Bottle of White, bottle of Red...perhaps a bottle of Rose' instead...

Had an absolutely outstanding date day with my wife.  There were a few moments early on when I had an opportunity to get all butt-hurt and pouty, but I let it pass.  The science camp that the girls are going to was having some kind of 'big event' from 10:30-12:00, and all the parents were invited to attend.  Well, that was right in the middle of the day, and exactly the time period I was hoping to be at the gun range with my wife, prior to going to lunch and doing some wine tasting.

I wasn't pleased.  We had planned on shooting and wine tasting for several weeks, as soon as we realized that the girls camp was going to coincide with one of my Friday's off.  The girls came home Wednesday with the news of the 'Big Event.  Poop-cycle.  Well...we packed all the .22's anyway on the chance that things would wrap up quickly and we could still make it to the range.

Things ended up running almost 2 hours.  It was not all that exciting...we were given an opportunity to participate in some activities with the girls...a scavenger hunt, an experiment about lung capacity and another experiment comparing warm and cold gummy worms to muscles, in regards to why it's better to warm up before stretching.  While not exciting, it was a good excuse to spend time with my daughters, and even though it cost me getting to go to the gun range, I am glad I went.

I'm also proud of myself...once upon a time, any kind of schedule shift/change like this would have ruined my day.  I do not adjust easily to change...but...this was okay.  Kid time is better than range time(although I was looking greatly forward to showing my wife the plinking range.  I must be growing up.

For lunch, my wife and I went to Taverna Tagaris, the restaurant at Tagaris Winery.   Very nice and intimate...a pleasant lunch stop.  We split an appetizer plate, than I had a lamb and sausage burger, while my wife had a chicken and artichoke paninni, with a cup of Cherry Gazpacho.  The Cherry Gazpacho was very, very interesting.  I can truthfully say I have never had anything else like it. I may have to pursue finding a similar recipe at some point.

Following lunch we proceeded to the wine counter at the Tagaris tasting room, where we spent an amazing hour talking about nose, and legs, and finish, and other things that sound funny to me.  Given a choice, I will choose a good beer over wine any day of the week...but, as my wife and I edge closer to 'mature middle age' there are some social situations where wine is considered more appropriate than beer.  Plus, the more my palate adjusts to wine, it is possible that I wold choose a good wine over a poor beer.

Winery's are like potato chips...you can't stop at just one.  Having previously done tastings at the other two winery's near Tagaris, and having plenty of time to spare(nope, never considered going to the range after our first wine tasting...'wouldn't be prudent at this juncture'), we headed out to Benton City, and stopped in at Terra Blanca Winery. 

At Terra Blanca, we finally caved to some high pressure salesman ship(no, really, Sara just showed us a little pamphlet) and joined our first 'Wine Club'.  I think what sealed the deal for us is that wine club members get unlimited free tastings! Hooray for us!  I am fairly certain that we tried somewhere between 12 and 14 different wines at Terra Blanca.  For me, near the end, they were all blurring together...my pallet is not all that sophisticated to start with...if someone held a gun to my head and asked me to pick a merlot out from a syrah using just my mouth...well, it's been a fun life.

Our route back home took us by several more wineries, but we passed them by, stopping instead at the Black Heron Distillery.  Hey, when the pallet is tired of wine, nothing like some liquor to shock it out of its stupor.  We didn't taste much there...primarily I wanted my wife to try their Lemoncello, and I wanted to try out their Pepper Vodka they just released.  The Lemoncello was a hit, and we ended up picking up a bottle.  The Pepper Vodka...not so much.  I LOVE their basic vodka(Ink), but was not overly enamored of Brushfire, which is what they call their Pepper Vodka.  Jessie didn't try it....she could smell enough pepper coming out of my glass to convince her she didn't need it.  The proprietor said it's pretty good in a bloody mary, and I believe him...hmmm....50-50 Bakon and Pepper Vodka in a Bloody Mary?  Sign me up.

 

We really didn't need this much more alcohol in the house...but hey, much like ammo, it's not going to go bad...and it's unlikely the price is going to get cheaper.

