kerewin's whine cellar

Torres

When we were in Barcelona we got an opportunity to tour the Torres Winery. This was taken in their museum, which not only covers the history of their winery but also a good portion of ceramic and pottery history of the area.

this is about where I can't sleep

My whole life I have been a sleeper. That is, I MUST have 8 (or more) hours each night or things don't go well. However, I have been cursed with this issue wherein I HATE to go to sleep, and once asleep, I never want to wake up.

Aside from all that childish behavior I also get to contend with insomnia. Sometimes it is the I-can't-fall-asleep variety which seems like childplay compared to the occasional (yet more and more frequent the older I get) I-woke-in-the-middle-of-the-night-and-now-can't-get-back-to-bed sort. I have all these tricks I learned or read about. I can count, I can make my head a blank slate and write out the things stressing me out (hi, yeah, I get it, I can't sleep when I am stressed out. However, I would like to go back to the age when just acknowledging the stress made me able to sleep.). I pretended there was a cleaner in my brain sweeping up random ideas and filing them into the right parts (oh yeah, did I mention the other time I can't sleep is when my mind gets in this crazy whirlwind and I can't slow it down?). My senior year of High School we learned how to do a partial self-hypnosis thing that used to lay me down in minutes. I have about a billion cures. I have my special "sleep bed" that when I go into it, it has a blanket that makes me fall asleep immediately (the spare bed, and this newest cure which was INFALLIBLE seems to be failing miserably now). The evidence is certain, these cures are strictly temporary.

When I was a kid I read that the average time it takes people to fall asleep is 7 minutes.

WHAT????? For me, 20 minutes is falling asleep quickly. But once asleep.....oh man........I won't go into the latest not-sleeping scenarios except to say that they seem very work-stress related. Until the last year or so there was never a time that I couldn't get back to sleep in about an hour with a little water, or peeing, or lotion, or a blanket, or throwing the blanket off.......that time seems to have gone away. Now if I wake at 4:30am I can't get back to sleep no matter how many times I try, or how many beds I check out.

Sometimes, though, I hover on the edge of sleep and not sleep and I snap to into full awake realizing that I must have just been fully asleep because the images in my head were not only not true, but also completely illogical that's when I think, "ahhhhhh, I was really asleep, I can roll over and crash out" rather than thinking, "oh SHIT! I can't sleep, DAMMIT!" That is a beautiful thing. This new oddness wherein I realize I wasn't awake for the last few minutes seems to have arrived with my new insomnia. Can't I have the fun asleep-while-I-think-I-am-awake without the never-going-back-to-sleep?

Maybe I need new pillows? (they seem awfully unsmooshy lately) Maybe I need to swap from summer duvet + under-blanket to full on Winter down comforter? Maybe I need.........?

Anyone out there with a fail safe cure? (again since comments are totally effed you can always e me at kerewin at mac dot com) I have tried reading (wakes me up), getting up and not treating bed as a place to be awake (hi, the whole HOUSE is apparently a place to be awake), hot baths (not practical at 4am but I might be willing in the future), tv? radio? those things keep me awake, I have to have NO NO NO noise while trying to sleep or my head gets all wound again, drugs? I never know ahead of time about the insomnia, and 4am is much too late to take anything if you have to get up and 8am. Also, I can't see myself as the kind of person who takes something every night. I am totally at a loss. I wish every night was a night wherein I woke up realizing that I wasn't actually awake, but dreaming, however that is just a (heh) pipe dream. HELP!

Food for thought

Got an email comment on my list of potential Presidential candidates for 2008 and I thought it was interesting and funny so I am printing it here:

Geeze, Kere

Don't include Pataki on your list. ...Unless you, in
Washington, would also like to see him out of New
York! The only way I would want him as Prez is to
share the grief with the rest of the country.

Our wonderful NY legislature has failed to approve a
budget on time for at least a decade. I'm not talking
a few days... rather months! Fun for the whole
country! The Gov hasn't lifted a finger to force them
to do their job! Not sure if there is even a budget
for 2004 yet, and the deadline was April 1. Figures ?
April fools day for our budget ? it does live up to
it. Meanwhile school districts have to borrow to keep
afloat ? and go deeper in debt. The budget timeline is
here:
http://www.nysenior.org/Advocacy/nys_timeline.html
but I think they are optimistic to think it might be
done by July any year.

Alternatively, Hilary rocks! She has shown grace under
pressure and has been very attentive to the dilemas of
rural NY while still embracing the cities. So I do
agree on her incluson.

Peace.

Med

Thanks Medusa! Good to know. How in the world can you not have a budget in November for the current year??????????

