Today is a good day to sleep and putz around on my puter. Yesterday, I drove to Mont La Salle to take a bunch of pictures of the grounds there. I was pleased with the result, so I made a slideshow out of all the pictures. Last night I stayed up and talked to my online friend Andrew. It proved to be a rather uneventful day except for the fact that I didn't actually get to bed until around 3 a.m. Oh dash it, it's my vacation I can stay up late when I want to!

Vacation time

Today is the first day of my vacation. I haven't planned on going anywhere except to my neice Terry's house for Thanksgiving. I will sleep in, work on art projects, perhaps shoot a video dvd, or take a bunch of pictures. I want to meet new people and make new friends with interesting people who can show me how to use my mac better.I guess that's about it for now.

Charity Event

I find a lot of the volunteers from St. Helena who arrive for charity events here will behave in a particularly annoying and self-serving way. Everytime I try to extend myself to assist them, they walk all over me and make thier arrogant demands. I feel that many people who visit the Culinary Institute take on an attitude of entitlement, especially the locals who think that because they approved the insitute as a commerical entity, that they have the right to barge right in and do whatever they want in this space. This is a sacred space to me. It is all about building community, and food is the vehicle.Charity must begin at home. This is a home for the community of Napa.Respect, Tolerance and Appreciation are the watchwords.

Nights getting darker earlier

Now that standard time is upon us, the sun goes down around 4:45 PM in the evening. Winter is approaching very quickly. The basil in our herb garden is flowering or going to see like the fennel. Tour groups still come in to take advantage of the slow season, especially to take a peek at our teaching kitchen. I feel that there is change in the air, but I really can't put my finger on it. I'll keep you posted when I learn more.

Having fun uploading Pics

Today I have been taking lots of pictures of the neighborhood kids, vineyards and liquid amber trees that all look colorful and beautiful. I signed up awhild ago for a Flickr account and have enjoyed uploading my images to both this site and the Flickr site. If you would like to see more of my images, just go to :

Flickr

You can start a free account and be a photojournalist either here at Blogger.com or at Flickr. I am still trying to find a sight where I can easily upload Quicktime videos too. I just bought a gigbyte chip for my fujifinepix 3300 camera because I can take Quicktime movies very easily and the modify them using Quicktime Pro before I upload them to my mac site.
I want to be able to do all of this easy and effortlessly, and to be able to have others access my sites real easily.

The Big Push

Now that the World's of Flavor has passed, halloween is over and the winter season is approaching I have a little more time to blog. When I say this, I don't mean that I have a lot of time on my hands and that I am sitting around staring into space. This past week I have trained three new people who will be working at the concierge desk. They are all young women who are very pretty to look at... and my hope is that they will all perform well. I appreciate those that take the initiative to greet guests as they come through the door. On another note, I have sent Kitty a letter expressing my feelings for her. I don't plan on returning to the Friday night meeting any time soon. I think that I will be attending the Wednesday night meeting in St. Helena. Every time I attend the Friday night meeting, I am reminded of the love I lost.