This week’s Whine Blogging Wednesday is a short one. Not because I don’t have plenty to whine about. I do still have that whole House Fiasco to cover, you know. (You thought the bathroom was bad? Just wait!) Oh, and then there’s this heat. I mean what’s with the hundred-degree days, I ask you? I’m like three-eighths Scottish. I start melting when it stops raining.

Nah, the issue, as you can plainly see is fur-related, and you’re just getting a sneak peek. And really, it’s not so much an issue but a minor inconvenience, which could easily be solved by installing a bed of nails between my keyboard and the monitor. Or perhaps a lake. Or loch, as I prefer. With invisible, feline-deflecting monster.

Now, next week — next week, there’s no whining on Wednesday. Not a scrap of whining allowed. Why? Because next week’s Wednesday is my birthday and I fully intend to do right by it this time.

(When one spends one’s previous two birthdays on a tiny island away from all one’s friends, one gets rather pissy about it and one vows to do right by one’s next birthday.)

So, the plan: I am making a list. (Have I mentioned I love lists? I should do a quick site search to see how many times I’ve mentioned I love lists and then make a list of… oh never mind, you get the idea.)

This new list?

Forty Five Neat Things To Do On My Birthday. The goal: Collect a list of at least 45 neat things (that don’t take all day or destroy my bank account), and attempt to do as many of them as possible between sunrise on the 18th and sunrise on the 19th. (I should note that I didn’t invent this idea; I just borrowed it from a friend with a recent birthday because it was simply too cool not to use.)

Of course I’ll blog on the Big Day — but alas, no moblogging or voiceposting as I lack them newfangled technogadgets — and I’ll even share pictures because for some bizarre and unexplainable reason, my flashcard reader is functioning again. (Lappy is still quite dead, though, but that’s a whine for another time.)

There is one discouraging part (and I won’t whine! I won’t!): Chopper has to work that day. ALL day. From seven a.m. well into the evening. So, for the vast expanse of my daytime birthday, I’m on my own. Or, with friends just crazy enough to join me.

And I need a list.

(It’s WBW: Share your whines in the comments and while you’re at it, help MizD plan her birthday!)

MizD: Look! Just look what they did!

Chopper: (with a heavy sigh) I know. I know.

MizD: But — But —

Chopper: You need to get it out of your system.

MizD: All of it?

Chopper: Yes. All of it.

MizD: At once? Like, maybe in a blog post?

Chopper: If it works for you, baby, then yes. In a blog post.

MizD: Hah! At last! I have a reason to bring back Whine Blogging Wednesday!

This week’s episode: House: F.U.B.A.R.
(or, what part of “no substantial changes” did the tenants not understand?)

Once upon a time, we had a cute little Victorian bungalow and it was well on its way toward restoration as a perfect and cozy sanctuary away from the grind of the workaday world. Oh, all right, maybe half on its way if I’m going to be perfectly honest about it. It still had its share of problems. Damaged floor in the bathroom, cracked window in the living room, kitchen in dire need of a makeover. But all in all, it wasn’t too shabby of a little house for being almost a hundred years old, and we’d put many long hours into chipping away at our Big List of House Projects.

Some of our improvements were small: A new ceiling fan for the kitchen, a new light fixture in the bathroom. And some – three in particular – were quite the challenge. Those three: The bathroom, the studio, and the yard.

One: The Bathroom.

Our bathroom is tiny. Seriously tiny. It is, as they say, a one-ass bathroom. We’ve yet to tackle the ugly shower walls, or the sink counter, or the floor, but we did take on the rather ominous job of painting the walls. Eh, it’s a small room. No big deal, right? One gallon of paint and it’s done? Hah. This place has nooks and crannies that would scare the crap out of a cockroach. It’s not just a major pain in the ass to paint, it’s a major pain in the ass just to reach around the toilet tank to clean.

(Yeah, ick.)

