Merry Christmas

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Today started slow. I got out of bed, took a shower and made a milk shake.Then I sat down at the computer and called all the members of the OLPH men's club to remind them of the meeting taking place on Wednesday evening. Then I jumped in my little white potato of a car and drove down to Napa. There I went to my nephew Edward's house for a wonderful day of opening presents and eating Croation Cuisine.Ed and Ant's new baby Mila will be Christened on New Year's Eve so I hope that I can take next Sunday off. The picture you see here is of the little tyke in a good mood. She is five months old, and quite a talker. She likes to stick her tongue out and give everyone a raspberry.Then she cuts little farts and breaks up laughing.She had us entertained for hours.The time went by quickly and before you know it, it was dark outside and people were stuffed. We had already chatted and exchanged gifts. I recieved a nice shirt from Rita and Hamish and a Nike+Ipod Sports kit from Ed, but unfortunately I have the wrong kind of Ipod! Also,I don't have a new pair of Nikes to slip into...Which, by the way are necessary items to get going with this program.So,If I buy a Nano, it would be my fourth Ipod, and I am sorry, but that is ridiculous! The other present I got was a cool book about Motor Scooters from Mario( Antonella's brother )I really appreciate his thoughtfulness. All in all it was a great day and I hope we do it all again next year.

Festive Appearances

I enjoy my work but
I have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility that a lot of people read as control. Today, a group of thirty people did not show up for one of our cooking demonstrations at 10:30 AM. We called the group to remind them and only got voicemail. Patricia Landis is in Panama taking a vacation and she is the one who made the reservation. I let her know how I handled the situation.I am also training someone to work the concierge desk even though I haven't been called on to do so. She is a nice person who is my age. Her name is Marnie and she lives locally. She is the manager/owner of a workout gym in St. Helena. So far we have been enjoying working together. I hope it continues that way. She is the best friend of Mary Lee who is someone who has been on-call as a concierge ever since I have been here.This a picture of them and a friend at our Christmas party which took place on the sixth of this month.

What have I done?

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Another silly movie showing me fumble around trying to find the right settings, etc. Generally making an idiot out of myself.

The Return of...

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After my attempt at staying in shape, I went to ACE® to buy a shower curtain because I am having my bathroom painted in the morning. I spent most of the afternoon cleaning and scrubbing the floor, then the shower tiles , the toilet, the sink, etc. etc. I don't want these guys who are doing the painting to think that I live like a pig. My apartment needs a good dusting every week though.Where does all this grey dust comes from? During the summer months the spiders make good use of it, as it becomes the choice material for making thier webs. Where am I going with this...hmmm. Well as Banteron told you, This morning he went for a run/walk with his buddy, Don. They yabber on about their lives and what new projects they are working on just to stay busy. Then it's time for a cup of mud. Today Bant had his usual roasted brew only this time it included a big dallop of Espresso Ice Cream in the cup. Yummmm ! This weeks blog is announcing the return of "Banteron from Boca Raton". My alter-ego.

Sketching what I see...

I have been practising my drawing skills here at work now that it has been kind of slow.Yesterday, I drew this teapot to learn how to do reflective objects and chrome better. It is tricky and requires observation to get all the detail. I don't always draw things the way I SEE them. I rely a lot on my imagination, or rather what I THINK something looks like. I don't know if I could make a living doing this quite yet. I could be a lot more disciplined around this practise. I am building a portfolio and plan to have another show at some point. This time I will plan it a little better.

Showing off

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I have been playing around with this video blog thing for a little while now and I want to broaden my ability to create effective content. So,here i chose to show off some of my black and white art work... only it's blue ! Yep, I got Quicktime Pro to let me colorize the video. Now if I can only figure out what I am going to upload next.

iTALK

Spec commercial for a new cell phone from Apple by award winning filmmaker Christopher DeSantis with design by Gregory DeSantis.

The Men's Group

I have been in the men's group at our Catholic Church for some time now, and I have been president since July. I have just recently added a web site here in Google to support the members. I have invited around twenty-seven regular members who have e-mail, and so far only one has signed on. I plan to announce to the group on Wednesday that this web site has been created so that we all can stay in touch with the group and each other. It is my intention that this site builds community and good will among the members. These are a great bunch of guys who have lived in and around Calistoga for some time now.

