I'm finally over the cold that has worked me over the past couple weeks. Started as plugged up ears, in to my sinuses then it's been phlem city for the past week straight. I even bought some good meds that they made me fill out a form to get ( had psudoephedrine which is controlled) but really did do the trick.
But just before I got sick I had an awesome 3 day weekend, well mostly just the sunday of it, Saturday I don't think I even left the house and Monday I was hungover and forced myself out in the afternoon just to take a cruise around the valley.
Oh and I had a bit of a confusing Friday night... Worked kind of late and before my boss liz took off she mentioned she was headed to the watervale pub... So when I got off about an hour later I asked if she was still there and she txt'ed back saying she was and if I came down she would buy me dinner... Umm interesting. We had a fun night, lots of laughs, had a few beers, got to know each other better, had a tasty dinner I had the "fin and flipper" plater which I was hoping had dolphin... And the night ended with me wonder if that was just my boss buying me dinner and drinks and thanking me for the effort I had been putting in at work (and if u read this liz, it felt more than that to me, :-] )
Saturday was a lazy day... But Sunday was great, a full day of fun. The day started out meeting up with Luke, Sarah and Yuri and heading to the Clare horse racing track for the big labor day races, which was a lady's day theme... They thought it was close enough to walk but after walking for a while I called my roommate and asked how far... Would have taken over an hour to trek out there!!! Took a shot at hitchhiking... And lucky for us a guy that lived just before the track had room for all of us, the AC was a great relief the day was starting to heat up. The track was great fun!! There were about 8 total races and we decided it was a good idea to buy a beer after each time we placed a bet. Let's just say by the time the races were over we were all wasted, burnt up by the sun but I was lucky enough to win about $50!!! But that only covered my beers. During the races we hung out with who I was told was a local celebrity, johnny haysmen, I think he used to be a AFL football player and is working with my friends at leasingham, he's the first Aboriginal I've got to know. And lucky for us his dad had room for us so we had a ride back into town. We had a few hours before we were heading out so we again made the bad decision to have more to drink... And white wine at that... This is the point in the night it went down hill for me. Our plans were to have dinner at a place called Citadel which play a movie on a big screen out front while you eat, felt like a mini drive-in. That weekend it was Gran Torino (which I need to rent cause I can't remember how it ended) We caught a ride with Ryu and sara and met a couple others there. And Liz showed up too with a friend... During intermission I moved over and watched the rest of the movie with her. Which I'm a little embarrassed about because by they point I was 3 sheets to the wind and I'm sure it was very clear. After the movie we all headed back home... Which was a little difficult for Sarah, luke and I because our ride walked home, so we decided to walk back too, likely another hour walk... Sarah tried hitchhiking again, randomly a cab stopped, but we would rather walk then pay for a cab but for some strange reason we got the ride free because the cab was going back into town anyways, good deal. Sadly I still had a 30 walk ahead of me from their place... It was a long walk so i did something im not sure i regret or not which was I sent a few flirty txts to Liz which were well recieved :-) but 2 weeks later kind of feel like I might have said too much... In Vino Veritas... I couldn't help it she's awesome.
Since then we have been working super hard and long hours and coupled with my cold it's been a couple of very tough weeks. But I've been having heaps of fun and been giving the responsibility of one of my favorite tasks... Yeast innoculation!!! Also I've been the one to rack all the white juice off it's lees (gross sediment), which is a tricky & sticky job but feel honored she trusts me to do all of them. :-)
This week we put the first red grapes in our open fermenters which are made of slate, as in big stone slabs!!! They are super old and amazing. We also had some trouble with our cooling system and our first 3 tanks of shiraz are already done fermenting and Friday we made a huge mess pressing the 1st tank... Glad I was off warming up a couple cold white juice tanks getting ready to add their yeasts so I got to watch them pull their hair out and lend my assistance when I could (or wanted to, I mean Richard gets scary frustrated sometimes, more than his usual amount of talking to himself, didn't help he got splashed in the face and front with red wine so it looked like be just killed someone or bit their neck) I'm sure I'll have to do one myself this week... I'll take pictures of my hands to show u the fun it is.
