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Last night we did the Notaviva wine & music pairing that I mentioned earlier.  First of all the building that we did the tasting in was awesome.  Set at the end of a gravel road, almost the entire building was exposed wood.  There were three levels to the building, and the top level was a recording/production studio.  As I mentioned before, they played 10 clips of songs for each wine and we rated them based on a 1-10 scale.  There was a wide range of music genres from organ music, to Metallica, to country and so on.  It was much harder than I thought it was going to be.  I ended up trying to think of the wine I was drinking, and what kind of music I would like to be hearing when I was drinking it.  Others tried to think of the subtleties of the wine (bitter, long finish, etc.) and if that went with the wine.  I would say by the 3rd or 4th wine (out of 5) – we trailed off and were just feeling good to be drinking wine.  Notaviva said that they were going to release the results of the ratings and also the raw data to us, so I’m wondering what that will look like.  Either way, a fun way to spend some time with friends.

With the winemaker from Notaviva

Update, check out the picture set on Flickr: Notaviva Music & Wine Pairing

Jasmine Bloom

In my last home, I got barely any sunlight and the Jasmine plant that my Grandma gave me nearly 6 years ago only had about 3 blooms total – and that was when my A/C unit died for a long weekend.  In my new house, it is starting to thrive.  With an Eastern facing window, plenty of morning sunlight and more attention and water from me – there should be about 20-25 blooms in the next two weeks.  It’s hard to tell from these pictures, but you can see how much healthier the plant is compared to a few years ago (it just looked like a growing twig).  My grandma would be proud.

Jasmine Plant over the years on Flickr.

I didn’t make it downtown but managed to get on the roof to catch a glance from Arlington…

Rooftop Inauguration View

There was one glorious summer where I worked at the Burke Lake Ice Cream Parlour.  I got to eat all the ice cream, soda, milkshakes and hot dogs I could stand.  I also got to watch The Price is Right.  Every day.  I used to dream of being on the show, and bid on all the items and the showcase showdowns with my friends/coworkers.  The dream was to win both showcases.  This guy achieves my dream and more…(results start @ 5:12 if you’re impatient like me)  Drew Carey sucks compared to Bob Barker – what a lackluster reaction!

via

I have had my Grandpa’s paintings ever since my Grandma passed away a few years ago.  They didn’t really have nice frames on them, and finally after moving into my new place, I decided to put them into some nice frames.  My Grandpa was self taught for all the crafts he was into: painting, carving, woodburning.  My mom just told me that he learned to paint from books and paint by numbers.  Eventually he moved up to doing large paintings.  He did painted of these back in 1971.  They used to be in make-shift frames, but now they’re finally in frames that do them justice.

Waterfall

Winter

This is one of my favorite things about my new place.  I get to see this almost every morning when I wake up.

Sunrise on Flickr

Europe Trip Map – See you in a few weeks!

hey everyone. Excuse my extended absence lately. I’ve been quite occupied. This is the first time I’ve ever posted from my phone but it seems approriate. For the next couple months I will be traveling every weekend except one and won’t have a free weekend until October.

This weekend I’m headed up to NY to visit an old friend. In a few weeks I’m starting on my first trip to Europe since highschool when I went to London. I’ll be hittin Paris, Berlin, and dodging bombs in istanbul. Along the way I also plan on dropping in on krakow, Poland. It should be a busy and interesting time leading up to the best season of the year: fall.

I’m sure I’ll be updating my Flickr photostream a lot more often than this Blog with pics from my mobile. Until next time!

Harvard gets the greatest commencement speakers (if you haven’t seen Conan O’Brien’s Harvard commencement speech, check it out…). This year, JK Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, gave the speech. While it wasn’t with as many zingers as Conan’s, she has some great life advice…

…some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
-JK Rowling

http://harvardmagazine.com/go/jkrowling.html via A&A