Work, wine, bursitis and Football

In an earlier blog I talked about being on notice for layoff at Weyerhaeuser. Last Friday I received a job offer to join the Lumber and Wood Science group, which I have accepted. This job takes me back to a scientist role, which is similar to the role when I started with the company and it will now extend my tenure with Weyerhaeuser beyond the end of this year ... Hooray! I spent some time this week haggling over the offer and transitioning from my corporate headquarters (CH) office to the Weyerhaeuser Technology Center (WTC). I officially start on Monday, November 17. Which brings us to wine.
For those who may not know Mary and I do enjoy wine. On Tuesday we got our quarterly shipment from our Elk Cove (Oregon) wine club - 2 excellent bottles of Pinot Noir. One of the two bottles 2007 Richmond Hills Pinot, filled out a flight (3 years of the same vineyard and wine maker) which we will look forward to sharing with friend some years from now. We have done that one other time and it is a lot of fun tasting the year to year differences in the fruit because of all the factors that affect the crop from year to year as well as the wine making itself - very interesting or maybe I should say "berry interesting". Anyway with work starting Monday and not much more I could do there until I am electronically transferred (in this case re-instituted as an active employee in People Soft) into my new team, Mary and I decided to take an outing. Our default idea was to go to Poulsbo for the day, but I couldn't get too excited about it and countered with a suggestion to go to Seattle for the day. This didnt stick either, no real plan just kind of kick around and explore some sites we havent seen and old sites too. Then Mary suggested wine tasting ... she had seen an article on some up and coming wineries and one of them was in Woodinville. After mulling it awhile I latched on and while Mary was at Book Club I found 4 wineries to visit. Mary liked the research so we planned for Woodinville and starting to get to know more of the "local" wineries.
So it is time to go, I write this as Mary preps to leave. We will spend the night up there too so we dont have to fight Friday evening traffic. Early this morning the wine trip seemed like it could be in jeopardy. Since Tuesday night I have been dealing with an ache in my left hip. Friday morning I went to the chiroprator hopeful that he would do a simple adjustment and magic the pain would subside. No such luck. After a few simple tests he says you are having a bursitis flare up and the answer is rest and ibuprofen. Seems my workout on Tuesday, running side-by-side with Mary had flared up the bursor in my hip and it is still alive and well 4 days later. It significantly distracts my ability to think of much else. With the diagnosis in hand Mary and I decided to carry out the wine tasting as it would not require much walking. The most painful part of the trip was the car ride. It is very difficult for me to get comfortable in the seat of a car. The result is constant squirming. Mary drove to Woodinville, about 40 miles, with the first stop at Januik/Novelty Hill wineries; these two operations share a warehouse factility where they have their wineries, common tasting room and the same wine maker, Januik. From there we had lunch at the Barking Frog which is at the Willows Inn if you are looking for a nice ($$$) place to stay. The food was great, Mary had sauteed scallops and I had a very good chicken club sandwich. After lunch it was back to wining with Brian Carter which was written up in the local newspaper magazine last week, then a first stop at Delille to pick up a pre-ordered bottle of wine (more on that later), on to Bookwalter (an add suggested by the host at Brian Carter (Ken), and then to Matthews, a total of 6 wineries. We ended the day at Delille Cellars where our pre-purchase wine was the ticket to an evening of hors d'ouevers with a tasting of their fall release wines. Summing it up for the day - some great wines, interesting conversation with people who make and sell wine and some very nice time together with Mary. Damages at the end of the day was 17 bottles of very good wine and a busted budget for the month.

Finally, Saturday is football day. This evening we plan to watch two (2) 2008 "never ran" teams - Washington Huskies and UCLA Bruins - battle it out at Husky stadium. The real novelty is likely to be watching Rick Neuhiesel coaching at Husky Stadium after being asked to leave in a gambling scandal several years ago. Neuhiesel is now coach of the UCLA Bruins which is also his Alma Mater. The Washington coach Ty Willingham is also something of a pariah at UW as the Huskies have gone 0-11 in 2008 with 2 games still to play. It has already been announced that Ty will not be back to coach next year.
Well this is more than enough blogging for one time ... the bursitis is still bugging me, the trunk is full of wine, we will head home soon to get ready for the football game and Monday I start my new job. I wish and hope all is well with everybody reading this and Cheers!

Mike