Anyways I'm sorry for not posting in a few weeks, sure I forgot to include a few great details and I need to be better about taking pictures too. Hope everyone is doing well.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Free Hat!!!
Headed down to adelaide today with my new best buddies (haha, maybe not but they are a awesome couple) sarah and luke for the day and this afternoon we stopped in at a pub for a couple beers and luke and I scored free hats with each jug (aka pitcher) of beer we got! We were in the "big city" today to check out the adelaide fringe festival... kind of a music, art, comedy, street fair thing. but i think we kind of missed out, more of a night time festival i'm guessing because not much was going on.
Work this past week was a bit of the same old, same old. A little lab work, a little crushing, and a lot of cleaning... actually spent most of my time in the bottling hall, first programming the label machine then helping label over 900 cases of Cab sauv. missed out on most of the grape crushing though... seems like they needed my untrained expertize in mastering the unknown elsewhere... yet still found a way to send that crew home just in time for me to clean out the press of all the grapes skins that get crammed in every corner and seam! Jerks! ha, just kidding, i'll get them back someday.
Near the end of last week i got some sad news, my friend Rach was quitting her job and going back to melbourne and then on to magnetic island in the far north queensland. She was the one i took out for valentines day and have been hanging out with a lot. Her job has been kind of been giving the whole vintage cellar crew the run around, offering only a couple shifts a week after telling them they needed to be her the end of january... and after over 4 weeks of little work and again promising that grapes will start to come "next week" as they have for the past couple weeks, rach decided she had enough. I'm going to miss her. I had friday off so in the afternoon i took her to Sevenhill Cellars for a little wine tasting (which i still hadn't had a chance to do) and then gave her a personal tour of the all the cool little sites around the winery, church, crypt and old stone buildings around the property. Then met up with other friends and headed out for a fun night out to say goodbye, first at the blyth pub (dinner and karaoke), then middle pub (drinks outside) and finally the bentley (more drinks [butcher of port?] and music).
Got up saturday morning just in time to run over to rach's and say goodbye as she drove away. afterwards i spent the morning downtown walking around, got a iced coffee and toastie... closer to lunch i got a beef pie (i love these pies, i'm sure they are very unhealthy but once a week i can treat myself) then met up with krys, will, luke and sarah to go for a 30 minute drive out of town to watch some tennis. kry's team was short 2 guys so she bribed will and luke to play for them with a 6 pack of beer. it was funny both hadn't played for years and both lost their games 6-0, but as a doubles team only lost 6-1. also saw a the old folks of the area playing a little lawn bowling, which must be huge here because every town seems to have a bowling club and field. took saturday night easy, a little worn out from the night before and day in the sun.
Today was a great treat in adelaide though... when we first arrived we found a place one of their friends suggested for dim sum! we were very lucky to get a table because soon after we sat town the queue (aka line, ;-] ) was out the door. if you don't know what dim sum is, well you sit there and servers come by with platters of different small portions to choose from... like steamed dumplings or fried shrimp or bbq pork ribs, just enough so everyone gets a couple of bites to eat then wait to see what comes next. its actually kind of exciting! It was amazing food and we ate till we were stuffed! we thought it was going to cost a fortune! but only ended up being about $75 to split between the 3 of us. after lunch we felt like a little dessert and found a bubble tea place and got drinks... i love bubble tea! ran to catch a bus to a part of the festival called, "the garden of unearthly delights!" which i can only imagine gets outrageous at night... but during the day it was mostly families. but we did catch a "freak show" but really more of a collection of stuffed animals with birth defects :-/ like a 2 headed calf, 1 eyed chicken, 1 head and 2 body duck, fish monkey boy... not what we expected but not bad for $5. watched a street performance with a guy stacking buckets and standing on them like 15 feet off the ground then juggling 3 daggers. then headed out for a afternoon drink... got our free hats... we met up with one of their mates, Sebastian and his lady friend (both from france) and we all went out of dinner at a noodle restaurant... mine was really spicy! but yummy.
now i'm exhausted and ready for bed! perhaps a big week coming up. We should finally be getting in some Shiraz fruit this week which i'm very excited about... RED FERMENTS! and we should also be racking all the whites we have pressed and getting those fermenting. oh and i think i heard there was going to be some filtering and bottling... %-) oh boy... not what i like to hear, crushing and bottling!!!
