Friday, October 19
11:49 p.m.
When I left for work this morning, my car wasn’t where I left it. I only panicked for a second, realizing my car had been towed. Annoyed, I walked over to the rental office to find out where my car was. I had left my car alongside a curb that was partially painted yellow because there were no spots available at 9:00 p.m., when I had returned from the vineyard crew dinner. All of this made me decide to purchase a covered parking spot to avoid a parking shut out.
I had to get picked up by a taxi and brought out to the tow yard. That cost me $40 with tip. Then, I had to pay $165 for the tow. I tried to breathe and manage the stress of this unnecessary expenditure. It would have been easy to be angry and upset all day. I had a good cry at the rental office and quickly got over it. What’s done was done.
I met with two of my co-workers at the house of our director of consumer sales. We worked through our 2008 event schedule and discussed aspects of our wine club. We took a break around 2:00 and went for a late lunch at a new spot in the small wine country town of Carlton called Cielo Blu. It was kind of disappointing. Perhaps this was because of our late arrival. But the floors were dirty with pieces of garlic and other food spillage. My salad was very average. The service was slow and not very helpful. The young woman’s exposed belly was very distracting. And the severe classical music was strangely off with the theme and mood of the open pizza place. This place could benefit from some upgrades and improvements.
After lunch, we went back to finish up our meeting. About an hour later some of the tasting room staff came over and we drank a bottle of Argyle bubbly before we all headed out to an industry colleague’s home in Newberg for a winery neighbors’ party. It was a fun evening of networking and enjoying good wine. A couple of highlights included a rich Lirac from the Rhône Valley and a decade old triage bubbly from Oregon.
