I Want to Cry

After spending AN HOUR writing this journal entry, the laptop froze and I had to exit and now I am starting all over again. It's nearly 12:30 a.m. and all I want to do is sleep, but it's now or never...so here we go once more....

As I started to say before I was so rudely interrupted, wifi is not all its cracked up to be. We are at a lovely B&B in the Napa Valley, which comes with wifi, but it doesn't seem to be very fast, it won't download things I want it to download and wouldn't upload a photo to Flickr.

Also, I forgot that the last time I used this laptop, Movie Maker wouldn't work and I intended to figure out why, but I didn't and I can't get it to work now either, so you're stuck with Cousins Day Christmas until I get home again.

The morning started early for me, 5 a.m. (after not getting to sleep until after 1 a.m.). It wasn't Nicki or the puppies who woke me up--I just woke up. So I got up and cleaned some for Ashley. I got all packed for our trip and fed the puppies twice, I was pleased to see that Tosca finally shows a weight gain--a whopping 4-1/2 to 5 oz (depending on where she stands on the scale), but Poochini is still at 3-1/2 to 4 oz, so I'm glad that Ashley will be with them for a couple of days so she can assess if there is a problem with him.

We left home around 10 and drove to the Napa Valley, where we met Char & Mike and Rich & Pat at Goosecross winery.

They were several "tastes" ahead of us and we had some catching up to do. The wine was good and each of the 3 couples bought some to take home, so I'm sure they were glad for our business on this rainy Sunday.

When we left there, we headed to Mustards Grill, which turned out to be the perfect place for a leisurely lunch (which we had already decided would also be "dinner" as well).

The sign in front boasts "almost a million pork chops served," so I felt compelled to order their "Famous Mongolian Pork Chop" which lived up to its promise. It arrived juicy and succulent (first time I'd been served pork medium rare, with real pink in the center) which came with their homemade mustard sauce and some pretty delicious sweet and sour cabbage. Mike and Rich also ordered the pork chops and seemed to enjoy them as much as I did. (Walt was eating lamb shanks, char her seafood tostada, and Pat a vegetarian dish.)

The restaurant also boasts a pretty extensive wine list.

After lunch we made our way to the Ambrose Bierce House in St. Helena. Rich and Pat are in a room downstairs and the rest of us are in adjoining bedrooms upstairs, adjacent to the sitting room and the dining room, where breakfast will be served tomorrow. I plan to sleep in the couch in the sitting room and hope that I wake up before our host, Carlos, comes to fix breakfast.

There is a great guestbook here, though, and I must share an entry with you. One guest complained about difficulty getting upstairs for breakfast and conditions of the dining room. There was an "Innkeeper response" highlighted with blue marker which read

For those of you who are staying in the downstairs room, how hard is it--really--to get to the dining room? One staircase. Is that difficult? What a shmuck.

Another guest complained that the meal was "not gourmet" and the "innkeeper response" was, What did he want? Caviar on his eggs benedict? What a shmuck.

I can only assume that the "innkeeper" wasn't anticipating return business from people!

Char had brought a game called the Mexican Train game, which is a game played with dominos, little train engines that look more like jujubes, and a noise maker that has to be experienced to be understood (when I get the video done, you'll know what I mean)

Lemme tell you, this ain't no bullet train! It's more like the little engine that could. Except the hour we took out to indulge in the free wine and cheese cocktail hour and discuss everything from the Loma Prieta earthquake to the battle of Gettysburg and the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as critiquing Bill Richardson's beard, we played that damn game for FOUR hours. In the end Pat won, I came in second by only a few points (obviously beginners luck), and everyone else was behind us.

We don't know what is on the schedule for tomorrow. We are meeting other friends for lunch at 1 and there are a couple of wineries people want to visit, so I don't know if we are going to winers both before and after lunch or what.

But that's the nice thing about an impromptu getaway like this--it doesn't matter, does it!

Now let's see if this will post or if I have to have a tantrum!