Chris (brother-in-law as opposed to the zillion other Chris's I know) has started up a new web site mainly for the Tuscaloosa area, but plans on expanding it one city at a time.  The general premise is to find cities where the larger restaurant guides missed (like Tuscaloosa, AL) and put up a guide for that city.  I think he's done an excellend job so far.  Check it out and click on an advertisement as that is the way he plans on getting revenue from the site.

http://www.eattuscaloosa.com/

Yesterday we went to the Magic City Art Connection.  This is our second time going to the art show, but our first time to attend the Corks & Chefs Food & Wine Tasting Event.  I must say it was a pretty good display of what some of the local catering companies can crank out.  Our friends Amy & Nick joined us along with brother-in-law Chris.  And you know what that means...  while we were out enjoying ourselves, Wilson was at home terrorizing Grandma.  Poor grandma.

This is so sad...  apparently someone in our neighborhood had their box fall off the post (or had it ripped off).  Not being an easy thing to replace, they took the mailbox and lashed it to the pole using duct tape.  Funny how it ends up looking like a makeshift cross.

On our last trip out to San Francisco (New Year's), we were introduced to a new phenomenon...  The "enjoy!" pack.  Delta is apparently trying to make its passengers happy:

The one thing to note is the back of the shortbread:

Yes, you read it right, 31% butter!!!  How can they possibly expect to have any more customers when we're all in the hospital?

This is George:

This is up close on what's in the bottom right of this picture:

So as you see, George made a new friend.

Where are Bud and Emilia do you think?

Laura and I were in PetSmart buying some more fish and happened by the cat pens.  There was a single cat sitting there by herself.  Neither one of us could get her out of our minds, so the next day we talked and Laura called the Shelby County Humane Society about her.

That night we went down and adopted her.  She is a 15 year old cat whose owner had to give her up because she was going into a nursing home.  She is a bit crazy (what cat isn't), but very sweet.  And she always seems to be hungry.  Not sure what that's about, but we might should purchase stock in Fancy Feast.

Here she is in all her glory:

Yes, you saw it right....  here is a closeup:

I'm not quite sure why she'll walk around with her tongue sticking out, but it is very amusing to me. 

She has her own heating pad as a bed on our couch.  This is pretty much what she does when she isn't begging for more food:

Laura and I went up to Nashville to see Caitlin skate in a competition up there.  We woke up the next morning to this view:

Caitlin and Michelle did quite well in their competition.  Here are a few pics of them in action:

So how redneck do you have to be to seal two of the doors in your car shut with Great Stuff?

On our last evening in Healdsburg we decided to grill out.  Everyone made fun of my hamburgers, even my lovely wife.  I made modest sized hamburgers and apparently we had gotten the jumbo sized buns.  Mike, being the oh-so-funny guy that he is thought it'd be fun to see how many hamburger patties he could fit on the bun:

After dinner, we all waited the obligatory 30 minutes before swimming and got in the hot tub:

And what I think is a very fitting picture to end the New Year's sequence...  a sunset from Pier 39:

What is this fruit that Rob's neighbor is lining up so nicely in the gutter for the trash people to pick up?  They're about the size of grapefruit but don't quite look like them:

The one that got away:

So now the tragic part of our journey...  on the day that Rob "had" to go back to work, we got a call from him explaining why he couldn't come back out and see us...  apparently there was a police chase that lasted several hours.  It ended right in front of Rob's house.  On Rob's vehicle:

And the truly tragic part of it...  Rob just purchased a brand new bed and was bringing it home for his fancy place.  The cardboard  box in the pictures above?  His bed.  With the wheel of his truck on top of it.

They even called out the CSI to investigate:

The remainder of our trip we spent up in Healdsburg, CA.  We stayed at a rental house more or less on top of a vineyard:

I would highly recommend Healdsburg Country Gardens to anyone that was planning on going up to wine country.  Speaking of wine, over the next few days we visited quite a few wineries, quite a few of them we hadn't even heard of before.

We visited Mill Creek, Dry Creek Vineyards, Clos Du Bois, Seghesio, Jordan, Silver Oak, Geyser Peak, Ridge, Simi, and Mondavi.

Here are some pictures from Mill Creek:

Here are a few pictures from our favorite, Jordan:

So I'll tell you about one day in the middle of the week just because it doesn't fit in with the rest of our trip...  Rob had to go to work for a day and we decided to head back into SF since we didn't get to do much while we were there.  We took the boat over to Alcatraz.  I remember it being this huge monstrosity that took forever to walk around.  Of course, the last time I was there I was about 8.  So as it turns out, it's a dinky little island with only a few buildings and a 150 yard walk up hill.  Woo. 

I did get to take what is probably my favorite picture of the trip though...  Believe it or not, this was taken on the walk back down to our ferry boat:

It was an enjoyable day but it felt like we didn't do a whole lot.

So I'm finally getting around to writing about our New Year's trip and it's officially late April.  Yeah, I'm a slacker.

Dec 30.

We flew into good old Sacramento.  Never have figured out why the airport abbreviation is SMF.  We had good old Rob with us since he was travelling back with us.  Oh, and by us I mean Laura, Becca, and myself. 

Rob's place was pretty nice.  A lot more feminine than I was expecting, but it was really cool that it had a lot of older chandeliers, clocks, and things.  Check out his manly wallpaper:

But on the bright side, it does not represent how cool the rest of his house is:

Which brings us to incident #1...  We were staying in Rob's dining room on an air mattress for the first night in town.  Funny thing is we woke up with the thing mostly deflated.  So we got the little pump and got it back up to normal mattress height.  Soon after I got back onto it, Laura said she felt a draft under the covers.  After poking around for a few moments, we found the source of the draft:

And then there was the next day.  Dec 31.  We needed to go by Target for a few various things.  While looking for a place to stay, we were told that portions of the area had been flooded.  We didn't realize that all the water in California had accumulated in the Target parking lot:

We should have realized this was a sign of things to come. 

We did have brunch at the famous Tower:

We attempted at this point to head to San Francisco (the original point of the trip).  We started seeing bad signs of things ahead:

So then we found the place where the water was across the road instead of covering the farmland beside it.  The police had all of I-80 closed and detoured onto very small streets.  We allocated about 5 hours to take the normally 2 hour drive and to get showers.  4 hours into the voyage, this was our view:

So as you can imagine, everything was just ducky.  Yeah.  So anyway, after taking several detours and wading past several "flooded" signs in the trusty Robmobile, we made it to the hotel with less than an hour before the boat was set to leave.  And of course we had been told on numerous occasions that the boat would leave us if we were late.  55 minutes until the ship leaves.  Check-in, 15 minutes.  Take the fastest showers ever 10 minutes.  Get dressed in formal attire, 10 minutes.  Cab ride across downtown SF to the boat, 15 minutes.  That's right, we show up with about 5 minutes to spare.  A lot of people did a lot of things to help us all make it (lady let us check into the hotel before her, Rob went down and found a cab).

The boat is normally used for other things like parties and weddings.  This night it had a couple levels of seating for dinner, a dance floor, and an open bar.  They had absolutely wonder food.  I can't believe squash bisque is actually very tasty.  We had a wild group behind us, but we still enjoyed ourselves.

Here is our entire crew for the evening:

Anyway, about midnight, the ship lined up near the bay bridge and we got to see the Nea Year's firework display.

And once the fireworks were over, we went back down to the dance floor and the DJ played "Sweet Home Alabama" for us since apparently we traveled the farthest just to be there.

Good times, good times.