Can you imagine anything more decadent than that?
Yeah probably, but as we were eating them this afternoon at Charlie Palmer’s at Bloomingdales, accompanied by a glass of the Hartford Court Lands Edge Pinot Noir, I didn’t much care. 
They were that good!
At least you can negotiate wine prices. I didn’t try negotiating menu items.
Just returned from a weekend vacation in Las Vegas to celebrate our [Edie and me] 35th wedding anniversary. WOW! 35 years, that’s longer than a lot of people I know have been alive.
Oh well, but I digress!
All in all, this weekend was one of the more pleasant and memorable ones. We stayed at THEhotel at Mandalay Bay in a very comfortable 725 square foot suite. We saw Bette Midler on Saturday night, which surprisingly [at least to me] was very enjoyable. We then ate at Bradley Ogden after the show, Aureole on Sunday night [our anniversary], and RM Seafood Monday night.
All the meals were great, as were the wines. The most memorable being the 10 course dinner we had at Aureole on our anniversary, which is the main reason I’m 7 pounds heavier today, than when I left on vacation. But the best part of the weekend was negotiating the price for a bottle of wine at RM Seafood Monday night.
As I was perusing the wine list, I noticed a 2006 Dumol, Ryan’s Vineyard, Pinot Noir. I’ve had the wine before, and it was great, but the price at RM Seafood was nearly twice the price of the same bottle at Campanile in LA.
There were a few other good bottles of wine I could have ordered instead for less money, but at that moment I was in the mood for the Dumol. I just wasn’t willing to pay the price on the list. So after already having two glasses of wine in the hotel lounge, while we watched the Steeler game, and not thinking the waiter would accept my offer anyways (the wine manager was gone for the evening), I offered him 25% less for the bottle. Without hesitation, the waiter said “sold”.
Damn! Had I’d known it was going to be that easy, I would have offered him a lot less. Oh well, it was worth it, and it was a fitting end to a great weekend.
So that experience taught me a valuable lesson. No matter the circumstances, you don’t always have to accept things the way they are, or appear to be. Very little in this world is fixed in stone, and if you want something you think may be out of reach, you shouldn’t be afraid to try to reach it anyways. You never know, as in this case, you might just be successful. And besides, the worst that can happen is the answer is no, and you’re no worse off for trying.
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone for a bike ride this morning, after a relatively hard ride yesterday [but not overly hard], and a pretty fancy dinner last night, consisting of two especially good bottles of Pinot Noir (2006 Dumol Ryan’s Vineyard, and a 2005 Frédéric Mugnier, Nuit St. Georges, Clos de la Marechale), and just rested instead. But I’m a glutton for punishment I guess, and I refuse to let this feeling of malaise, I have been experiencing lately, continue. So I ventured out anyways.
I didn’t go with the club, since I got up late (remember those 2 especially good bottles of wine) plus there wasn’t a scheduled ride today, as the club was putting on a cyclocross race. Instead I went out by myself, and did my favorite ride, Turnbull Canyon.
I knew I wasn’t feeling that great, but I was able to make it up the first climb (Colima) struggling only slightly. It wasn’t until I started up the back side of Turnbull, that I realized just how badly I was feeling. After getting only a 1/3 of the way up Turnbull, a rider from the Banning Bikes group, which I passed earlier, while they were regrouping after Colima, went by me like I was standing still.
Now I realize I’m not the strongest rider around (far from it, noting I am 61 and anemic), and it may have been only a minute or two before they resumed their ride, but still it was demoralizing. Fortunately, I didn’t see anyone else behind him, so I tried picking up the pace [a little] in the hope I could at least stay ahead of everyone else, before getting to the top. I did manage to get to the top before anyone else caught me, but my time was really disappointing, and I think I paid for that little bit of extra effort on the way home.
The last 8 miles, which should have taken only about 25 minutes at most, took almost 32 minutes. I was didn’t have much left. Fortunately I can rest the remainder of the day, and hopefully after a little while, I might even feel like walking over to the park, and watch the remainder of the cyclocross races, if it’s not too late already.
I learned I don’t like going on vacations. Of course that’s really nothing new. I’ve always known that, but I can’t help myself. I just love the anticipation of going on vacation. It’s just that once I’m on vacation, all I can think about is getting back home.
[Is that what happens when you get old, and set in your ways, or is it just me?]
I also learned October is probably not a good month to go on vacation.
While this is supposed to be the warmest month of the year in San Francisco, it was anything but that on Saturday and Sunday. When we arrived on Friday, the weather was actually pretty nice. It was sunny, warm, and there was very little wind. Of course that all changed when the sun started to set. Not only did it get colder, but the wind picked up, making walking to dinner a little trying.
And it didn’t get any better the next two days, including the drive down the coast to Monterey on Sunday, where it was even colder and windier. We spent one night in Monterey, and then drove to Solvang the next day, where the weather, while not perfect, was much more tolerable. Plus the wine there is very good! We ended up buying 19 bottles in only a day and a half of wine tasting.
Another lesson I learned was not to drive a car into San Francisco. I definitely won’t do that again. Traffic is horrendous, and parking is unbelievably expensive. I ended up spending $54/night to park the car at the hotel where we were staying. [That is just ridiculous!] Next time I’ll fly, and walk (it’s not a very big city), or take a taxi or bus to where I want to go. $108 goes a long way in a taxi, and even further on a bus.
I also learned I don’t need to go to another lymphoma conference. For all the talk about how great our health care system is in the US, treatment options for cancer (which consist of infusing deadly chemicals into the body) haven’t really changed much in the past 40 years, except for maybe the reemergence of Bendamustine, an old East German drug [chemical] which is showing good promise in treating lymphoma. There is some new research going on, but nothing at all earth shattering, or that I didn’t know about already, but even those are years off. Hopefully I’ll still be around then, but I have my doubts.
I did get one piece of new information from of the conference, and that was, in addition to having MCL, I may also have Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma (CTCL).
You see, ever since my diagnosis with MCL, I have noticed a number of lightly discolored spots on my chest and back. They never bothered me, they’re relatively small, and they’re not very visible, so I never gave them much thought, that is until I saw pictures at the conference which bare a striking resemblance to what I have. The spots make up well less than 5% of my body’s total surface area, so if it is CTCL then it is likely a very mild form known as Mycosis fungoides (MF).
In about 10% of the cases, MF can spread to the blood, lymphnodes and other organs, but the spread in very unpredictable. In most people it progresses very slowly, or often times, not at all, which after 7½ years, just might be my case.
Of course it is possible I don’t have CTCL, as I was told by the expert, at the lymphoma conference, it is rare to have both a T Cell and a B Cell Lymphoma (MCL is a B Cell lymphoma), but it has been known to occur. And I have often been told I am a one of a kind individual.
It will be interesting to see what my oncologist has to say about that at my next appointment.
Worst of all though, it wasn’t until I got home that I learned I gained 4 lbs. I wouldn’t think that was possible, only being gone 5 days. I guess 5 days off the bike, and way too much food and wine, definitely takes it toll.
But it is good to be home, back in my own bed and back to my regular boring life.