Vanessa from Workaholic Mama seems to think my wine habit is actually healthy. Or she's at least an enabler, because this morning she posted a piece I wrote on finding a decent $5 red wine. Enjoy the reviews, and please note that if you stage an intervention for me I will demand video rights and all broadcast/syndication revenue.
Showing posts with label Wine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wine. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
More Data Needed
It appears that the more wine I drink the night before the less likely I am to pack a lunch for my husband in the morning. It could be me just making a correlation, but perhaps more study is needed to determine if this is actually a causal effect.
Friday, April 24, 2009
Monday, September 22, 2008
What I would name my pregnancy book, if I were to write one:
The Bitter Waddler
What to Expect When You're Wearing Maternity Underwear
Your New All-Time High Weight: A Month by Month Journey
Maternity Pants: Satan's Little "Congratulations!"
Girlfriends Guide to Heartburn
Missing You Desperately: 9 Months Without Wine
The Cankle Diaries
For All This, This Kid Better Grow Up to be President.
Eyes on Your Epidural
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Back to proper blogging
OK, so I recently admitted to myself that the cord that connects my camera to the computer will not just turn up. It has most tragically gone to the land of the lost - where I hope it enjoys a lovely life with its new friends: dark pearl earring I miss terribly, and every hair band I've ever purchased.
In any case, I bought another one, but it was the wrong one. And then I finally bought a correct replacement. Soooo, really all of that basically amounts to my sad apology on why I haven't blogged much lately. Without pictures, it's not as fun.
So, with that, let me catch you up on what we've been up to this summer...
Mmm. Nothing better than summer festival food in Chicago.
We goofed off in Millennium Park with Mike.
I planted some window boxes, which clearly confused Jethro...
We realized we may be getting too old for Lollapalooza.
And we had some exciting neighborhood news - a new restaurant opened right near us -- and they sell wine under $20. Sweet mother - what a gift!
Not included in photos, but will also be fondly remembered:
- I got to visit my best friends back in LA and finally meet their new little baby, who is an absolute perfect angel, naturally.
- Mr. A and Cousin K arriving home from a long and drunken night out, on ONE bike. Seriously - two grown men trying to balance a shared ride on one bicycle. Hilarious.
- The Harry Potter Night that our wonderful town put together. It was amazing - our main street became Diagon alley, one of the churches recast itself as Azkaban, and folks were in every costume imaginable. There was HP theatre in the park, butter beer served in restaurants, and even the town newspaper published itself as "The Daily Prophet". It restored my faith in community!
So all in all, between flights we managed to pull off a lovely summer. AND we still have a few weeks of warm weather to go!
Sunday, March 25, 2007
IPR
Girls night last night. Had a lot of fun, and was introduced to a fabulous new wine. Its so sweet, so yummy and so drinkable it's developed a nickname: IPR - International Panty Remover.
Villa Giada Moscato d'Asti
Heehhheeee
Thursday, March 01, 2007
More Warm Wine!
Messy ugly storm tonight, which means (of course) its time to curl up at home and have more MEAD!
Tonight we rate Chaucer's Mulling Spices.
In honor of the father of English literature, I will attempt to rate this lovely warm adult beverage in drunken iambic pentameter.
So warm so sweet I want to drink too much.
So smooth I ask if booze has been withdrawn.
The tone is pale and gold with light it shines.
Too weak the spice but not so that I halt.
For that, I gulp and deem the wine a 4.
Hey, Ms. Bennett was right. Learning this stuff was worth it!
It *is* useful in real life.
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Glogg!
Our next warm adult beverage is Glonz Vin Glogg.
JLA: 4.5 out of 5. "Reminds me of Mr. Anderson - sweet, swedish and you can call it honey."
JHA: only 3.5 out of 5. "It's good, but maybe too sweet." (OK, he's a dude, and dudes just don't like sweet honey wine as much, I guess.)