So, when we took on the task of scrubbing it down and prepping the walls for painting, we knew we’d have to pick a good quality paint and a nice rich color that wouldn’t show off every steam-laminated dog hair that clings to its surface. Seriously. Dog hair. It migrates to the bathroom like swallows to Capistrano, only by the hour, not by the year. Trust me. I’d need to be Joan Crawford on speed to keep up with that cleaning project.

We went for a coffee color and found faux antique bronze fixtures to match. The eventual plan was to redo the shower in tile of various shades of cream, brown, and black. Ditto the floor. Very cappuccino. Very au lait. (Or au soy lait, to appease my crabby digestion.)

We made it as far as the paint job and the cabinet hardware before we had to move north. Of course, that didn’t stop us from further planning: Let’s do something with slate so it’s all dark and rustic. Let’s get a clawfoot tub!

And then we came home…

…and discovered the tenants had repainted the bathroom pale blue with crappy paint and not much of an eye for staying between the lines. (I bet they suck at coloring books, too.) The hardware’s mostly still there, though blue-tipped in places, but there’s a curious absence where the sliding door to the toiletry cabinet once was.

Oh, and the dog hairs? So, so visible.

But you know what? This is nothing. This is, comparatively speaking, a weensy whine; a warm-up before part two and then the grand finale. Renters, they repaint all the time. It’s when they tear things apart and muck with the landscape that things really get interesting.

MizD: There. I whined about the bathroom.

Chopper: All out of your system yet?

MizD: Not exactly. I’ve still got the studio and the yard, and then there’s all those little things… windows painted shut, mildew from the houseplants… I could go on and on.

Chopper: But it’s Whine Blogging Wednesday, not Whine Blogging Week.

MizD: Hey. WBW. Same initials. Who’s going to notice?

Chopper: (another heavy sigh) You will have this out of your system when you’re done, right?

MizD: (fingers crossed behind her back) Of course, pookie. Why would you ever doubt me? Blogging is cathartic. I’ll be just peachy dandy about the condition of the house next week.

Chopper: You will?

MizD: Absolutely! Especially if you clear all these boxes of kitchen crap out of the living room!

Chopper: Oh, yeah, that.

It’s baaa-aack.

Today’s whine from MizD is brought to you by the letter I for Irritable Intractable Impeded Internets.

Here goes:

Once upon a time, many months ago, before MizD dropped everything to go care for her ailing parents, she had a growing web design business. Okay, it was slow-growing, like asparagus in Alaska (she imagines), but point is, she had opportunities to build her client base and actually do well at this web design thing. Then, she moved to a tiny island where not only did everyone’s websites look like they were designed by Front Page version 1.1 circa 1996, but MizD’s caregiving efforts took precedence and the web design fell by the wayside.

Now, many months later, MizD has returned to her roots in Portland and she, with meager savings from a summer’s work in tourist retail, is determined to dive into the freelance thing again. She is excited. She has many ideas. She knows that some success in this endeavor may even give her and Chopper the resources they need to start a culinary business together. She forges ahead.

Or rather, she would forge ahead, but MizD is stuck in a place with crap-for-internet service. In short, there’s a big nasty hairball in her tube and she’s completely lacking in CyberDraino.

Why just yesterday, MizD attempted to upload a single CSS file for a client’s website, and it took her an hour because of how many times the connection failed.

So, what did MizD do? What every frustrated geek would do at that juncture: She stomped out the door of her tiny cave, trudged down the street to the nearest coffee shop and ordered a double espresso.

And when she received her rich, supposedly mood-enhancing beverage, she took a single sip, opened her sleepy eyes, and promptly wept at her surroundings.

For MizD was in a forest of wireless laptops. Laptops at every table, and at each one, fingers tap tap tapping away, writing blog posts, shopping, networking, surfing the web at 21st century speeds. She was, in a word, surrounded by productivity and none of it was hers.

Alas, all MizD could do was drink her now bitter espresso and wander back to her cave to spend another hour trying to upload a new index file for a soon-to-be-annoyed client’s website.

Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tube (beyond the hairball). For in just two short weeks, MizD will be out of this cave of antiquity and two weeks after that, MizD will be in her own home at long last, and there, at long last, she can make leaps and bounds toward her ultimate goal of freelance success.

