuck entire bags of beads at us. One guy even tried to pitch an enormous Sponge Bob Squarepants at me; I politely declined. We then proceeded to my friend's favorite gay bar at the end of Bourbon Street. Apparently the other one is scary and militant. We both agreed that the bartender was cute and that boys dancing on bars in varying styles of lingerie is icky. We agreed to disagree on the definition of the word "fag hag" and how that term would apply to me since I was accompanying him out. I was then hit on by a lesbian with her questioning male friend, who then hooked up with my friend after I rebuffed their advances. Fun stuff until I had to drag my friend back to the hotel and then yak up the muffaletta.

The next day we chowed down on some yummy Cajun food and did some more walking around before going home. The Dog "Parade" was today, although it did not seem that organized. Luckily, there were no flight dramas

Dump Delta

My trip to N'Awlins was seriously marred and almost ruined by Delta's horrendous delays and even worse customer service in ATL. Here's a summary of what happened:

• The plane is late arriving into LGA and took off an hour late.
  
• We had 20 minutes to make our connection, but we had get from Terminal A to Terminal E.
  
• When the gate agent saw us running down the hallway to make the flight with about 10 minutes to go, they shut the door on us and then yelled at us. Didn't even try to help us, didn't tell us we had been rebooked, just yelled and told us to go to customer service (all the way in Terminal T).
  
• Customer service was rude (whatever happened to Southern hospitality?), told me that I obviously don't fly very often (are you kidding?), threatened to have my boyfriend arrested for exclaiming "This is crap!", and then made us pay for the hotel, hiding behind Air Traffic Control as the reason why we were stranded.
  

The horrible customer service agent was wearing a "Keep Delta MY Delta" lanyard. At this point, US Airways can have Delta, PLEASE! I would expect top-notch service at a company's HQ. Plus, the more I look around on Flyertalk and in Google, it seems that this is an endemic problem and not a fluke.

Restaurant Week cont.

Spice Market was just as good with their prix-fixe lunch as they were for my mom's birthday dinner last year.

Osteria del Circo had a good selection. The boar stew looked better than my fish, but everything was very tasty.

Molyvos was great, but a lot of the more interesting menu choices cost extra. Isn't the whole point of Restaurant Week to have a more affordable menu?

Overall, a tasty week.

p.s. Happy Groundhog Day!

Happy Australia Day!

This is the closest holiday to the American July Fourth, although they commemorate different things. Who cares, there are free meat pies sausage rolls, and Lamington in the company pantry. Since it is a holiday, and no-carb diet rules are suspended on holidays, I'm going to dig in, maybe have a Tim-Tam while I'm at it...

Restaurant Week - Take 1

It's the most wonderful time of the year! What beats eating three-course meals at swanky restaurants for the price of an entree?

This week I managed to hit three places:

Hudson Cafeteria: very Goth university dining hall serving haute comfort food. Yum!
Estiatorio Milos: expensive but yummy Greek food; I still like Uncle George's or Mythos better
The Water Club: quite possibly the WASPiest restaurant ever. Unadventurous food, neat view of the East River and the heliport.

Next week I have a few more lunches, and I'm trying to find somewhere more exotic than TWC to surprise J...

Progress!

My manicure lasted over a week without noticeable chipping, I only broke (well, picked at and broke) two nails, and my manicurist did not yell at me for having shredded cuticles this week. Can I keep this up and have scratchworthy talons?

A Brief Reprieve from Winter

For the first time since high school, I have Martin Luther King, Jr. Day off. My aunt has been harassing me to come visit her and my uncle at their newly-renovated condo in Palm Beach (as if she needed to twist my arm), so I did. The weather was absolutely perfect - not overly sunny, breezy, 70's. I broke my Phase 1 induction by drinking some wine and having the combo platter at John G's in Lake Worth, but it was totally worth it. The pool was a bit breezy for reading my back issues of the NYT, and there were dead Portguese man-o-war all over the beach, but otherwise, it was a nice recharge.

I wish I could retire right now, preferably somewhere that has an average yearly temperature of 60-70 degrees Fahrenheit. But then I might get bored. Maybe I will shoot for retirement at 45...