Making Wine: More than Meets the Eye
January 31st, 2011
Peter Kitchak and I spent the weekend at his namesake winery in Napa racking wine. Racking wine is the process of removing sediment from the handcrafted oak barrels during the lengthy aging process. First each barrel has the wine drained, then the barrel is cleaned and lastly the wine is delicately pumped back into the barrel. The characteristic wine-colored stripe on the barrel indicates the barrel has been racked. This was the first year we had multiple vintages to rack, about 50 barrels, each representing 25 cases of bottled wine when the aging is completed.
It is a great hobby to hold me over this winter until gardening resumes in Minnesota.
Editor’s Note: Ready, Set, Go (under the knife)?
January 24th, 2011
As Editor and Filmmaker for the Nipntuck Blog, I have a unique vantage point in which to share patient’s experiences about their cosmetic surgery with our readers. As part of my research, I also follow new trends and catalog the latest cosmetic surgery headlines making the news. An article that we featured last week really piqued my interest. “About Face†was written by Contributing Editor for Vogue Magazine, Dodie Kazanjian.
Kazanjian concludes that if you want the best result for a facelift, opt to have one in your 40’s and if you wait until 60, basically forget it! Since I am awfully close to that “why bother†age, it made me start wondering about having a facelift myself.
Chalking it up to the winter doldrums, I joked with my hair stylist that he needed to give me a great perky haircut or I was going under the knife. Well Jason Deavalon is quite a formidable stylist and my hair did look amazing, but I am wondering if I should give serious consideration to having a little nipntuck of my own. My husband, the plastic surgeon, was decidedly quiet on the subject until I brought it up last week. Of course, he said it was totally up to me. I feel a slight obligation to look my best, lest I be judged too harshly due to the circumstances. My friends know me to be generally unaffected by what people think, so my concern comes as a little bit of a surprise to me. I’m thinking spring might be a good time for some “facial freshening.â€
Although I obviously won’t be able to film my own surgery, I can record a video diary and document my experience in a series of personal posts. Stay tuned!
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