Valentines Day

So not to get mushy, but me and Heather had a pretty good Valentine's Day weekend last week. Each of us had a day to something for the other....On the Saturday of that weekend, Heather took me for a picnic on a beautiful day at the Scottsdale Civic Center. It was near a bunch of outdoor art and water features. We had some delicious tofu, kale salad, smoked pasta with mozzarella, and bread with Brie. Afterwards, she took me to the local arts center, where they had an interactive music display. One of the pieces allowed you to DJ, but alas, we were supposed to bring our own records. This was really a downer, considering that I want to learn how to DJ for some reason. After an uneventful visit to the bathroom (hint hint), we took off to eat some good ole ice cream. I got the dulce de leche, which literally was chunks of caramel on a cone.... a great end to a great day.

On Monday, it was my turn. The date officially began at 8pm, but first I had an intramural soccer game. Our team won 4-2; my fantasy stats looked good with 1 goal and 2 assists. I could have had 3 assists when I kicked a corner (that's right a corner) to the center and the header was missed high. Anyways, the reason I tell you this, is that after the game I had to run to the School of Sustainability and take a shower on campus. Our building has a shower because it is encouraging people to bike to work rather than drive in the heat.... Anyways, I digress again. After I showered and got ready, I took Heather to Studio Vino for a wine tasting. Although this wasn't your average wine tasting.

Smelling Oak Chips (see story below)

When we arrived, we met our friends Colin and Jenny, and were introduced to the owners. They informed the girls that we were here to taste 10 wines, eat appetizers, and select one of the wines to make. We would make the wine that night, then come back, bottle it, and design a label. Pretty cool huh? So we conversed through the tasting, enjoyed our company, while making the owner and our host laugh quite a bit... someone mentioned Indian Leg Wrestling, and all of a sudden we have the owners and girls asking us to do it in the studio... funny, but I lost both matches.

the leg wrestling

Anyways, we then proceeded to make the wine, which involved us pouring the grape concentrate into a bucket, mixing it with warm water, and oak chips (which we smelled), and stirring it with a huge power drill. Lastly, we poured the yeast in to make it ferment and we'll be back in a few months to bottle and cork it. Pics of are visit are soon to come, as soon as Heather shares them with me.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on what to put on our label design... my thought is to put some obscure country like Estonia and a year like 1962 on the label, to make it look vintage.

Odd things my girlfriend does...

(4) While it hasn't happened for probably 3-4 months, she'll meet me sometime in the afternoon or evening, and say, "Are you hungry?" If I say "Yes" or "why do you ask?", she'll pull some sort of leftovers (pizza or quesadilla) out of her purse... her PURSE.... and ask me if I want it. Of the 2 or 3 times she has done it, it has either been in a napkin or a plastic bag.... a louis vuitton doggie bag.

What's been happening?

Been a while here on the Nomadic Ute... sorry for any die hard followers (ha)! The month of January went by quickly... when I got back from Utah, Heather basically took my planner from me and wrote in all the dates and events that I had with her... I guess that comes with the 'leaving her for 10 days' situation... we had a launch party, housewarming party, and oh yeah, I went to Vegas with her for her friend's bday. I experienced my first sports betting, and I lost on 3 of 4 prop bets, which will likely discourage me from doing it again. Also, Vegas is just not worth doing anymore unless you have plans to go to shows; showing up and figuring it out only results in me losing money :)

We also went to Barret Jackson a few weeks ago... for those, like me, who had never heard of this, it's this huge car auction, where people with a lot of money congregate to ogle over fancy cars. A Shelby went for $350K.... and Rusty Wallace sold his NASCAR stock car for like $130K. Heather told me there is always a party atmosphere with celebrities galore, but there was not.. I was told that Kerry Wood (the ole Cubs pitcher) was there by a few her Dad's friends, but come to find out, it was some other Cubs pitcher I'd never heard of..... they pointed him out to me and I was like "that's not Kerry Wood." They say, "oh, so who is he?" I don't know, it's your pal. If I didn't go, Heather would have saw me later that night and been like, "Riley Riley, guess what? We saw Kerry Wood!" Pssshh

Other than that, I organized an intramural soccer team for our Grad School. We are the Flying "SOS"ers. Most of us on the team haven't played soccer since we were in 4th grade, but we won our first game this past Monday 5-3... surprisingly, I scored 3 goals, a hat trick. I wouldn't put too much on that though, as my 2 other frontline teammates did all the ball handling and just passed it to me beautifully so I could kick it in. For the next game, there just might be some celebrations, like tearing the shirt off and diving on the ground.