Friday, December 01, 2006
Welcome to Winter
Our lovely warm fall weather ended abruptly last night. In the course of just 10 hours the temperature dropped 50 degrees and we were hit with seven inches of fat wet snow. Here at home I spent those ten hours quietly freaking out about how I was going to drive to work. I've never ever driven in snow before -- let alone a blizzard, so the morning commute had me terrified.
My lovely husband prepped me well -- drive slow, don't brake too fast, stay in your lane if possible, etc. It was all helpful advice. (Although the one thing he didn't mention was that the brake lights on the dashboard we're going to go off -- which made my heart stop for a second.) Anyway, it took an hour and a half, and I only screamed once (when a truck blew by me and the entire car was *splatted* with a heavy smack of muddy slush), but you'll be proud to know that I managed to get to work in one piece. The car's in one piece too - if you don't count the nail marks in the steering wheel.
With the day being filled with frazzled nerves and heavy snow, I thought this might be a good night to start the 2006 Anderson Mulled Wine Ratings. (I know those of you familiar with the 2003 Anderson Cheese Chart are excited -- we certainly have a history of brilliant epicurean evaluations, don't we? I believe our top cheese won on a rating of "MMMMmmmmmmmm".)
Alrighty. Our first contender is a traditional mulled wine, from The Bay Tree, sold last year through Crate and Barrel. I steeped the little bag in a cheapy bottle of Black Swan Shiraz/Cabernet.
I'm giving it a 3 out of 5. It's lovely and traditional, but maybe a little too clovey. So it's a little dry. And my tongue went puffy. So there you go... -2 points for needing to push your tongue against the roof of your mouth to make sure it's not *actually* getting bigger.
Tuesday, October 03, 2006
What did Ringo do?
So we had an enormous storm last night. A storm so big it was one for the record books.
While the rain pounded down outside, we were curled up in front of the tv for a little Monday Night Football.
BAM!!!
At about 10 pm the we were jolted out of our seats by an enormous crash from the back of the house. The floors shook. The sound thudded in my chest. The rush of adrenaline hit me and thought "Earthquake!" (Hey, 30 years+ in LA will do that to a girl.)
I looked at Mr. A. He looked at me. And we both thought it. What in god's name could Ringo have just done? Did he knock over the fridge for Christ's sake?
In the kitchen everything was fine. I told J to check the back sun porch (half expecting that the thing had fallen off the house.) He swung the door open and everything looked fine... until...
a flash of lightening hit.
HOLY SHIT.
In brief glimpse of lightning we could see it: the beautiful old giant tree from next door -- flatly laid across our yard. Squashing everything in its wake.
A few minutes later we lost power.
Later we came to realize it took out a little chunk of our roof. And the patio furniture. And our grill.
In a situation like that there's only one thing you can do -- crack open a bottle of wine. Or two.
Truth be told that grill sorta sucked anyway.
More photos of the scene on Flickr.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Temp Kitchen
When we decided to put off doing the kitchen overhaul for a year I began to strategize on how to create a workable temp kitchen. I've learned this is a right of passage for many rehabbers, so I tried to look at it as a challenge. Keep the costs low and see how creative you can get with what you have. In the end, we ended up surprising ourselves -- it's actually (dare we say it?) cute!
Here's a shot of the kitchen before. Not a great shot, but oh my lordy, get a look at that trim near the ceiling. And treasure the pot rack in front of the window. I can only imagine what the P.O. was thinking... "I know, if we block the little light with POTS and PANS no one will notice that the kitchen doesn't have a fridge! Brilliant!" 
So before we could actually begin, we had structural guys come in and reinforce the floors under the kitchen. Apparently this is why the P.O. didn't have a fridge in the kitchen -- the floors couldn't support the weight. Welcome oh great metal support post!
As you'll recall my dear sweet husband ripped out the old-lady-blue floor tiles that just plain grossed out his wife...
