Tempier Rose 2005

Jun 3, ’06 8:59 AM

By a happy accident, I bumped into Christine at Whole Foods yesterday, and she happened to have just put out their allocation of the 2005 Tempier Rose, so I was able to buy some and try it last night. The wine is deep salmon pink, and on the palate has huge body, like the 2002 did upon release. The flavors are herbal, with red fruit underlying the typically complex salty, almost “garrigue” nose.

Given everything that’s happening, I haven’t scheduled an annual rose tasting, but perhaps once I get an offer on the Seattle house and can get rid of the need to keep the staging pristine and intact, I’ll put something together. I’ve still got a bottle or two of 1999, and samples of everything since then of Tempier Rose, and it’s always good to see how this wine is evolving.

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I’m moving north!

Jun 3, ’06 8:03 AM

Well, it’s mostly official. I’m moving north, to San Juan Island. I found a terrific house last weekend, which looks like it has DSL capability, and the seller accepted my offer, so unless something happens during inspection, I’ll be closing in early July and moving my main base of operations up to the islands. My intention is to keep a small (studio or 1 bedroom) apartment here in Seattle, and split my time. I’ve still got plenty of things going on here in the city, so I imagine I’ll need to be down here part-time, and of course this is where friends and family all live.

My house here in Seattle is finally on the market. We had a well-attended broker’s open house this week, and there’s been a steady flow of folks checking the place out, and a few early buyers. This weekend ought to generate more traffic — three or four groups are coming today, and tomorrow we’re doing an open house from 1-4 p.m. So, if you’re looking for a house in Seattle, in the Maple Leaf/Greenlake area, come on by – here’s the listing.

I am also in the middle of petitioning the faculty at the UW Department of Anthropology to readmit me to the Ph.D. program. I won’t comment much on this while it’s in process, except to say that I’m looking forward to being back and resuming my research and studies. More on this as things develop.

I’m still doing work for the team at Microsoft, helping get the new program manager I hired situated and oriented. He’s an expert in the particular field, so I suspect he’s going to be very effective at driving the project forward. There’s definitely some folks I’m going to miss once I’m finished up, and it’s been a terrific experience, but as I’ve talked about, it’s time for me to take a different path.

Well, it’s almost 8 a.m. and that means I need to put away books and other evidence that I actually live in this house, and get it ready for showing.

A couple of very strong book recommendations, by the way:

Charles Freeman: The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason – a superb and fairly balanced history of the late Classical world, the origins and early development of Christianity and its integration into the power structures of the late Classical and early Medieval world, and in particular the gradual suppression of Greek philosophy and science. A superb book.

Stephen Eric Bronner: Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Towards a Politics of Radical Engagement – only midway through this, Bronner positions it as a “sequel” to Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialectic of Enlightenment, and to some extent as an antidote to the pessimism that their critique spread into critical theory on the key Enlightenment thinkers. Bronner argues effectively for the positive legacy of the European Enlightenment and that leftist politics needs to re-engage with this moment in cultural history in order to find its balance and center of cultural authority.

Just a couple more, quickly:

Malle – How the Mind Explains Behavior: Folk Explanations, Meaning, and Social Interaction

Lieberman – Toward an Evolutionary Biology of Language

Stewart – Letters to a Young Mathematician (just finished this – light but very interesting)

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Restaurant review: Steps Wine Bar & Cafe, Friday Harbor, WA

May 29, ’06 11:58 AM

On this weekend’s trip to San Juan Island to look at houses, I had the good fortune of stumbling into Steps Wine Bar & Cafe, in downtown Friday Harbor next to Pelindaba (the lavender store and internet cafe). Steps is the project of Madden Surbaugh, a graduate of the New England Culinary Institute. His mission is to present local ingredients and change the menu daily, pairing the food with an excellent wine list. Although the list naturally has a full spectrum of Washington and domestic wines, Madden stocks white burgundy and Chablis, Bordeaux, red Burgundy, Rhone wines, and even the Rare Wine Company “New York” Madeira bottling.

I discovered Steps while looking through real estate listings online at Pelindaba, next door, and when I poked my head in during the afternoon to make a reservation (they only take reso for large tables, btw), Madden and company were busily prepping for the evening meal. I got a look at the wine list, and spied a large pan of Swiss chard being prepped for greens. I was hooked, and went back that evening. Madden and his staff took care of me, serving the last bottle of the Dauvissat Vaillons 2000 Chablis (turned out to be Jean Dauvissat, not Rene & Vincent, but it was still terrific with the food), and several tasty dishes. I started with the mixed greens dressed lightly with a thin gorgonzola, walnuts, and cranberries, and Madden followed this up with two perfectly tempura-battered Westscott Bay oysters presented on a drizzle of shoyu cream sauce. This was followed by the “main course”: two small plates of asparagus risotto (perfectly done, with local asparagus and the right balance of cheese and vegetables) and sauteed Swiss chard with sesame and shoyu (which was amazing — and I’m not a greens fanatic normally). I finished with a wonderfully flavorful scoop of orange marmalade ice cream, and staggered back to the Friday Harbor Inn.

Saturday night, after looking at property all day, dinner was a half-portion of the salad, grilled asparagus with a lemon-tarragon mayonnaise, and a “turnover” of Albacore tuna, orange oil, and olives inside puff pastry. I also snagged a little taste of the prawns with cardoons and artichokes, which I liked better than the turnover, and is something I hope to have next time I’m in town if Madden has it on the menu. The lime soup and a glass of the New York Madeira made an excellent finisher, after accompanying the meal with the Jasmin Cote Rotie (vintage 1999, if I recall correctly, and terrific after half an hour of decanter time — very meaty and roasty on top of the sweet black fruit core).

