Hey, all.

I know I’ve been inexcusably incommunicado for a while. You know how life is.

But I thought I’d bring you all a ray of sunshine, a breath of fresh air amidst our daily drudgery.

The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco

Join up and show your support because I can’t think of a more apropos way to "honor" our 43rd President.

This must get on November’s ballot.

UPDATE: MySpace disabled the link. I’ve switched it back, so we’ll see if the assclowns fuck with it again. If they do, here’s the link unembedded. Just copy and paste.  presidentialmemorial.org

Enjoy.

Happy midnight, all.

Brandy and I are in the midst of our final preparations and packing arguments. In less than eight hours, we'll be on a plane headed for... well, a layover in Chicago first. But after that, we'll be headed for Amsterdam to begin our five-week, whirlwind tour of Europe.

Despite our historically bad timing (the currency exchange rate), we're really looking forward to this trip. There will be lots of wine (and beer and liquor and fatty foods), so I'll try to keep a running blog of the trip, complete with pictures if I can find fast enough Internet access.

In the interest of consolidating my posts, I'll just be posting on my Blogger blog.

So keep on checking that site, and maybe you'll be able to bear witness to the Wine Tour of Europe...

Hat tip to Aaron Gleeman and Deadspin for this.

This prank was just too damn good to not post. For the blow-by-blow, click on the Deadspin link above.

Well, that's done. Took my WSET exam yesterday morning. Think I did OK. Depending on what they were looking for in the short answer, I either did extremely well or extremely poorly. Either way, I learned a shitload, and if I have to retake the test, I have to retake the test. And to think, Level Four (the Diploma level) is exponentially more difficult.

Now that I've finished this round of studying, I'll be kicking into high gear for trip planning. Two weeks left...

In other news, you know how I said I'd have lots of pictures from my reunion. Umm... I didn't take any. I have some nice shots of my friends' kids from the day before, but none from the actual reunion. Ooops.

The reunion itself was very pleasant. It really was nice catching up with everybody. I might post more about it later, but honestly, there isn't that much to tell. We got together, hung out, drank some, talked, and basically just enjoyed what turned out to be some fabulous Labor Day weather.

And, of course, it was great to hang out with my parents. As I've grown older and older (and older and older... ha ha, yes, you're very funny), I've come to realize how cool my parents are. And to appreciate how nice it is to have home-cooked Korean food on a regular basis.

Hey, Jooms, Korean BBQ next week, right?

Not yet. But soon.

You see, in preparation for my 15th high school reunion, the magic of which will be going down on Sunday, I just bought a new digital camera. This one, actually.

I haven't used it yet, but I like the fact that it is only slightly larger than my business card holder and slightly smaller than my wallet. Now that's a small camera.

The folks at CNET really liked it. The super-geeky, super-picky folks at dpreview.com (That stands for digital photography review. Perverts.) hadn't reviewed it, but gave high marks to the similar models.

You know what that means?

It means the odds are good I'll be changing my default pic, most likely to some picture involving beer, mojitos, daiquiris, or some combination of the three. Hopefully, on the way in.

But I'm not making any promises about that.

Everyone have a lovely Labor Day weekend.

Good morning, lovely readers.

I apologize for the extra-long hiatus from blogging (I know you require my incoherent ramblings to function on a day-to-day basis). I was sick, then Brandy was sick, then Brandy ended up having bronchitis, and you know that no one feels like sitting at a computer typing when they're sick / nursing someone back to health.

Since the end of our long, slow recovery, we've gone into full-on trip-planning mode. We've been checking train schedules, contacting potential hotels (might have waited a bit long to do some of those), and generally plotting out the more minute details of our trip.

I've also gotten confirmation from several wineries / domaines / châteaux / weingüter about tastings and/or tours. So I've got that going for me.

In addition to trip-planning, I've been studying for the WSET Level Three exam and investigating the steps necessary to start a little side project. I'll know if I passed the WSET in mid-September. Hopefully, I'll have the project started up before October (actually, it's sort of necessary that I have it at least started before then). Of course, I'll let you know more when I've got it for you.

In other news, I'll be home this weekend attending my unofficial 15th high school reunion. I'm actually looking forward to it, if only for curiosity's sake.

