image via: wwc

I’m not a wine snob by any means – the depths to which I’ll willingly plunge are shameful actually. But I do enjoy drinking wine and was delighted when I arrived in Seattle and found out that there were wineries I could drive to in less than 30 minutes to attempt to impress any visitors who came to town.

I was doubly excited when a former co-worker and fellow wine drinker (she’s probably more of an enthusiast) called me up and invited me to the “Passport to Woodinville Wineries” that will take place April Fool’s weekend (April 1 and 2, 2006).

It’s like winning the Golden Ticket, except with wine instead of chocolate.

For those who don’t know about this event (like I previously did not), turns out all Woodinville wineries will open their doors for visitors that weekend from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and will provide wine tastings, food and, I believe, tours. Tickets are $45 for the whole weekend and for a limited time can be purchased on-line [wwc]. Only 3500 (yikes!) tickets will be sold, so if you want to attend, it would be best to scoot right over to the Web site and get yourself tickets now.

I can hardly wait. In case you’re worried about my wine-soaked self commuting from the Eastside back to West Seattle, we’re renting a designated driver. My friend, she’s a great planner!

Oh and I almost forgot! Here are the the participants (whom I’m too lazy to link to, sorry!): Austin Robaire, Baer Winery, Betz Family Winery, Columbia Winery, Chateau Ste. Michelle, Covington Cellars, Cuillin Hills Winery, DeLille Cellars, Des Voigne Cellars, DiStefano Winery, Facelli Winery, Januik Winery, JM Cellars, Mark Ryan Winery, Matthews Cellars, Novelty Hill, Page Cellars, Red Sky Winery, Silver Lake Winery, Stevens Winery, Woodinville Wine Cellars and Woodhouse Family Cellars.

So far, the only two good things to come out of the Olympics have been the complete deflation of overhyped athletes (I’m looking at you, Mr. Miller) and Ron Judd’s Olympics blog [seatimes], which has consistently been the funniest writing about the games so far.

The only things I’ve found interesting are the Olympic sports you only watch every four years, such as curling. Curling has been lambasted for years as not being a sport and more some combination of skill, strategy, and luck, rather than athletic achievement. Anyone can curl, they say, while you have to be in elite physical shape to win the downhill like superathlete Bode Miller. (In his case, perhaps it’s his liver in elite shape.)

And, you know what? They’re right. Anyone can push a 44lb chunk of granite with the right amount of spin and have it hit the guard stone then glide to a stop in the middle of the tee, thanks to two non-athletes frantically brushing imperfections off the ice. Yup. Anyone can do that.

If you agree with me, why don’t you stop by the Granite Curling Club on Saturday from 10am to 5pm? They’re having one of their Olympic season open houses, and they’ll give you a chance to prove what an incredible curler you are. And hey, you can join a league, too, and prove your greatness on the road to Vancouver 2010.

Your friends at KEXP and House of Blues don’t think you’re seeing quite enough of the great outdoors. Or at least that’s one message you might take from their supersizing of this year’s annual Sasquatch festival [hob]. In previous years, the event one of the better excuses to visit George, Washington for a full day in the sun, occasional wind, and gorgeous view of the gorge at The Gorge. People who didn’t feel like making the long drive home fueled only by memories of (for instance) the Flaming Lips & friends in furry costumes with flashlights and extra large cans of energy beverages could assemble an A-frame tent in the dark and sleep in the adjoining campground. It was a quaint, single day affair that encouraged hipsters to get some much needed sunlight.

This year, however, the party will last for three days (as many days as another cleverly-named local festival). From Friday to Sunday, an incredible lineup aims to dominate your holiday weekend. The participating artists give you plenty to get excited about — Sufjan Stevens, Special Guest – to be announced, the Shins, Death Cab for Cutie, Arctic Monkeys, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and many more — but three days feels like too much [Ed: or do you just fear change? --guilty as charged.]

With this expansion, Sasquatch seems to be aiming to cut into the number of Cascadians making the trip down to Coachella, since it takes place less than a month later. And two weekends spent in the sun just seems to be inviting skin cancer.

What do you think? Is three days too much or just enough? And how excited are the merchants of Ellensburg?

Image via The Cooper Archives

Say that you are leaving the mall after an evening of shopping when your elevator gets stuck. You’ve got two options, right? You can either wait patiently in the unmoving cab for security to figure out how to shoehorn your rapidly-becoming-claustrophobic self out, or you can gang up with your fellow passengers to pry open the doors and hop out. Are you a waiter or are you an action movie star?

Last night at Lincoln Square in Bellevue, an elevator full of people faced just that choice. And, sadly for at least one of them, they chose the latter option [Times]. Although the incident is apparently still under investigation, it seems that several of the passengers decided to save themselves. The last man out slipped backwards after jumping down to the floor below the halted elevator and fell about five stories to what was likely an untimely and messy end [P-I].

Don’t try to escape elevators, people. The Elevator Escalator Safety Foundation advises that you wait patiently for rescuers. Use the time to get to know the people that you’re trapped with, or something. Don’t turn out like that poor Kirlander.

Somehow missed in last week’s obsession with love, greeting cards, and support for the floral industry was the story about Seattle’s valentine to local musicians. Announced last week [p-i], the City has upgraded it’s music for callers on hold [seattle]. Instead of corny instrumentals of corporate music people with city troubles will be hearing other locals playing their own non-objectionable tunes to ease the pain of waiting to talk to their city government. It’s a nice idea, but even if the music is very good, nothing’s going to change the fact that you’re in the unfortunate position of having to call city hall.

Sad that you don’t have a pressing problem worthy of municipal attention? Why, why not just download the quarterly podcast [#]?