Finally, for those who have stuck around to the end, your reward is some Billy Joel...maybe you recognized the post title from the beginning of 'Scenes From an Italian Restaurant.'

Keeping the kids happy.

The Casey Anthony trial having brought all kinds of bad, horrible things happening to kids new to the front of my mind, I decided that I wanted to do something good for my kids.  Usually dad doing something good for the kids means making them a tasty breakfast.  With them having to be out the door in a timely manner for science camp today, I wasn't going to have the opportunity to do French Toast, or chocolate chip pancakes...so I decided to whip up some banana nut bread instead. 

A few weeks ago, I suffered a momentary lapse of attention to detail, and picked up a 5 pound bag of whole wheat flour, with an expiration date of October on it.  Wanting to get it used, I searched the internet for a banana bread recipe using whole wheat flour.

I settled on this one...it also had the added somewhat healthy benefit of using honey instead of processed sugar for it's sweetening.  For bananas, I grabbed two out of the freezer about two hours before needing them, and let them thaw, then mashed them with a fork.  Yes...out of the freezer.  SWMBO has started sticking banana's in the freezer a day or two before they are too far gone...she then uses them for her protein shakes, and I have found they work good for banana bread. 

The nuts where the biggest pain in the butt of the recipe.  Wanting to work with what was on hand already, instead of buying some already chopped nuts, I sat down about a 3rd of a pound of hazelnuts we had bought a few weeks ago at the farmers market and commenced a shelling.  After shelling, that 3rd of a pound was barely enough to make it worth while to add to the bread...but I helped out a bit my maybe letting a piece of shell or two slip into the batter(at least I think I bit into a piece of shell this morning). 

The bread came out really good.  Instead of making one big loaf, I used some of the disposable mini-loaf pans.  I have found in the past that when I try making a full sized loaf of banana, or zucchini, or spice bread, it never wants to finish cooking in the middle.  Using these mini-pans solved the problem...I just had to watch them closer while cooking.

The end result was worth it this morning...both girls asked for a 3rd piece, which I was happy to be able to provide them. 

Dad for the win...

No, No, No...that's not the correct answer!

This is why I shouldn't hop on the internet first thing in the morning to find out what is going on in the world:

'Caylee's Law' petition drive: Do missing child laws need to change?

So...two and a half years ago in Florida, a bad, bad horrible thing happened to a two-year old girl in Florida.  

One of the few FACTS that were learned during the course of the investigation into the horrible thing that happened to this little girl was that her mom did not report to ANYONE that she missing for approximately a month.  If you feel that this points to some wrong-doing on the moms part, I agree with you.  But the Prosecution wasn't able to prove that wrong doing, and so the only thing the mom was found guilty of was lying to the police several times.  Since she has already spent over two years in jail waiting for her trial, she is basically going to be let go with time served.

Some people are not happy with this, and in addition to creating facebook groups that might as well be named 'Let's form a lynch mob and go grab Casey Anthony'  are now writing petitions to make it EVEN MORE illegal to do bad, bad horrible things to your children, and then hide it from the police. 

Look...a parent that LOVES their child is going to report it to the authorities as soon as they realize that child is missing.  A law requiring you to notify the police within 24 hours of noticing your child missing is unlikely to sway someone from doing a horrible thing to their child...'Hmmm....I wonder if I have time to feed Johnny into the wood-chipper and still call the police within 24-hours?'  

The other part of the proposed law is that parents will have to report the death of a child within 1 hour of discovery.  I just don't see how this one is going to be enforceable since I thought only medical personnel could determine legally if someone is dead or alive. 

And we've made it...

I'm really finding myself enjoying the 8-9's schedule we work at Hanford...I'm getting used to having every-other Friday off.  This week, for example, Monday was a Holiday, and Friday was scheduled to be off, so we got have a three day weekend, work three days, and then have another three day weekend. 

That's A-okay.  Especially because tomorrow is going to be something of a date day with my wife.  The girls are going to Science Camp at the Washington State University Branch Campus in town from 8-4:30, so SWMBO and I are planning on running to the Rattlesnake Mountain Shooting Facility so she can see how much fun the 10/22 is with the Red Dot scope, and then we will hit one or two of the local wineries for some tasting, and some lunch(and yes, we will stick to it in that order). 