Oh, and I'll probably also go to this. Tractor pull, anyone?

Sorry I haven't updated the blog in a while. I've been sick. Honestly, that's no excuse since I've been able to go to work and all, but it seems that when I'm sick and at home, I don't feel creative in the least, little bit.

But Decanter Magazine's little email news flash turned me on to this site (eat-american.com) that highlights rare and nearly-extinct American agricultural products from Charbono wine grapes (naturally, what piqued my interest) to Tupelo honey to geoduck clams. Anyone who enjoys heirloom tomatoes should be all over this project, as Richard Villadóniga is basically pointing out heirloom varieties of other agricultural products that have been pushed out of the marketplace by Big Agriculture (or agribusiness, if you prefer).

In any case, it's a compelling project that deserves your support.

When I feel a little better, I'll tell you about the winery lunch at Marimar Torres, the 8th Annual Insider's Exploration of Dry Creek Valley, and tasting the wines of La Spinetta.

On Tuesday, Brandy took the day off, and we went to lunch at Zuni. We split a Caesar salad, a burger with blue cheese and heirloom tomatoes and an order of shoestring fries. Wonderfully tasty, as always (I do, however, miss the truffle burger). We decided that that is the perfect amount of food for lunch. Especially since...

That night, we went to Morton's for dinner (yes, that's two restaurants in one day). Anyway, if you go to their website, you can find an offer for "Steak and Seafood for two" for $99. Being the frugal pair that we are (ha ha), that was of course why we were there. And to up our cheapskate quotient even more, we brought our own wine. Granted, we brought a bottle that they didn't have on the list: the 2002 Joseph Phelps Insignia (I'm not sure if everyone will be able to view that page, so if not, I'll just tell you that the Insignia earned a score of 96 points and was Spectator's No. 1 wine of 2005).

Needless to say, we had a fabulous time.

I won't go into the intricacies of the special offer since it's spelled out for you on the website, but we ended up with quite a bit of food to take home (although we did finish the wine), and we thoroughly enjoyed our experience. We'll probably go back before the special ends on September 30.

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In other news, Brandy and I went to see Buffalo Tom and Juliana Hatfield at the Great American Music Hall last night. Great show.

Juliana played solo, which was cool for me since I had only seen her playing with the JH3 and her backing band previously. I'm still quite bitter about being out of town when she came through here on the Blake Babies reunion tour a couple years ago.

Buffalo Tom played their typically high-energy set, and it was cool to hear them rock out a bunch of classics along with stuff from their new album, which sounds great.

If you're reading this today (July 26th) and you live around LA, you can catch them tonight at the El Rey. I would highly recommend it.

Prior to the show, we grabbed a bite at Old Chelsea Fish and Chips, probably as a subconscious way to contrast the previous day's upscale dining. For the uninitiated, OC provides the fish and chips for Edinburgh Castle, one of the dingiest, divy-est, most wonderful bars in San Francisco. Located around the corner from the Castle, OC shares the area's decorating scheme: down market, waaaayy down market. Three tables, a small counter, and a heavy-duty fryer that takes up the entire back wall of the kitchen.

Now, looking at some of the Yelp reviews, I have to question the sanity of the some of the reviewers. Last I checked, fish and chips was not the stuff of gourmet legend. We're not talking about some meticulously prepared, delicate fillet of sole. It's street food, bar food, drunk food. It's supposed to be greasy.

And it is wonderfully so.

Plus, I gotta support Korean businesses, or they'll revoke my Asian card. I married a white girl; I'm already skating on thin ice.

Well, this makes it four posts in three days. Weird.

Anyway, if you find yourself in the Mission in the near future, you should try looking for these little stencils on the sidewalk. [Yes, the picture is the link to the post on SF MetroBlogs.]

I must say that I loved these books as a child - the classic Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, the Middle-Earth-themed knock-offs, all of them. Very engrossing.

Actually, I'll bet (little) kids would read more if you did this sort of thing online (where you could just click your choice as opposed to the tedious act of flipping around in a book). I call dibs on that idea. I'll call it Click-Your-Own-Adventure™. Unless, of course, that's too close to the original name for my intellectual property attorney, in which case I'll call it... I don't know, Click2Pick™ or something less dorky.