I can't belive I lost $20. I never lose at poker, at least not that much. Luckily Mike won around $20 (probably all my money) so we pretty much broke even. Our typical poker crew is me, Mike, Josh, Bill, and Jay (a new addition who is working out pretty well). Jay brought Cliff (or Cliff bar), a friend of his from out of town, this week. Luckily, he was as loud and obnoxious as we were. Here are some pictures from poker night.

Typical games include: 7 card stud (duh), Follow the Queen, Beringer, the Triumvirate, Night Baseball, Duck it, Screw your Neighboor, and Guts (always played at the end of the night). At some point I will post the rules to all of these games plus some of our house rules.

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We decided to avoid staying in Oregon again and drove all the way home on Thursday. It took us about 15 hours but it was worth it to get home to my own bed. Sigmund, our very handsome Dalmation, was very happy to see us. His girlfriend Betsy staying at the house while we were gone. Sigmund loves Betsy. She is the best dog sitter we have ever used but she books up very early. We planned this vacation months ago totally around when she would be free.

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The downtown of Calistoga is designed in an old western theme. We are staying in a great cottage near downtown. The best part of our stop over in Calistoga was dinner. We ate at the Flat Iron Grill. The food wasn't bad but the main attraction was that all of the waiters and cooks that I could see were hot, 20 something guys. They wore baggy jeans and white button down shirts. Yummy!

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We attended a three hour tour called "Wine Essences" at Robert Mondavi today. It was pretty cool. The first part took place outside in their demo winery. The guide talked about grape growing and then let us taste some of the different grapes to show how the different grapes (Merlot, Cabernet, Chardonnay) influence the taste of the different wines. My favorite were the Sauvignon Blanc grapes. The second part of the tour was inside at a large table. The guide poured several varieties of red and white wines. We then were asked to indentify the fragrances in the wine (chocolate, berries, apple, etc.) We were aided by a massive table of wine glassed filled with every possible smell that can be found in wine. From leather, mushrooms, and dirt to mango, pineapple, and honey and everything in between. It really was a lot of fun trying to indentify the different smells int he wine.

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Mike and I decided to head over to San Francisco today. I was a little nervous to drive over the Golden Gate bridge and quickly turned the driving over to Mike. He got very cranky while driving due to the fact that there are no left turns allowed in the city. I guess it didn't helped that his annoyance amused me greatly. I couldn't stop laughing as we drove around aimlessly looking for China Town. We eventually solved this problem by calling our friend Sean. Sean also lives in Seattle. He is our "hip" friend who always knows where to go and how to get there. He was of course familiar with San Francisco and was able to direct us to China Town.

Once there we had lunch at "The China Town Restaurant". Really, that is their name. It cracked us up so we had tot eat there. The highlight of the trip were a couple of short hikes in Golden Gate Park (the Japanese Tea Garden) and the Presidio. I took an amazing picture of the Golden Gate bridge which is now my Windows background. I love my new digital camera!

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Our new accommodations are located at the Lodge at Sonoma and they were awesome. A friendly, pimply-faced valet parked our car and bought our bags to our new room as we checked in. I could tell things were getting better already. After getting comfortable in our room we decided to take advantage of the Raindance spa located in the lodge. We both got relaxing massages to work out the kinks we suffered from after a night at Andrea’s Hidden Cottage. After our massages, we sunned ourselves by the private pools outside the spa. (BTW – Mike told Nonnie we were checking out 4 days early, I chickened out.)

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