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Speaking of podcasting, later this week Seattle plays host to podcast hotel. From the 23rd to the 26th, the Triple Door, Hotel Max, and Thinkspot will be swarming with techies intent on making your iPod a little more full of homebrew content:

The Seattle event . . . will draw on the city’s thriving indie music scene and core concentration of bloggers, podcasters and technologists who will discuss mobile culture, copyright issues and how art and commerce intersect in podcasting and video podcasts. [podcast hotel]

If you’re into hearing techies talk about technology, hearing musicians play music (not necessarily about technology), seeing local computer celebrities (like Chris Pirillo), out of town computer celebrities (like Craig['slist] Newmark [remote viewing], beloved well-compensated radio personalities (like John [in the morning] Richards), or just spectating as the computer society and a/v club graduates try to teach the indie kids to dance put their music in easily accessible downloadable formats you’re in luck: tickets are still available. Everything from the all-inclusive three-day pass to a la carte can be yours for a price between ten and one hundred dollars.

And if you miss it, I have a feeling that you’ll be able to catch up with the content by adding a link or two to iTunes. Just don’t turn it up too loud [msnbc]

The annual Seattle Home Show is going on through the 26th at the Stadium Exhibition Center. If you own a house, it’s worth the trip. You can find anything from pruning shears and cheap kitchen knives up to designers and architects who will work with you to build your multi-million dollar dream house.

Also, there are hot tubs. Lots and lots and LOTS of hot tubs. They must be a popular item around here.

Only a little over a week stands between me and one of my favorite times of the year, the 25 for $25 deal where in March and November, 25 restaurants step forward and offer a 3 course dinner for $25 or a 3 course lunch for $12.50. There are precious few other times where you can see so much optimism shine in my eyes, and yes, the other times also tend to be food related.

A couple of comments about next month’s food extravaganza.

The new restaurant participant is Six Seven, located on pier 67 (what a coincidence!) at th Edgewater Hotel. Never having been there, I’ll only point out that they’ve opted to provide both the cheapo lunch and the cheapo dinner. That’s always nice when a newbie restaurant does that. It’s almost like getting two for one.

And speaking of two for one, even though it isn’t listed as new, the Yarrow Bay Grill are putting their Beach Cafe to work — somehow I don’t remember them doing that before.

A cursory glance over the preliminary menus exposes two immediate facts. The pumpkin-based menu items are, thankfully, gone. My big hope is that no-one took advantage of them, and that they won’t be back this November. In their place, a few more restaurants have decided to offer selections from a cheese tray. Could this be a nod to those of us in the carb-conscious crowd?

The good folks at Treehuger.com wrote an article a while back about how much more expensive Whole Foods is, compared to WalMart. This of course, isn’t a surprise to anyone, but what was a surprise to me was the last time I got almonds. I like to duck in and grab a bag of almonds from their bulk foods section, and all through 2005, it was a pretty good deal at around $7/lb. Then comes 2006, and with it, a price change to $10/lb. Yes, folks, now it costs three bucks more for my almonds. That’s an almost-50 percent markup. Did I get a 50 percent markup in my salary? I don’t think so!

Also tugging away at my purse-strings is the movie theatre in Woodinville. They’ve long been the lone holdout in matinee prices, the place that was charging six bucks per ticket, when everyone else was charging more. In fact, last month, they ran a coupon for five-dollar-tickets during the week — a fabulous price at any time of the day or night. And this month? Up to $6.75 like everyone else. I stood staring at the ticket sales clerk for the longest time, before asking her if I was crazy, or if they had upped their prices. No, I wasn’t crazy, she assured me.

The theatre in Woodinville is where my friend and I went to see Firewall this week. A movie set in Seattle, it starred our favorite Seattle star, The Rain. It’s too bad The Rain didn’t get top billing, because let me tell you, we saw more of The Rain than we did of earringless Harrison Ford. In fact, aside from the sunny day start of the movie, and the watery-grey-but-clearing end, The Rain featured in every scene, plopping dramatically against Ford’s wide brow, and dashing itself against every window. I saw more of The Rain in that one movie, than I’ve seen here for the entire winter. Do you hate the sunshine we’ve had recently? Go see The Rain in Firewall.

Of course, you know, it’s not real rain. And it’s not real Seattle either, beyond carefully panning around at the beginning of the movie. Almost everything was shot in our sister city, Vancouver, and then, get this: for the view outside his office? They erased what was there, and put Seattle in! Because apparently it’s so horrible being here, with all the sun and all, that it’s easier to do it all on computer!

One of the bigger cases of hacking in the Northwest in recent memory: tens of thousands of accounts potentially compromised at the UW Medical Center. Apparently there was an organized, large-scale attempt to gain control of priviledged systems at the hospital (specifically, Active Directory Domain Admin passwords) for the last eighteen months.

The emphasis seems to have been on stealing the hospitals’ “disk space and high-speed networking”, presumably for distribution of pirated software, rather than any attempts at violating patient privacy. UW students and faculty, though not directly involved unless associated with the Medical Center, are now dealing with tighter controls on password strength and change frequency.

So, I was perusing the Slog just now and found an interesting little piece [slog] by Tom Francis in regards to the Alki Community Council [alkinews] meeting last night. I rarely pay attention to the council because, well, the ins and outs of whether or not a hotel should be on the beach don’t usually concern me. However, it turns out that I missed participating in a meeting last night that could affect me greatly. You see, one of the main agenda items was “How do we take our neighborhood back from unruly revelers?” It seems that some of the residents of Alki are concerned about the loud partying that occurs at the beach and the fall out that usually happens on their lawns and other property.
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