Just back from Napa, Monterey, Carmel, San Fran and Mountain View among other places.

The trip was a good one but we are happy to be home and have some recovery time before heading back to work next week.

I recently did some biking on part of Raleigh’s greenway. The buckeye trail was great, lots of wildlife and a trail/boardwalk that jets right out into the wetlands. Worth checking out if you are a walker, runner or cyclist.

Deb was visiting this past week and we headed over to Mom and Dads to grill out. Yum!

Our New To Us 2007 A4, originally uploaded by slacker_today.

So long Camry, you will be missed. With Kat’s Camry in sad shape we’ve replaced it with something german. I think with this car Kat and i are both happy with the purchase. Sporty, fun to drive, safe, good visibility and a very nice interior.

Storms around our house were bad yesterday evening. Several homes on the west side of Raleigh were damaged by tornadoes. Its unclear if this funnel cloud touched down or how bad it was but I’m happy its well north of our house. All we ended up getting was lots of rain and some wind.

Spring is in full swing and Kat’s garden is looking good.

For the show we were very lucky to have tickets in the second row, almost dead center.

Tony was a great speaker, in person the same personality that experienced in his books and on TV carries over.  During the talk he spoke about his travels, about Food Network, and about the economy and how it effected the restaurant industry.

A few tidbits from the show:

• Anthony Bourdain now refuses to talk bad about Rachel Ray. It seems something Tony did really upset Rachel and it made Tony feel bad enough he’s stopped talking about her all together.  He joked that she is super powerful now and could have him killed but it was obvious that he was feeling guilty about it. He told us the story but I wont share it here.
• Tony was offered the back end of a pig while filming with a small tribe for his TV show. He usually makes his crew eat everything he eats but he knew it was so foul this time he was on his own. As it turns out the pig had been dead a little too long and not cooked nearly enough. He spent several weeks on antibiotics to clear up “the problem”.
• It seems Tony really likes Bobby Flay, he repeated several times that he was too good for Food Network.
• It seems Tony have softened his stance on several things he use to be very bitter about, maybe due to his success or maybe just getting older. Probably both. I was surprised to hear him say he was grateful to Food Network for giving him his first TV show. I know at one point he was very bitter about the way they treated him at the end of his run with them. Now he says he could have done a lot worse.
• He talked about the production of their show and how they got ideas. He said one of the first things the staff do is think about where they are going and think about what movies they have seen that they really liked from that part of the world. They often go out of their way to rip off camera shots and dialog from those movies during the show. (I’ve caught some but not all of the references)
• After all the joking around he brought up the subject of organic produce and posed several questions to the audience about whether or not it should be a high end only product. He also talked some about eating local or regional only products and only during the “in” season.  These couple of questions actually contain many points including getting more money into the hands of local farmers, cutting down on pollution by not importing tons of produce from overseas and bringing the price point on organic products down so everyone can afford them.This was type of comments I expected to hear from him during the show. After all the jokes and cursing he slides in just enough content to make you realize you are listening to someone talk that has a little more intellect than he might initially lead you to believe.

In all the show was really good, our seats were fantastic, and after the show those of us with “vip” tickets got to go back stage and meet Tony and have books signed.

Christmas 2007

Christmas 2008

You’ll find some public pictures in the gallery.

Our home is dual zoned so we have separate heating and air conditioning units for our upstairs and out downstairs. During the summer the A/C system struggles upstairs where its much warmer. In the winter time the downstairs heating system works harder than upstairs. Coincidently our upstairs AC and downstairs heater have both required service while we’ve lived here.  The downstairs heater’s service was trivial but the upstairs A/C ended up needing a new compressor. I guess this creates an equal balance within the home somehow but as a general rule its mainly just a pain in the ass.

At least our whole home warranty continues to pay for itself.