We are in Chicago for Lauren and Michael’s wedding. Last night, Friday, we went to the rehearsal at Holy Name cathedral, followed by a tasty dinner at Wildfire.

Several weeks ago I had a paper from my UNC days accepted to PLOS Genetics… today it was officially released online: “Systematic Identification of Balanced Transposition Polymorphisms in Saccharomyces cerevisiae“.

Careful, don’t read it all at once :)

We arrived in San Francisco late last night, and made our way to St. Helena this morning. Today we tasted wines at Rombauer, lunch at Domaine Chandon, Jarvis, Silver Oak, and finally Beringer. Tomorrow includes lunch at French Laundry and tasting at Joseph Phelps. It’s a rough life, we know :)

We’ve been a bit lax with updates, in part because we post many of our quickie updates on Facebook, but so far we’ve had a great month. Some of the highlights:

• Had one of my UNC papers accepted to PLOS Genetics, a well-regarded journal
• UNC won the NCAA men’s basketball tournament – Go Heels!
• Tax refund from the state, and nothing owed to the Fed.
• Parents visited for Easter – great dinners at The Mint and 18 Seaboard in Raleigh, and a nice paella at home for Easter dinner.
• U2 tickets for next October in Raleigh
• One hour later we jumped on a great deal to Lima, Peru, over the Labor Day weekend for less then it would cost to fly to Chicago!

Last night we attended a Loire wine tasting lead by Sheri Sauter-Morano at 3CUPS in Chapel Hill. Sheri is a certified Master of Wine who lead us on a geographic tasting tracing the Loire river valley from west to east. The Francois Chidaine Montlouis demi-sec was our favorite, a lovely chenin blanc that tasted of sweet honey. Of course, the Loire Valley is well known for it’s white wine, and this tasting didn’t disappoint, as all but the Bernard Baudry Chinon (cab franc) were white wines.  A wine tasting dominated by white wines? Yes please!

We learned some interesting tidbits about the Loire Valley, and the overall tasting reinforced our opinion that Loire wines go great with food (see cheese above as exhibit A). The next class, on German/Austrian wines next week, looks good too, so we’ve convinced my parents who’ll be in town for Easter to come along too.

Three months into our relationship Leandra made me these cookies:

How could I not be smitten?  Neither of us are big on Valentine’s day, but we do like an excuse for a special meal. ToniteLeandra is making her famous cheese fondue that we’re pairing with a Veuve Clicquot champagne. A bit fancier perhaps,  but I’ll always appreciate cookies!

I’m in San Diego for the Plant and Animal Genome conference, and since Alamo is running a great $10 a day weekend deal, I have a car till Monday for $36 total. Nice.

After checking in to the hotel, I drove down to South Mission Beach and walked along the ocean front walkway. After a day in airline seats it was a perfect antidote! I stopped in to Cane’s to watch the sunset -  a bit touristy, but the view is unbeatable, and my southwest spring rolls were good.

This morning I went to the Hash House a Go Go for breakfast and had the turkey and bacon hash. It was enormous, easily enough for two people, and about $12. More importantly, it was a good mix of flavors and quite tasty.  I’m pretty sure that I won’t be eating again until dinner time.

We’re all a bit tired from our trip up to NY, but Riesling is definitely the worst off: At this point she’s wishing for an early dinner and and an early bedtime for Christmas Eve. If she gets a new squirrel that would be fine too.

Merry Christmas everyone!

How’s that for a look? Leandra has been back in FL visiting her sick grandmother, and Riesling has sorely missed her. Lots of moping, checking every car that drove by just in case… and quite a few of these looks. Poor girl.

On Friday, Leandra braved the crowds and went shopping early, then played golf with her family in the afternoon. Since I’m not partial to shopping or golf, I rented a kayak from Ray’s in Bradenton and spent several hours paddling ~5 miles upstream, then back down again.

It was an absolutely perfect day for kayaking with no wind, 70 degree temperatures, and very few people out on the water. Along the way I found some swamp lilies in bloom:

I also saw a number of animals including egrets, herons, hawks, a pileated woodpecker, turtles, and jumping fish. All in all, it was a very relaxing workout, and a great capstone to our Florida trip. It also makes we want to go kayaking again in the near future!