Top Ten Most Popular Posts on Left Coast Cowboys During Nov 2008

Having been a young child in the Sixties, it’s an instinctive fear, every time I’m in a dinner situation where everyone contributes, that someone will show up with some sort of vegetable baked in Cream of Mushroom Soup. Maybe topped by those horrible chrome yellow crunchy things. (What were those? Onions? Potato sticks?)In the Sixties, somebody’s mother always made this dish.

I live with an Englishman. So there is a daily quota of pork products that must be consumed. When in doubt about feeding an Englishman, just make sure sausages are part of the mix. Not namby-pamby “Seafood and Mango” sausages, but the good old fashioned fruit of the pig. If you want to go one better, include bacon. Bacon-wrapped sausages are the Gold Standard.

The hype everywhere is that the teen vampire 90210 movie, Twilight, is opening and expected to be HUUUUGE. Excuse me, I’ll pass. And that’s despite being a secret vampire fan. Not that I dress in Goth gear and wander around clutching an Anne Rice novel. It’s just that there’s something about vampires. I never miss a vampire movie. The only genre I like more is Law & Order derivatives.

Here we are one day from the end of NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month.) Over 10,000 of us around the world committed to blogging every day on the day (no writing five posts on the weekends and storing them) for the month of November. And it looks like, barring getting hit by a truck or breaking all my typing fingers, I’ve made it.

 From reading my posts in the last six weeks, you probably think it’s all Cincault, Grenache, crushpads and winemaking here at Two Terrier Vineyards. Actually the winemaking section of TTV — in fact the whole “inhabited by humans” part of the property — is relatively small. You can’t landscape 40 acres. And why would you want to? We’re trying to keep as much natural as possible.

If I were an old Yiddish man from Brooklyn, I’d be saying, “Oy, I know from Christmas songs.” (Or, then again, maybe I wouldn’t.) But in any case, I do know my Christmas songs. I have amassed what I believe to be one of the world’s greatest Christmas song collections. I’m calling my collection great not only in its size, but in its diversity.

 On the eve of what every pundit tells us is THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN OUR LIFETIME, I was shocked to learn that an otherwise educated and aware acquaintance never votes. He had some convoluted argument about how Henry David Thoreau was against voting on the theory that “it only encourages them” and, “no matter who won, it wouldn’t make any difference.

I always swore I would never be that blogger who had nothing to say but what I had for breakfast. My big stumbling block with blogging has always been that I felt I couldn’t blog until I had something profound to say. Or at least something to say that took up 1000 words. Now that I’m on a long weekend in Mexico, I’m that “breakfast blogger”.

Ever since his victory speech when Obama announced he was getting a puppy for the White House, I knew I had the solution for him: A Smooth Fox Terrier. No, not for Sasha and Malia. Smooth Fox Terriers are too rambunctious for younger children. Get the kids something cute, kid-friendly and hypo-allergenic (one of the Obama girls has allergies). Voters at the American Kennel Club chose the poodle, followed closely by the Soft-Coated Wheaten Terrier — both not dogs I would suggest.

I hosted a baby shower for a good friend. Actually, the first baby shower I’d ever been to. Did you know you can actually risk diabetic coma at these things? Because there is absolutely NOTHING you can buy for a baby that does not push the Cute-O-Meter way into overload. First there are all the teeny, tiny little onesies and footie pajamas.