Work this past week was a bit of the same old, same old. A little lab work, a little crushing, and a lot of cleaning... actually spent most of my time in the bottling hall, first programming the label machine then helping label over 900 cases of Cab sauv. missed out on most of the grape crushing though... seems like they needed my untrained expertize in mastering the unknown elsewhere... yet still found a way to send that crew home just in time for me to clean out the press of all the grapes skins that get crammed in every corner and seam! Jerks! ha, just kidding, i'll get them back someday.
Near the end of last week i got some sad news, my friend Rach was quitting her job and going back to melbourne and then on to magnetic island in the far north queensland. She was the one i took out for valentines day and have been hanging out with a lot. Her job has been kind of been giving the whole vintage cellar crew the run around, offering only a couple shifts a week after telling them they needed to be her the end of january... and after over 4 weeks of little work and again promising that grapes will start to come "next week" as they have for the past couple weeks, rach decided she had enough. I'm going to miss her. I had friday off so in the afternoon i took her to Sevenhill Cellars for a little wine tasting (which i still hadn't had a chance to do) and then gave her a personal tour of the all the cool little sites around the winery, church, crypt and old stone buildings around the property. Then met up with other friends and headed out for a fun night out to say goodbye, first at the blyth pub (dinner and karaoke), then middle pub (drinks outside) and finally the bentley (more drinks [butcher of port?] and music).
Got up saturday morning just in time to run over to rach's and say goodbye as she drove away. afterwards i spent the morning downtown walking around, got a iced coffee and toastie... closer to lunch i got a beef pie (i love these pies, i'm sure they are very unhealthy but once a week i can treat myself) then met up with krys, will, luke and sarah to go for a 30 minute drive out of town to watch some tennis. kry's team was short 2 guys so she bribed will and luke to play for them with a 6 pack of beer. it was funny both hadn't played for years and both lost their games 6-0, but as a doubles team only lost 6-1. also saw a the old folks of the area playing a little lawn bowling, which must be huge here because every town seems to have a bowling club and field. took saturday night easy, a little worn out from the night before and day in the sun.
Today was a great treat in adelaide though... when we first arrived we found a place one of their friends suggested for dim sum! we were very lucky to get a table because soon after we sat town the queue (aka line, ;-] ) was out the door. if you don't know what dim sum is, well you sit there and servers come by with platters of different small portions to choose from... like steamed dumplings or fried shrimp or bbq pork ribs, just enough so everyone gets a couple of bites to eat then wait to see what comes next. its actually kind of exciting! It was amazing food and we ate till we were stuffed! we thought it was going to cost a fortune! but only ended up being about $75 to split between the 3 of us. after lunch we felt like a little dessert and found a bubble tea place and got drinks... i love bubble tea! ran to catch a bus to a part of the festival called, "the garden of unearthly delights!" which i can only imagine gets outrageous at night... but during the day it was mostly families. but we did catch a "freak show" but really more of a collection of stuffed animals with birth defects :-/ like a 2 headed calf, 1 eyed chicken, 1 head and 2 body duck, fish monkey boy... not what we expected but not bad for $5. watched a street performance with a guy stacking buckets and standing on them like 15 feet off the ground then juggling 3 daggers. then headed out for a afternoon drink... got our free hats... we met up with one of their mates, Sebastian and his lady friend (both from france) and we all went out of dinner at a noodle restaurant... mine was really spicy! but yummy.
now i'm exhausted and ready for bed! perhaps a big week coming up. We should finally be getting in some Shiraz fruit this week which i'm very excited about... RED FERMENTS! and we should also be racking all the whites we have pressed and getting those fermenting. oh and i think i heard there was going to be some filtering and bottling... %-) oh boy... not what i like to hear, crushing and bottling!!!
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