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Thanksgiving Wrap-up
Maybe I'm just not social enough, but I rarely have an excuse to open a Magnum. I just don't end up having enough people over for dinner that it really makes sense.
But this year I decided that Thanksgiving was going to be the perfect holiday for a giant bottle of wine. I spend Thanksgivings visiting my friend Sarah's family in Davis, and their meals are a combination of classical Thanksgiving food and Indian cuisine.
Jeff Garneau at K & L in Redwood City was extremely helpful, recommending the perfect bottle at an amazing price. It was a 2003 Kunde Sonoma Valley Merlot. And it was the perfect wine for a perfect day.
Maybe it's because there are so many great places to buy wine in San Francisco, but for some reason when I lived in S.F. I almost never went to K & L. But now that I've moved to Redwood City, I've stopped in three times in the last week.
The Redwood City store seems to have a lot more energy than the San Franciso store. Of course, maybe it's just the holidays.
I'm sort of tempted to buy a few more of the Kunde Merlot Magnums. At less than $20 it's almost difficult not to. But next year for Thanksgiving I want to bring a double magnum. I'll have to keep an eye out for something special.
A Chipotle Halloween
Chipotle has a great Halloween promotion each year: dress like something on their menu and get a free burrito. Since the only thing I like better than free food is free wine, I ended up spending part of Halloween at Chipotle with a piece of aluminum foil wrapped around my head.
Afterward, I stopped by Cost Plus World Market. For years this has been just a tremendous place to buy wine. Along with Trader Joe's, it's the first retail chain I think of for finding good, inexpensive wines. If only they'd start shipping wine as well.
I bought a few reds as part of their "biggest red wine sale ever," but what was really exciting was finding a few whites in a special half-off section.
I just tried the Vegas 3, which is not named after Las Vegas but is instead the name of the wine maker. It's 40% Verdejo, 40% Sauvignon blanc and 20% Chardonnay and comes from Spain.
For the price of $5 (half of it's normal $9.99 price tag), I thought it was great. Not everyone seems to agree with me though.
Once I open them I'll let you know how the other wines I bought turn out.
Internet Explorer Issues
Thanks to everyone who wrote in about the site not working on Internet Explorer. Unfortunately I need to boot into Windows to test against IE. And I don't like to do that too often.
Luckily a friend has looked at the problems with IE and given me some possible solutions. I'll try to get to them soon.
Like so many other web developers, I use Firefox. I'm no longer a Firefox zealot; unfortunately, Firefox 3.0 just has too many problems, especially with the extensions I use. Often times when I click "close other tabs" it will sit there for thirty seconds being unresponsive. Perhaps I use too many tabs?
So now instead of badgering everyone I know to try Firefox, I encourage them to try all the alternative browsers and pick the best one for themselves. I've yet to try Google's Chrome, but I think they have the right model making each tab a separate process. Please Google, let's get Chrome running on Linux!
Becoming Public
It seems as if I've been working on this site forever. Part of that is my own perfectionist nature. And it doesn't help that I am forever switching to "better" technologies. I still wince about how I thought I could switch from MySQL to PostgreSQL (database engines) in only two days. I want those three weeks of my life back!
So why launch now?
First, my friend Ameena bet me ten cupcakes that I couldn't have the site up by Wednesday. And I hate to lose a bet.
Second, this weekend is the Wine Bloggers Conference. I am officially unveiling the site there, but it will be up by Wednesday so I can win the cupcakes and fix any major problems beforehand.