Providing she doesn’t run out of money and clients first, she thinks, glaring at the evil hairball that looms before her at every turn.

(And speaking of turns… got something to whine about? Share the love!)

Since we here at Belly Timber are just too darned swamped to cook this week, we’ve decided to launch a new tradition:

Whine Blogging Wednesday!

That’s right. Forget the pairings and the earthy undertones and that three foot square terrior that’s so unique because it’s where old Vintner Joe buried the mule 45 years ago, it’s Whinin’ Time.

Go on. I’m sure you’ve got something to whine about. Share the love.

Here. I’ll start:

4:30 am wake-up call for catching the ferry out of town.
Far, far too many hours on the freeway.
More complicated logistics than you can shake a stick at.
and…
Five and a half days without blogging because Mrs. D’s ancient laptop is about as dead as Vintner Joe’s mule.

Cross fingers we can steal a moment on a computer while we’re away.

Meantime, whine amongst yourselves.

On June 3rd we took a road trip to Seattle and indulged in a wee bit of geeky revelry. Here, at long last, is our trip report.

1. The party begins with a cheese sandwich.

It’s the beginning of February and we’re waist deep in The Great Cheese Sandwich Controversy of 2006. Chopper’s just grilled up this crazy tuna melt extravaganza, and I’m all set to blog on it, when I see this post over on Food Blog S’cool. Andrew of Spittoon is pointing us toward free wine from the Stormhoek Winery in South Africa. Free wine? Cool! How can I pass that up?

So, I head over to gapingvoid and the free wine blurb …. and get utterly sidetracked reading Hugh Macleod’s most excellent manifesto on How to Be Creative. Now that’s what I’m talking about, I think, and promptly rewrite my first cheese sannie post, pack my bags, and run off to the crazy land of Gastroblogia.

And then, I sign up for the free wine, because first of all, duh, free wine, and second of all, this whole Geek Dinner thing is just plain cool.

Now, where to go to find a bunch of geeks?

2. Dude! Seattle!

Of course, the next thing I do is contact our good buddies over at Clawfoot Bathdog and say Hey! We need geeks! Oh, and we’ve got free wine!

Naturally, they jump on it.

Of course it helps that we offer to cook. A lot.

3. You want us to cater your what?

Because, see, not only do we seriously dig cooking for parties, but later this summer — end of July to be exact — we’re catering our first wedding. Or, to be more exact, we’re catering our first wedding that’s not our own wedding. In a word: Yikes! In four words: we need to practice. A lot. Okay, that’s six words, but point is, this party gives us a great chance to not only show off our cooking chops to our geeky Seattle friends, but refine the art (or chaos, as the case may be) of preparing great food in someone else’s kitchen.

So, we dedicate many hours in May to discussing recipes. Menu items are discarded for being too time-consuming, too messy, or too costly in ingredients. Other menu items stay on the menu despite being too time-consuming, or too messy, or too costly in ingredients. Eventually we find a moderately happy medium and begin the at-home prep work prior to packing up our whole kit and caboodle for the trip to Seattle.

And naturally we run out of time to prep everything we want to prep ahead of time, so now I know I’ll be spending at least two hours before the party rolling truffles. (Note for future reference: don’t let this happen at the wedding.)

4. Once again: Dude! Seattle!

We arrive the night before and of course the first thing we do is stay up too late. Never fear though, that’s what annoyingly grating alarm clocks are for. Next morning, somewhat bright and moderately early, we head down to Pike Place Market and complete our party shopping.

The thing about Pike Place is you don’t want to have to shop in a hurry. The thing about our recent visits to Pike Place is we’ve always had to shop in a hurry. This time, we rush through the outdoor stalls and then hit Sosio’s Produce, where we snag some mighty fine looking fruit and a couple of ginormous yams for Chopper’s mixed tempura veggie platter. I want to stay and look around, or at least snap a few decent photos, but we’ve got to run. We’ve got to hit the neighborhood grocery store and then head over to the party location by noon or we’ll never get our cooking done in time, truffle rolling or no truffle rolling.