The floor was refinished. We steamed off the trim. Then we broke out a left-over can of Berkshire Beige paint. We squished in some cheapy-but-energy-efficient appliances, and put up some shelves.... and viola!
Not a lot of counter space, but good storage, and nice floors. When we properly re-do the kitchen the fridge will move to the basement and we'll get ourselves something that actually holds more than my wine and diet coke.
Sunday, September 17, 2006
The view from the porch
One of the unexpected joys of the new house is our lovely front porch. Lately on warm nights Mr. Anderson and I have enjoyed having a nice chat out on the porch with a glass of wine. It's a wonderful way to unwind -- at least for us. For Ringo its the most aggrevating time of the day. Between him and us is just a single screen door with (thank goodness) an extra industrial-strength pet shield. 
I'm thinking we're going to need to order replacement shields by the dozen.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
(Long Overdue) Barn Update
I use the word "barn" because that's our new friend Bill, the garage contractor, shared with us when he came over a couple weeks ago. What he said was, "Ma'am, I don't think that's a garage you got there. I think that's a barn. There are a few left in this area and occasionally I see one. Yea, I think it's a 1-horse barn."
Alrighty. Pursuant to our orders from Allstate, the barn had to go. (Incidentally when we told our neighbor it was coming down she said, "Let me know when so I can enjoy a glass of wine and watch." *That's* how good our barn was looking these days.)
First Mr. Anderson and his dad removed the siding and sheathing from the walls. At least the walls they could reach (the south side of the barn was covered with weeds and protected by yellow jackets.)
Then my FIL brought out the love of his life, his chainsaw, to prep the posts for falling.
In the center of the barn was a lally column. For those of you not familiar that's a single column that jacks the whole structure up when the poor sad thing can't support itself. Pull it out or take a wack at it and the whole thing goes down. At least theoretically. The guys tried pulling it with a rope. Nothing happened. Then they decided to try wacking it (via a plank) with a sledgehammer.
Hahahahaa. So the lally column was kicked out, but the thing still stood! Only one way it was going to go down...
One might question whether it was worth it. In the end the guys were filthy, exhausted, sore, and the truth is we could have paid someone to do it for very little dough. But look at the smiles on theses faces...
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Crabby crabby crabby
I've (finally) come home, and I just can't seem to shake this crabby feeling. I don't know if its work, or the fact that Katie Couric is no longer going to wake me up every morning (you laugh, but I've been watching her faithfully since I was 16, and I am devastated), or if its the irritation of having my TIVO suddenly develop a dire, urgent, social consciousness. (Tonight it greeted me with the "BirdFlu epidemic" Oprah Show and a special National Geographic on terrorism and chemical weapons. Good lord!)
Booooo
Mr. Anderson is wisely holed up in his office, working on things that require "total focus".
Mediation, breathing exercises, or yoga might be an option.
Or wine.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Winter? What winter?
That's how this town gets you. It's a beautiful night. My gorgeous husband and I just watched the sun set while sipping wine on the deck.
Ahhhhh....
We're off to bar hop along Division. The patios are full of people. Gotta enjoy it while it lasts...
Sunday, May 14, 2006
Its a sign
So we've been worrying about all the work this house is going to need. And how much its going to cost.
Then we arrived at Torrey Pines Lodge for our friends' wedding. 
The photo I've posted here just doesn't do it justice. It's a beautiful cedar-sided craftsman masterpiece. It simply takes your breath away. Standing on the lawn looking up at it I knew it was a sign. Apparently Mr. A felt the same way. A few wine glasses later we slurred to one another...
JHA: "God, don't you love this place?"
JLA: "Yea, I gotta tell you, it reminds me of the house."
JHA: "Man, I love that house."
JLA: "Baby, I gotta tell you, I want that house."
JHA: "Yea, who are we kidding, that's our house."
So money be damned! I think we're going to throw caution to the wind and make sure we land this deal.
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