Barrels Full of Wine (-o's)

We returned from scenic Sonoma County a few hours ago. Our yesterday was spent in the company of some good-looking kids tearing around from winery to winery, drinking the finest Zins, Pinots, Cabs, and Shirazes, all for 10 bucks! Every year the wineries in the Russian River Valley do two consecutive weekends of barrel tasting, in which you sample their stuff that's still cooling its heels straight from the barrel. We brought down the property values a bit while we were there, but most of the winery people were smart enough to just pour us decent-sized samples and send us on our way. And now, the pics to prove it:

This is my favorite picture of Becky and I anyone's taken in a long time.

Sarah-Jane and Dave, en repose. Dave was our driver (he doesn't like wine.) After we got back to Santa Rosa he made up for lost time with some delicious vodka drinks. He earned 'em.

Becky, Sarah-Jane, and Sarah-Jane's sister Carrie-Ann. They're just huge on hyphenated names in that family.

Many a free sample later, we were ready to head back to town to diversify our "things we drank today" portfolio.

The bitch of the whole thing is that I woke up sick on Friday. It takes more than a head full of mucous to keep me from the vineyards, however, so I've spent the last few days thoroughly medicated. I keep the good people in our nation's pharm industry in business, at least when I have the sniffles. Anyway, we had a blast this weekend and I expect we're going to make it an annual event as long as we live in Cali.

Side note: It was nice to hear from some of the usually-don't-commenters on my last blog post. I only wish I could join my good-looking friends up in Portland for an evening's festivities watching America's Next Top Model...together.