It's not that I don't care...

Late Tuesday afternoon, there seemed to be a great outpouring of emotion on the internet machine.  One could not click around much(or at all on Facebook) without running into someone expressing their opinion that a great legal injustice had occurred in Florida, where a jury of her peers found that Casey Anthony was NOT guilty of the premeditated murder of her daughter, cute little two-year old Caylee.

Most of my memories of the story come from the time I spent in New York.  The cafeteria there had a TV which permanently tuned to Headline News, and Nancy Grace seemed to be talking about ‘poor little Caylee Anthony and her murdering harlot of a mother’ every night. 

I don’t like Nancy Grace…she makes my teeth grate…but, it seemed like she had a point in regards to Casey Anthony’s guilt.  The facts that were public did not paint a pretty picture.  Your two year old girl was missing for a month and you didn’t bother to tell anyone, and instead used that time period to party and participate in Hard Body contests at night clubs? 

There can be little doubt that something terribly wrong had taken place, and shame on the prosecutors in Florida for failing to get a murder conviction.   Much like in the OJ case that I have heard this compared to, the failure her is not The Legal System, but poorly executed prosecution. 

If that Jury had come out Tuesday afternoon and said ‘Guilty with the Death Penalty’ recommended, no one would be happier than me.  I YEARN to see the guilty punished.  I find it an affront that Nidal Malik Hasan(who is ACCUSED of the Fort Hood Shootings) and Jared Lee Loughner(ACCUSED of killing a 9-year old girl and Federal Judge among others in the Tucson shooting), are not already in the ground.  There are few people in the world who could say they were bigger fans of quick, painful justice than I am.

It’s not the way our legal system is designed to work though.  You are innocent until proven guilty by a Jury, not Nancy Grace.  It is considered more just to let a guilty person free, than send an innocent person to jail(or the electric chair).  As much as it frustrates me right now, I know that if I ever am arrested and charged with a crime, there is not another Justice System I would want to find myself in than ours. 

Bah.  Horrible things happen every day, and Nancy Grace doesn’t get worked up over it all. 

Back in 2005 in Bremerton, a young lady let her 18-month old daughter starve/freeze to death, because she just didn’t care.  She stopped feeding the baby, and then because the pile of diapers smelled so bad in the room she left the window open until the baby got a fever and died.  She then hid the baby in a trash bag in a closet under the stairs until her husband came back from being underway and happened to ask what happened to his daughter.

At the end of May, in Erie, Pa, the body of an emaciated 14-month old baby was found in an abandoned suit case.  The mother of the baby came forward and admitted that yeah, she had let the baby die.

So, not to defend the actions of Casey Anthony, but even if the picture that the prosecution painted is 100% the truth, that she taped her daughters mouth shut and then used chloroform to kill her, it’s almost a mercy killing compared to what some other parents you have never heard of have done to their kids.

It doesn’t mean they shouldn’t all burn though…

Day late and a dollar short...

Since it feels like I'm always the last one to find out about the really cool stuff, I'm sure everyone has already seen this already, but gosh darn it, I just got it in my e-mail today, and it almost made me fall out of my seat, so I'm going to have to share it with you folks.

MISS AIRPORT 2011 Calendar

back in the real world...

I had a very fine weekend, and to keep it fine I went out of my way to avoid reading stories like this:

On Independence Day, Minnesota residents united in frustration over shutdown

I really hope that after the next election I remember to look at how things went...if people are really as frustrated as they all say they are in this article, that there isn't a single incumbent politician who should get reelected in Minnesota.

But...they will for two reasons: 

Number one is short attention spans...the voters will see something shiney between now and then and forget about this weekend.

Number two is the simple reason that this is what the voters want!  Maybe not as a whole electorate, but the ones that voted for Republicans WANT the Republicans to dig in over the budget and keeping taxes low, and the ones that voted for a Democratic Governor WANT him to keep providing Nanny State type support.

Congratulations on getting what you want.