Persnicketity Persmimmons

This blog has nothing to do with persimmons other than I posted this pretty picture which was taken last year about this time .Today my sister Ellen sent me an email which was one of her famous surveys. She does this from time to time. It consisted of 50 questions that are varied and diverse. They are fun to answer and to ponder about... " What was the last fuzzy thing you touched? " or" Who was the most famous person you have stood within three meters from?" These kind of questions make for a time of reflection in an otherwise boring fall day at work. Luckily, my manager and my supervisor were not in today, which was nice. I don't feel that I have to perform like a trained monkey so much. My scooter is running great. I tell everyone that it is like an "E-ticket" ride at Disneyland. I hope that I don't repeat myself too much. I do so much of that at work. It is really hard to say anything original because people are constantly coming up with the same stupid questions that I have to pretend they are asking me for the first time. Sheesh! My good buddy, Steve Ruggenberg has decided to move on from work as a demo chef at the De Baun Theater. I have an idea why he is moving on ... but it's all good.

Digestability

I haven't made the time to blog since the Worlds of Flavor Conference over two weeks ago. The reason being what I call "Digestability". This is where the information and conversations have been coming at you at such a rate that you have no time to reflect. Forming an opinion is sometimes like having a turd form. A collection of matter conjoins to form a mass which may be symbiotic or may not be. Bringing ideas together into a cohesive package is not always the easiest thing. Too many things get out there way before they have been cross-referenced for their viability, let alone proper grammar and spelling. An idea is only as good as it's support structure and digestability.

Back from the W.O.F. O6'

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It has been a long day... I have worked straight through without taking much of a lunch break yet i feel energized from the people I met today. It is nice being of service and feeling like I am doing the right thing with my life.

This video was originally shared on blip.tv by banteron with a Public Domain license.

Almost Halloween

It has been a busy week. The Robert Parker event took place on Thursday, and Friday was the B&P graduation. Tracey, Dawn and Andrea invited me to the ceremony and dinner which was fantastic. I don't think I have had a better week as far as food tasting goes. Yesterday was the Pelligrino "Almost Famous" chefs competition. The lunch that was prepared was mostly Northern Italian- which is my favorite cuisine. Parmigiano Reggiano crustinis, gnocci, pesto, ceasar salad, linguini and desserts that were scrumptuous.On another note, Yesterday I drove my scooter back from Vallejo and froze my tookus! The bike is now over 1000 miles and next paycheck I will bring it in for it's first servicing. I enjoy riding it but the cold weather is begininng to come around.This coming week is the "Worlds of Flavor" conference at the CIA, and Spain is the hosting country. The place will be packed for sure. I will bring my digital camera to document as much as I can. After this event we enter our "quiet" period until thing pick up again after February with the Mustard Festival.

Is anyone out there?

When I starting writing this blog, I thought that more people would read it (ego).Now I realize that I barely read it even after I have written it ! That be said, I might as well recount the past week since I have last posted. Friday the 13th came this week and it was a doozy. We had a truck take out a power line in St. Helena which caused a major traffic tie-up, up and down the Valley. The CIA was without power for around two hours. People were just starting to head home when the power came back up.I try to stay cool in those situations because it is usually a time when the managers go into overdrive. I simply called PG & E and asked for an update call as soon as they knew when we might expect to get our power back. I must say, that PG&E really has got it down now to a fine Science. After two hours, I got a call from a guy who said we would have power within 5 minutes and not to tell anyone else, lest it be a false alarm ( the guy even covered his own tracks ! ) Well, he was right. The power came back and everyone who was about to leave for home, grumbled and filed back into the building. We lost 56 lunch reservations and had to close our campus store... oh well !

Spending Spree

Yesterday I went to a Mac Expo at Santa Rosa Junior College. I attended two workshops.One was with Barbara Heimann who taught Photoshop at SRJC until her retirement. The other was with Burt Munroe. He is a real Photoshop expert. He demonsrated some of his techniques, but went so fast I could hardly digest the information. I know enough about Photoshop to get by, but I know there would be tons more to learn if I was interested. I also won a book and t-shirt on Digital Photography which will go in my colletion.I also ended up buying Jim Heid's book on ILife O6'. I got it for twenty bucks when I would otherwise spend forty five. I also purchased Micromat's Techtool Pro for my Minimac which has been giving me a little trouble lately. I have a feeling that it is memory issues. Lastly, I purchased a little kit to keep my ipod scratch free. All in all, I dropped around $150.00 after I paid Roy at Revolution Moto to attach the wire to my tail light.

