Leaving on a Jet Plane

My dear friend, Kristin Frangione, just graduated from Cornell with her Master's in Agriculture Education this past December. Now she is student teaching and planning her career and her life.

Because she is super amazing and selfless and loves to help others. She applied to be in the peace corp.

With the economy the way it is, getting into the Peace Corp is no easy feat. Applications are through the roof these days (or so I hear.)

Here's how the process works:
Step 1: you fill out an application and they review all those to see if who they would like to find more about and continue in the process.
Step 2: If you make it this far, you are fingerprinted and they call a list of references, to see if other people think you are worth their time.
Step 3: You have a face to face interview. If this part goes well, you are nominated.
Step 4: Once you've been nominated, you basically have the job. As long as you can pass a background check.

This past Friday, Kristin, Ranatta, Judy and I met at CTB since she was in town for her interview (aka Step 3). Kristin explained to us that at the end of the interview, the interviewer had expressed to Kristin her interest in her and told her that she was to be nominated!

Kristin is going to western Africa in August for two years! Now its just a background check and learning French in the meantime.

Way to go Kristin!


sidenote: I just noticed that both Caton and I are in every picture of Kristin.

Uncovered.

Saturday night.
After spending the day touring 11 wineries. Somebody, I wish I knew who so I could tell them what a horrible idea that was, comes up with the great idea that we should all go to a strip club.

What?

I can't believe I even agreed to this proposterous idea. I have never even been to a strip club. While I consider myself fairly open minded. This has always been the one thing I politely decided I did not want to open my mind to.

But. I agreed. Actually, I don't even remember putting up I fight. I think part of me was a little intrigued to just see what it was like.

We pull up to what appears to be a triple-wide trailer. This? This is a strip club? I should have known then that we should turn around and leave.

We go up to the counter. $10 a person, the woman barks. Are you kidding me? That was warning sign number two that we should just leave. Isn't there any deals for groups? The guys try to reason with the woman. She lets us know if we have ten people it is five dollars a person. We have nine. This apparently is a no go. But there isn't even anyone in here. It's 8:30.  The woman didn't want to hear anything about that. So, we pay ten dollars a person. Crazy I know.

We walk into this dark room with chairs lining the outskirts of a gated stage area. The chairs were actually pretty nice. They were wooden, but the type of wooden chairs that you can really sink into, with arm rests and everything. These girls are coming out one at a time and dancing to two songs and then leaving. This was not at all what I expected. There is a pole in the center of the stage, that each girl meticulously cleans off before starting to dance. I don't know why they really bothered with that. They barely used the pole at all and although the pole was clean, they had no qualms against rubbing their completely naked bodies all over the floor and stage railing. Go figure.

Every girl basically did the exact same thing. Judy, Ranatta, Kristin and I were trying to figure out if maybe they have a class where they say....Ok. To be a good stripper you should get completely naked and swing your legs around. It is also really impressive if you slap your butt. Just do that repeatedly.

There was a really creepy old guy there. You know, he has this look like he thinks all the girls are his girlfriend. You can tell he comes there a lot and spends a lot of money because every girl makes a point to go talk to him while they're not on stage and everyone goes and does a little dance for him while they are.

I also learned that strippers go crazy for girls. Ranatta was the first target. The girl had Ranatta lay down on the wooden railing and she licked her stomach, leaving all her clothes on her. Then it was Kristin's turn. Kristin also had to lay on the wooden railing and the girl completely lifted Kristin's shirt over her bra and licked her stomach. Then, it was my turn. The girl had me lay on the wooden railing and started to lift my shirt up. I figured she was going to do to me what she did to Kristin. It's ok, I can handle that, I thought. But no. She didn't stop there. Not only did she lift my shirt up, but she also lifted up my bra. Are you kidding me? Did I just show my boobs to a bunch of Martin's friends. Great. For some reason, being the wife whose boobs everyone has seen isn't really the role I was hoping to fill. I would go ahead and say that trip was an epic failure.

At any rate, I won't be going back there....ever.

6 hours. 8 people. 11 wineries. exhaustion.

On Saturday, Martin and I went on an amazing wine tour. I absolutely love wine tours for a few reasons:
1. I love wine
2. The Finger Lakes makes great wines
3. A Wine Tour really brings people together.

It was kind of a random group of people to go touring with.
There was Martin and Myself ( we know each other because we're married)
There was Ranatta and Judy (we were all in the same sorority in college and now Ranatta and Judy are in vet school together)
There was Joe Zug (he graduated the year before Martin at Morrisville)
There was Steve Lane (he lived with Joe Zug and coincidentally works on the farm that Ranatta used to)
There was Jess Edsall and Brad (they are getting married. Jess went to Cornell with me AND to Morrisvile with Martin.)
So. yeah. Sort of a strange and disconnected compilation of people. I had never met Brad or Steve before yesterday. Ranatta and Judy had never met mostly anyone, other than Martin and I. When we were at Lakewood the wine pourer asked us how we all knew each other. 10 minutes into the explanation, we figured it probably would have been easier to say that we are just 8 random people that wanted to drink wine.