5. Belly Timber’s Circus of Innovation and Libation.

That’s what we call it on the Geek Dinner Wiki, but in truth, libation leaves innovation at the starting blocks and hits a hundred meters in nine seconds flat. Not that we don’t hobnob with about fifty seriously cool and creative people (most of whom rarely ever update their blogs, ahem, and yeah, look who’s talking), but the topic drift from creative ventures to Damn, this pinotage rocks with the chimichurri is both abrupt and overwhelming.

Eventually we give up, give in to the great cosmic party magnet that is a fine spread of wine and food and say, screw it, let’s indulge.

Regular readers of Belly Timber may recognize the chickpea spread and a variation on the fritters from May’s Paper Chef. Shame on us, repeating ourselves like that! Readers may also question the two “spicy” items at the top of the list. Well, let me assure you that while the meatballs are just spicy, the brochettes are SPICY. So spicy that I have to snag the little title card I’d made for them and change SPICY to

6. And about that libation…

There’s a reason for spicy.

We cheated. Well, not exactly cheated, but see the fabulous folks at Stormhoek sent us lots of wine and we had more of the pinotage than anything so we just had to sample it first. So, we tested a bottle, promptly loved it to death, and declared its rich, blackberry flavor perfect for a kick-ass spicy food pairing.

Oh darn, Chopper says. I have to go spicy again, what a shame.

Right. Like I can ever get Chopper to cook bland food.

Now, back at the party, granted, the libation factor is at a level that doesn’t exactly lend itself to the finer points of sommelierity (oh screw it, of course sommelierity is a word), but we do reach the conclusion that Stormhoek’s pinot grigio goes quite nicely with the tomato basil fritters, and their sauvignon blanc is a fine match for the savory chicken and mushroom pate. But the pinotage? Seriously, if Chopper would cook spicy foods every night for a year and pair it with that pinotage, I’d be in red wine heaven. Love it to death, I say.

7. And when the party’s in full swing…

…we discover our fabulous hostess has been keeping a secret from us. There’s a reason for that mirror ball in her back room and it’s not to con us into a re-enactment K-Tel’s Discomania, featuring Boogie Oogie Oogie by A Taste of Honey. No, it’s much better than that.

It’s karaoke!

Because nothing screams creative amateur hour in all its exuberant participatory glory quite like a pinotagedly (yes, that’s a word too, dammit!) giddy Mrs D and Chopper Dave luring the crowd into a sing-along with the Worst Journey Song Ever.

Ah, but it didn’t stop there. Neil Diamond! Meatloaf! Ozzy! The Madonna Like a Prayer dance party! Sheryl Crow in the style of Rammstein meets Klaus Nomi!

Oh, I could go on, but I won’t. It’s far too scary. And we have pictures to prove it.

8. Again pls, thanx!

No more parties for us while we’re stuck on this rock, but oh let me tell you when we finally get back to Portland we’ve got plans. Big, crazy, collaborative plans. (Plans we can’t talk about just yet, so shuush already!)

And big, crazy, collaborative plans always go down well with wine.

Special monster thanks to Stormhoek for the great wine, to Hugh Macleod for setting up the whole Geek Dinner thing and for the cool swag, to our co-coordinators at Clawfoot Bathdog, to our fabulous house hostess, Dawn, and to all our wonderful collaborators in revelry!

Oh, and PS: more party pics over at Paul’s photo gallery!

Since we here at Belly-Timber are all about cheap wines on a cheap budget (Mmm, Gato Negro, baby…), we’ve yet to participate in Wine Blogging Wednesday. It’s not that we don’t like good wine — we love it and cherish it and wish we could take it home and show it a good time more often — it’s just that, well, to be blunt, we’re cheap. If we’ve got thirty bucks to blow on a nice meal at home, twenty of it’s going into Ahi steaks and the ten bucks we’ve left is getting us the largest amount of wine we can find this side of a box. We do not do boxes.