October Blues

Today is Tuesday, my regular day off. I am feeling sad. I found out after reading the paper today that an old friend of the family has passed on.Frances McAteer was our neighborhood "mom" if you will. This wonderful woman would open her heart and home to almost any kid she knew. We loved her because she would make us laugh and was always interested in what we were doing. She would always have a smile to greet us, as well. Most of the neighborhood knew Mrs.McAteer, not just as a State Senator's wife, but as an encouraging and generous friend. Those days when it was unusually hot in San Francisco, she would let all the kids come and swim in her pool. We would dash out of our houses and run with our towels over there to be the first one off the diving board. I think that there must have been about twenty-five kids in her pool at one time.That was a treat not to be missed. I remember one time she took me along on a special trip to Alacatraz. This was long before it opened up to the public ( and even before the Indian "take-over" ) when there was a committee forming about what should be done with the property. She taught kids respect to be respectful of one another and to be polite towards adults. One time, Governor Edmund G. Brown was visiting her husband Gene at their home. I had the good fortune to meet him, because Mrs. McAteer invited me in and introduced me to him. I felt important because of her. I will never forget this kind gesture.

My New Scooter !

Okay, Revolution Moto has provided me with the most beautiful 250cc Aprilia Scarabeo Motorscooter around. In fact, it is the only one of it's kind in Northern California.
It is a deep indigo color ( almost eggplant, if you will ) and it is 100cc's faster than my old one.I really have to thank BMW of Santa Rosa for facilitating this process.They picked the bike up in their van when it broke down. The manager called me to tell me that they would get me a new scooter and Revolution Moto came through with a brand spanking new one in less than two weeks. I love riding it around now that the sunny season is still around. Pretty soon though, I will be driving the old white potato ( my Ford Aspire ) when the rain and cold weather sets in after Halloween.

Goodbye to my old scooter

Today I did some sleuthing to find out what the status of my motorscooter is, after my engine malfunction on the Silverado Trail. It looks like I will be getting a new scooter as soon as the othre scooter is paid off and the title is transferred. I am upgrading from a 150CC to a 250CC scooter which will have a lot more umph.Hopefully, I will be able to pick my scooter up on Saturday at Revolution Moto in Santa Rosa.So far, the people who work there and at BMW Santa Rosa couldn't be nicer. I have been treated with respect and dignity.I will sing thier praises as so as I am on the seat of my new scooter heading down the road.

The Potato Story

(You can view this image upside down,too!)

A girl Potato and a boy potato had eyes for each other, and finally they married and had a little sweet potato, which they called "Yam". Of course, They wanted the best for Yam, When it was time, they told her the facts of life.

They warned her about going out and getting half-baked, so she wouldn't get accidentally smashed, and get a bad name for herself, like "hot potato" and end up with a bunch of tater tots.

Yam saidi not to worry, no spud would get her into the sack and make a rotten potato out of her. But on the other hand, she wouldn't stay home and become a couch potato either.

She would get plenty of exercise so as not to be skinny like her shoestring cousins. When she went off to Europe. Mr. and Mrs. Potato told Yam to watch out for the hard-boiled guys from Ireland, and the greasy guys from France called French Fries.

Yam said she would stay on the straight and narrow and wouldn't associate with those high class Yukon Golds.

Mr. and Mrs. Potato sent Yam to Idaho P.U. (That's Potatao University ) So that when she graduated she'd really be in the chips, but in spite of all they did for her, one day Yam came home and announced she was going to marry a TV news anchorman.

Getting Married? Mr. and Mrs. Potato were very upset. They told Yam she couldn't possibly marry a TV news anchorman , because he would just a ... "Common Tater !"

Nice shot of Sedona

I wish I was there... it is a beautiful place. Last time was in 91' I think. My online buddy Steve took this shot during a recent trip. The place supposedly has many energy centers throughout the area. Many westerns were filmed there too. I know that there are some places where only the local Indian tribes can visit because they are sacred spots where initiation rites take place. The sky and scenery there is breathtaking. Thank you Steve for sharing your site with us ! If you would like to visit his website,click here

Blaaaaaa !

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I thought that I would have my eyes checked being that I am 55 and soon to be 56. I have been using the Dr. Dean Edell magnifiers for the past couple of years as my eyesight has gotten progressively worse. The doctor says that my eyes aren't any worse than any other person my age and that I shouldn't be concerned. Well, after my exam ( which my insurance paid for... ) I sat down to be fitted for my new glasses. I gulped when I learned the price but bit the bullet and ordered them anyway. Now I can SEE where my money has gone. Now if only i could correct my financial foresight.