Hopped the streetcar and spent a pleasant morning looking into the fine art galleries in Portland’s Pearl District. It was a fun day to visit the galleries, because they are all hanging their new shows for the First Thursday Gallery Walk. So the art was new, the galleries uncrowded and the people hanging the shows [...]

Wow! I started to work on my backed up blogging and it turned out a had a couple thousand photos to look through. So I spent the evening looking and making notes for some future posts. Of course, it is embarrassing, I’ve actually been lapped by the vacation. I’m writing about last Tuesday and here [...]

Hilarity in the face of the fear: The Sarah Palin Quote Generator.
I see our country being able to represent those things John McCain and I have both been discussing in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.
Thanks Val and bigcontrarian.

Lazing in bed in our super-cool Portland hotel watching the disgusting House Republicans make excuses for not getting the bail out bill passed. Boehnaer and Blunt — whose job it was to get the house Republicans to pass the bill — on TV whining before the microphones: It was a speech by Pelosi, it is [...]

On Monday, we lazed around in our Berkeley bed watching the economy implode on CNN, then we got up and went to a sake tasting for breakfast. We headed for the Takara Sake Brewery, the makers of Sho Chiku Bai (Pine Bamboo Plum) sake. Trip luck still holds: the people tasting with us were [...]

I’m falling behind in the blogging … the days are full, making the time to write short. But, here are some of the Things Yet To Be Mentioned:
Pasolivo Olive Oil Tasting Room, Paso Robles: We drove out Vineyard Drive, another nice Paso country road, to the beautiful, peaceful and welcoming Willow Creek Olive Ranch and [...]

We’re off to Chinatown in SF, but I put together a very rough slideshow of our ride with the Hollister Gliding Club. Click the picture or the “more” link below to view the slideshow.
So many cool things are happening, it is hard to find the time to write them all down!

… as he was flying back from dogfighting over Monterey Bay.

Tomorrow, gliding over the mountains near Hollister.

… of yesterday, but then who would watch the tide come in at Monterey Bay? Val’s out flying, so someone has to do it. I’ll have to catch up on the blogging later.

at Aubergine in Carmel, no blogging tonight. Except to say chantarelles, truffles, duck and fois gras with huckleberries, Kobe beef, sardines (that’s right, I ate a sardine and I liked it!), oyster vichyssoise, poached quail egg, tuna tartare, braised oxtail, marrow souffle … Sometime tomorrow, when I am recovered, I’ll say more … about beautiful [...]

Val got a reasonably priced haircut at Headhunters … At a nearby antiques emporium we purchased four very cool used cast iron skillets in various sizes for about $60 … We learned to taste olive oil like the pros at We Olive, where they had some 40 kinds of California oils set up at a [...]

We got the idea from a cooking show, New Scandinavian Cooking, in which host Andreas Viestad makes all his food — from complex gourmet recipes to simple drinks — on a portable outdoor kitchen set. We thought, why couldn’t we do some real cooking outdoors on our trip, finding fresh local ingredients and cooking them [...]

Just finished a delicious dinner of soppressatta and cheese sandwhiches, Israeli olives, fresh-baked pear galette with champage and artisan chocolates. I’m almost too blissed-out to blog.
I’ll just have to let the Iphone photos tell the story.

^ In the morning, we say goodbye to the good old Super 8. Plain, clean, cheap — we’d stay there [...]

I am eating a slice of sweet-tangy handmade rhubarb pie with a nice cold glass of milk. We are tucked in at the Super 8 after our first day of roving in Santa Barbara County. A perfect September day — low 70s, breezy, clear. We started the day at Goleta’s scaled back version of the [...]

First, the Goleta Super 8 does not stink! Hooray! In fact, our little room is clean and cozy and with the addition of our own mod blanket, some scarf-controlled lighting and a bottle of champagne, we are stylin’ for the season opener of Saturday Night Live. Tomorrow, the Santa Monica Farmers Market and Santa Ynez [...]

Just wrapping up the last of our preparations and we’ll be heading out for the short three hour drive to Goleta in a little while. I am anxious while Val boxes up the mobile kitchen and packs up the equipment bag with our cameras, computer, binoculars. Ajax paces, head down, knowing something is up, but [...]

Check it out! My iPhone is telling you where we are. Click here to see what it says. The map is also linked from the top of our sidebar at the left. Enjoy!

The Big Graze road trip to Seattle starts Saturday and plans have started to firm up as nicely as a panna cotta — not too hard, not too soft. Here’s how it looks so far (map below):
But first, a note to any burglar-readers of the nightnote. Ajax the Rottweiler is not coming with us on [...]

Guided to web coolness — as I so often am — by Michelle Nicolosi’s Google Reader, I just made my first Wordle word cloud based on thenightnote. It is a cool word usage graphic based on the nightnote home page. Click the image to see it full-sized.

Be sure to check out the thing that [...]

The Daily Show gives us a whiff of Republican hypocrisy. Stinky/funny/sad.