A Perfect Date

Gimpy starts his new job on Monday, so we decided that we should do something fun together, and I should take a vacation day this week.  We settled on Thursday, and I arranged for the day off.  Wednesday night we mapped out our strategy, and decided that we would go to two new wineries - one of them just opened May 1st - and go hiking. 

We got up early yesterday, and went to Fairway to get some bread, cheese, fruit, tomatoes, and pack my little wine picnic basket. Then we got on the road! 

The new winery we went to was called Paradise Hills.  It was a beautiful new building, but they were getting their growing pains out.  One of our favorite things is being able to collect a signature glass from each winery we visit, but sadly they were out of glasses AND their most popular wine.  I guess we'll have to go back! 

From there we went up the street to Gouveia Vineyards, because we knew they'd be an amazing place to have a picnic, and we weren't disappointed!  There were several places we could sit and overlook the vineyards, and I was in heaven.  

I unpacked our picnic while I sent Gimpy in to deliver a slice of my new favorite cheese (Parrano) to the ladies who helped us. It was a beautiful day, and a delicious spread.

We stuffed ourselves silly, and then went hiking for a little over an hour.  When we got home, exhausted, we had some sushi and went to see The Hangover II.  Hysterical.  If you haven't seen it yet, GO! 
I hope you all have a great weekend!
   

What's the big deal? You just call a bunch of bars and show up...

"What's the big deal?  You just call a bunch of bars and show up..."

A friend of mine said that last night at softball when I was stressing out about the Preppy Pub Crawl next weekend.  You see, now that I know we'll be over 115 people (we have 104 confirmed so far), it requires much more planning than the first year when we were 35. 

Where we live, there are a lot of bars, and the great thing is that most of them are in close enough walking distance to have a successful pub crawl.  The bad thing, is that some of them have a maximum occupancy of about 200 people.  When you are bringing 120-130 people with you, you need to make sure that they will have the capacity, the staffing, and the drink specials.  It's a bit of a balancing act to make sure that you are going to the smaller places earlier in the night, avoiding the ones with a busy dinner crowd at dinner time, and making sure everyone can get in! 

With that being said, I am totally stressed out.  I had ordered the koozies and planned my outfit, but then the outfit came and looked awful on me.  I had planned out timing of bars and then started arranging drink specials.  Then, I got a new dress... and called two of the early evening bars.  First bombshell hit! 

Butterface has a comedy show and can't accomodate us unless we start there - which we aren't doing.  The Showgirl informed me that they really, really, really wanted us to come, but their dinner crowd started at 6, so we would need to be gone before then.  I thought about things a lot during a run on Tuesday night, and decided I was going to move things around a little to accomodate.  We're starting at 3:30 this year, and were going to go to Crabby until 4:45 - it's on the water.

We'd then go to The Showgirl, hit my least favorite bar in town, and then head to a cute Irish pub before continuing our crawl.  Perfect.  I call the Showgirl's manager back, and he is excited, until he tells me that he has too many dinner reservations at 5, so we can no longer come there. 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME????  I JUST MOVED MY ENTIRE PUB CRAWL AROUND FOR YOU!

Needless to say, I wasn't happy.  Then I went to softball with this weight on my shoulders, trying to decide what to do.  I pretty much had decided I would discuss with a beach bar next to Crabby to fill in my now vacant slot, when I went to the Grizzly for drinks with my softball team.  The manager told me that Hula Skanks (huge, open spaces) would no longer be closed for renovations, as they are waiting till after the summer.  So of course, now I don't know what to do! 

Luckily, I don't have dinner plans until about 7 tonight... so I am going to do some mental shifting again during my run.  Hopefully I can get it all worked out.