Stealing thrift

Giving credit where credit is due, I totally stole this link from Peace Dividend:

YEAH!

oh yeah, don't be a hater, yo

White Loire Wine

I tried this Sauvignon Blanc the other day and was completely blown away. It comes from Touraine which is just outside (or is it just on the edge?) of the Sancerre area of France. This would indicate that the wine would be very green and grassy with a lot of grapefruit flavor, which can be quite delicious. Instead, it starts out that way just a teensy weensy bit. Then, you get this lovely steely mouth feel and a finish that I can only describe as the flavor you get from a really nice Chablis. This wine is elegant and tastes great on its own, but is also terribly food friendly. The killer is the price, where a good Chablis starts around $20 and just gets more expensive, this little beauty only runs about $11. If you are looking for it in a wine shop and they don't have it, just let them know it is a Robert Kacher Selection.

In other news, tomorrow I am going to attend a Cooks and Books dinner at Brasa. The author is Anthony Bourdain and after having spent the day reading about him and his life, I can't WAIT to go! This will be interesting seeing it from the other side of the counter and in a completely different venue.*

*side note: Before my current job, I was the manager/wine buyer/maitre 'd of the original restaurant that helped to launch the Cooks and Books series in Seattle.

Should be a good start to the week!

Long story short, Remy helped me deal with an ip glitch that combined with a high spam filter was keeping people from commenting. We did a side run around, of course, so I will only enable comments on current posts. YAY!!! thanks Remy, as I always say, "you're the BEST!"

UPDATE: Nope, the spam filter thingee is still blocking all comments, so I turned them off again...........*sigh*

Commentary

So the comments apparently don't work. Humbug. At least now I have an excuse as to why no one ever says anything anymore.

If you want to drop me a line, you can always do so at kerewin at mac dot com.

It seemed like each day in Sevilla we walked by this building, but from different angles. So then I would say to the Hub, "Hey, that's a really beautiful building!" and he would reply, "Yes, you said that yesterday."

the most optimistic pessimist I know

I find myself a bit depressed today because a majority of my country has just proved that the ultimate reward isn't bestowed on hard work and morality, but rather stupidity and corruption. Now I could just lay down and die, or I could move all my precious belongings to another country. OR I could consider that fairly soon good ol' Dubya, will make some gaff that pisses lots of people off and it will make it impossible to get any of his primary objectives passed, effectively making him a lameduck president. Also, I could think about all the many more worthy people who are going to possibly run the next time around. On both sides of the coin there are intelligent, compassionate people who have proved themselves capable of dealing......politically.

When we were in Sevilla, we took a walking tour with a woman who called herself Carmen (and since my name when I lived in Argentina was Carmen I wanted to do the tour), you know the one from the opera, who was from....Sevilla, of course. She walked us all over the town and gave us a good bit of history both of Carmen and Sevilla, in general. She was a complete nutter. She did explain something to us that I had wondered about, however. Every city sign, and many other things, like manhole covers had this symbol on it. NO [some sort of twisted rope or something] DO. Well, there was a King who had a son who tried to overthrow the King, with a bunch of ruffians he rallied from outlying towns. All of the Sevilla citizens backed up the King and he wasn't defeated because of it. The King rewarded his citizens for their loyalty by making a sign to thank them. It was a NO with a skein of wool followed by DO. The Spanish word for "skein of wool" is medeja. Commonly in phrasing of "have not/or had not" lazy people leave out the "ha" that goes after the "me", So if you add in the "ha" and split up the medeja and add the "do" to that it is "No me ha dejado" or, "the city hasn't deserted me." He made it the symbol of the city. (Yeah, THAT wasn't complicated)

Now is the time to stay. Now is the time to help educate our country (ie the south and the midwest) about rights. Now is the time to think of all the LOVELY, lovely people who will probably run for president in 4 years. Now is not the time to give up, now is the time to think positively.

Republicans

• Chuck Hagel, Senator, Nebraska


• Rudolph Giuliani, former NYC mayor


• George Pataki, Governor of New York


• Elizabeth Dole, Senator, North Carolina

Democrats

• Elliot Spitzer, Attorney General, NYC


• Evan Bayh, Senator, Indiana


• John Edwards, former Senator, North Carolina


• Hilary Clinton, Senator, New York

All credit for any optimism I have today goes strictly and solely to the Hub. He's the one who pays attention to the issues and reads every article in every New Republic, and truly is the best person I know.

Side note to the fabulous Hub: Congrats sweetie, Seattle REALLY REALLY loves the monorail! Now we will have 2 cool buildings AND a cool public transportation system!