This month, we make an exception.

It’s Local Challenge month and the assignment for Wine Blogging Wednesday is “Drink Local. Real Local. … Drink a wine from the winery nearest to your apartment/house/shack/bungalow/flat/tent.” Lenn from Lenndevours has even threatened to get out the atlas and fact check, just to be sure we’re not cheating. I figured we’d save him the trouble, so I did a little checking of our own with Yahoo Maps’ handy driving directions function and came up with this short list:

1) San Juan Cellars. At 5.3 miles from our home, they’re definitely the closest, but there’s a catch. The location isn’t so much a winery as a gift shop wherein they sell their wines, all of which are made with grapes grown in Eastern Washington, at least 150 miles away. Not exactly what I had in mind for drinking local.

2) Westcott Bay Orchards. A bit too far away for our purposes at 15.9 miles, but they’re worth mention as a unique winery that produces a tasty hard cider from “vintage” European cider apples. They’re on our list to check out in the near future.

3) Lopez Island Vineyards. Yahoo Maps failed me on this one, but I’d say 6 miles as the gull flies. Or as the orca swims. You get the picture. They feature several estate-grown wines and are a perfect choice for a visit … if the visit didn’t involve a full day off and a battle with tourists over space on the inter-island ferry. We’ll be saving that one for later as well.

4) San Juan Vineyards. Ah, here we are, just 8.9 miles from the house, and they grow their own! Time for a quick road trip!

The winery, established in 1996, is located three miles northwest of Friday Harbor on Roche Harbor road. B. of Culinary Fool visited last month and wrote about a camel she spied amongst the cows across the road. We missed the camel, but discovered instead this rather charming cat in the parking lot. A cat who fell deeply in love with the bumper of our Caravan and refused to leave without serious coaxing.

To the right of the parking lot sits the gift shop and tasting room. A century ago, this same building was San Juan Island’s one-room school house. Up the gentle, south-facing slope from the shop’s deck are outbuildings for the wine’s manufacture, a tiny chapel (available for weddings, of course), and beyond that, eight acres of cool-climate varietal grapes, designated for the production of the winery’s two Estate grown wines, Madeleine Angevine and Siegerrebe.

The first of the two Estate grown wines wasn’t available for tasting, so we zeroed in on the second, eager to discover what a truly local wine could offer us — and we were not disappointed.

The Siegerrebe has a citrus bouquet but with hints of spice, and the flavor — spice, honey, grapefruit — was delicate, not overpowering, but sweet enough that we both thought this wine would be best served as an aperitif or with a single, subtle dish (steamed butter clams or crab would be my local choices).

It might seem surprising that island-grown grapes could produce such a sweet wine, except that the San Juans have the geographical fortune of resting in the rain shadow of the Olympic Mountains. With its own collection of microclimates, our island gets just 18 to 28 inches of rainfall a year, compared to a whopping 120 in the little town of Forks on the peninsula’s western edge. Seattle, a part-time rain shadow beneficiary, gets 37. East of us, the Cascade rain shadow provides the Yakima and Columbia Valleys with one of the best grape-growing (and apple-growing) climates in the Northwest, and this is where many Puget Sound wineries get all but a select few of their varietals.

San Juan Vineyards ships regionally; their website lists a number of restaurants, grocers, and specialty shops in the Islands and in other parts of Washington that carry their wines. Where Chopper and I work, we carry the Chardonnay by the bottle, and their 2002 Syrah (a three time gold medal winner) is our house syrah.

We left the vineyard with a bottle of the Siegarrebe for $13.75 and a bargain: a three-for-twenty sale on their Semillon Chardonnay. There’s not a chance those four bottles will last us the month, but we’ve just scratched the surface of drinking locally. We’ve got Lopez Island and some hard cider ahead of us, and, come to think of it, it’s been far too long since we’ve headed down to the pub for a pint of locally-brewed Moggy Mild.

For more food blogging and photos from San Juan Vineyards, check out B’s post at Culinary Fool!