Sidenote: The reason I have gotten this far into the post without putting up any fabulous pictures from Saturday is because i forgot my camera at home. I was scared to write it for fear that Ingrid would jump through the cyber channels between her computer and mine and claw my eyes out. But, alas, I'm an idiot. So I really think that is sufficient enough of an excuse. And I've just written an admittance to forgetting my camera even after much reminding and prodding from Ingrid to take pictures and my eyes still seem to be intact.

Instead, I will be posting pictures of my purchases. Those, I was able to take after returning to my apartment and retrieving my camera.

The first winery we went to was Hazlitt. I love going to Hazlitt because it's a really fun atmosphere. It's not really a classy joint, they serve bowls of buttered popcorn to "cleanse the pallet" but it's definitely fun. Hazlitt is the home of Red Cat, the number one selling red wine in the fingerlakes region. Red Cat is a fun wine and is accompanied by a fun chant. everyone gets to do the chant when you go to Hazlitt, it's the last wine you drink. "Red Cat Red Cat its an aphrodisiac. Red Cat Red Cat it'll get her in the sac!" I bought a Bramble Berry wine here. It was delicious and you eat it with chocolate. Perfect dessert wine!

Next, we went to Red Newt Wine Cellars. While Red Newt doesn't offer the same atmosphere as Hazlitt, it definitely makes up for this in good wines. Red Newt has amazing white wines. I love dry whites and Red Newt definitely came through for me there. Here I purchases the Blue Newt White, a sweeter white that basically tastes like juice and that I think is going to be perfect with pears and cheese. I also really enjoyed the Salamander White which is a dry white and absolutely scrumptious.

Next up Atwater! This winery was fantastic because they were generous pourers AND they gave us chicken chilli to be served with this Vidal Blanc which I purchased. The chilli was amazing. As much as I love wine and drinking, I still love food more. This Vidal Blanc was buy one get one free and Judy and Ranatta convinced me that I need to get it to make with the chilli that was served. Apparently they want to be invited over for dinner. AND THEN, we had one to drink on the ride.

Next we went to Castel Grinch. This winery was strange. To say the least. It was way off the beating path in the woods, the wine pourer was a really old guy that kept talking about how he had buried 4 wives in his backyard and I couldn't really tell if he was joking or being serious. Also, I wasn't a huge fan of the wines. The had a tumbling falls series which I thought smelled just like toilet bowl cleaner. Not exactly the association I want to make with something I'm drinking.

Next stop. Lakewood. Another really fun atmosphere. This winery holds a special place in my heart because I went to college with the child of the owner. We has so much fun here and there wines are also really, really good. I decided to buy a dry red wine here so I could make some sort of steak to eat with it. Mmm. Mmmm.

After Lakewood, we went to Arcadian. The best thing about this place was they had a gorgeous black lab. I love black labs. Other than that, I wasn't too impressed. I mean. I understand serving tipsy people probably isn't the most fun job in the world, but it's the profession you've chosen - so get over and don't be stingy.

At Fulkerson, we tasted delicious wines again. Fulkerson has an amazingly huge selection of wines and they are all very good. I especially like this Traminette and can't wait to drink it. Maybe with some salmon?

Finally, and luckily, we went to Glenora. Judy had been asking about Glenora basically since leaving our apartment in Trumansburg. So when we got there, it was very exciting. One of Judy's friends from high school works there and happened to be working on Saturday. That was pretty exciting. Also, due to our "in" at the winery, we got to taste 12 different kinds of wine here. This is the winery that really put me over the edge as far as drunkenness goes. I should have bought wine here, but I had already bought a lot. So I decided to let Judy and Ranatta buy wine - I'll make them invite me over to drink it. Now I'm sorting regretting that decision because I don't know if I'll ever get to have the amazing sparkling raspberry flavor wine again!

Then, off to Hickory Hollow. As we walked in the door of this winery, one of the wine pourers whispered to another, "They are drunk." In an effort to prove them wrong we were extra interested in their efforts as wine growers and asked all the appropriate questions about the growing and fermenting process. We succeeded in winning them over and Martin might have picked up another farm to haul loads for Maybury's.

FOX RUN. I was very excited to go to this winery because their winemaker, Peter Bell, used to come into my Wines and Beers class all the time in college and I absolutely love their reisling. Peter Bell is basically the person that made me discover the beauty of Reisling Wine. Unfortunately, at this point in the wine tour I had not yet gone to the bathroom. So going to the bathroom was basically the only thing on my mind as I raced in there. Unfortunately, the bathroom was out of order. The owner told us we could go outside if we wanted to. Great. After one tasting, I had to go outside. So. I'm outside. Behind a dumpster. Peeing like I've never peed before. And someone walks by. Very Cool. At this point I was too embarassed to continue tasting and went to wait in the car. So I missed my favorite Reisling ever and didn't even get to purchase any.

Then. White Springs Winery. Once again. I do not remember this one. I think my relief at having relieved myself was so great at this point I was too busy basking in the bliss of that to notice anything else.

Lastly, Ventosa Vineyards. This is a really awesome, really classy establishment. I went to a wedding there this summer and I was so excited to return again Saturday night. It was the perfect way to end the wine tour. With a party. There was a live band and a ton of people and the sound of the buzzing of a hundred people talking and laughing floated through the air and I was just so happy to be there.

Can't wait for the next one. More on Saturday evening's events later....