Friday Harbor has come a long way in culinary terms — from Herb’s and the Downrigger (both of which still exist) or the Pizza place (which no longer exists in the same form) near Jim’s Meats (“You can’t beat Jim meats”) — to places like Madden’s Steps. No longer is the Duck Soup Inn the sole culinary destination on the island, and that’s a great thing, especially if you like good food and find yourself in the islands. I’ll be back, and I’ll be encouraging all my friends to go when they’re in the islands.

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Memorial Day Weekend in the San Juans

May 29, ’06 11:32 AM

Now that the house is (almost?) ready to go on the market (our target is this week), I spent the holiday weekend up north looking at property. Friday and Saturday were spent on San Juan Island, and Sunday on Orcas. Today I’m spending in ferry lines of monumental proportions — the penalty for looking at property while the rest of the world is trying to vacation.

But the trip has been a really productive one. There’s a property on San Juan Island I’m going to pursue, possibly putting an offer on it this week after I get more information on taxes, septic system, and homeowner’s association assessments (like many places in the islands, the water system is community-owned and maintained). But if it all works out, the property itself is pretty amazing and — given a reasonable sale price for the Seattle house — within my range. I’ll post pics and other details once I actually plunk down earnest cash and make a formal offer.

On the job front, I’ll be at Microsoft for another month — to assist with some ongoing projects and transitioning part of my position to a new employee (whom I just hired into our Swedish subsidiary). The agreement is that I’m going to be working remotely much of the time, given the move and other stuff going on, but it shouldn’t matter much since coordinating with Olof in Stockholm is a time zone and phone/email challenge whether I’m in Redmond, Seattle, or Friday Harbor. Collaborative tools like Groove, Communicator (the industrial-strength version of Messenger), Sharepoint, and email work well, but there’s a basic time-zone thing that technology alone simply can’t solve for us.

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Confessions of a Packrat

May 11, ’06 7:59 AM

Those who have been to my place won’t be surprised at how many boxes it’s taking me to pack my books: 26 total for the main floor of the house, not including the 3 foot stack of obsolete computer books I’m throwing out and the largish stack of “immediate access” stuff that I’ll pack at the last minute. That leaves the spare room upstairs, which has four full shelves and an assortment of still-packed boxes, so I’m guessing the total is doubled. Plus, there’s about 10 boxes down in the basement of academic-related stuff that has never been unpacked in this house.

But I knew the books were going to be bad, and display my packrat tendencies. The real surprise was the number of obsolete or dead computers lying around in nooks and crannies. Yesterday I had a junk hauler come and help get useless stuff out of the house, in prep for further packing and staging. Nowadays, of course, computers and monitors are tough to get rid of, because of recycling fees. So I had to estimate ahead of time for them how many of each I wanted them to haul away. Boy, was I wrong….the total turned out to be 9 dead computers and 4 monitors. Who knew? Well, I knew about the dead monitor and computer somebody dumped on the parking strip opposite my house (which is near a busy street) rather than recycling it themselves. And I knew about the dead 14″ monitor we had from the old days at Emergent Media/Allrecipes, that came with the dead server boxes from those days (including our first audio server, “Weismann” for those of my colleagues who may remember it).

But I’d completely forgotten about the Mac Centris 660AV and Applevision 14″ AV monitor in boxes in the basement, which hasn’t been out of the boxes since 1997. And I’d forgotten the old IBM Thinkpad 560X which died quite awhile back but was in a box. And the Sony Picturebook ultra-portable, which stopped reliably booting Windows ME a few years ago, and for which Sony wanted outrageous money to service.

They’re all gone now…and I feel good about that. Now if I can just find somebody who’s interested in used computer books from the late 1990’s, I’m set….

(We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming soon, I promise. Just have to get a few domestic things done fairly quickly!)

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More Changes…

May 7, ’06 1:03 PM

This time I’m really sorry about how lax I’ve been in writing. But some big changes are occurring, and I’ve been busy. For the last couple of years, as some of you already know, I’ve had health problems which I’ve been working through. I don’t want to discuss the details here on the web, since it’s really nobody’s business but my own, and I believe health information should be private.

The upshot of all this is that I’m realizing I need to do the things I care most about, while I can. And as most of my friends have been telling me for decades, I also need to slow down a bit, enjoy myself, and reduce my stress level. What this means is that I’m leaving the high-tech world, at least as a full-time job. I’m still involved in a few things from an investor and advisor standpoint, and I expect to do some consulting work here and there, as interesting projects pop up. But I’m going to be leaving Microsoft in a couple of weeks, and taking a bit of time off over the summer, before deciding what to do next.

I’m also in the process of getting my house ready to sell, with the goal of exiting the Seattle real-estate market, at least for awhile. I don’t believe it’s going to crash, particularly with strong expansion by Microsoft and strong in-migration predicted for the next five years. But I do suspect that real-estate elsewhere may be a better investment for the moment. I’m looking north, to the islands, for a little place with a bit of a view, a bit of quiet, room for my books and an office, but still with high-speed internet access. I’ll likely get a small apartment here in Seattle, since my family and most of my friends are here, my business interests continue to be here, and the University is here.

I’ll discuss more plans as they develop; I don’t want to discuss things which are still up in the air and out of my control, but I expect this to be an interesting summer. I also expect that I’ll have more time for writing and research, and thus I hope folks check back occasionally for some of the essays and pieces I’ve been working on sporadically. I hope to get back into the rhythm of things fairly soon.

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