Also heard as feliz cumpleaños in spanish, or in the spirit of the Beijing Olympics, “生日快乐] (shēngrì kuàilè)” in mandarin, happy birthday Leandra :)

Or, A Cautionary Tale About Repairing Your Own Wine Fridge

Our 50-bottle wine fridge has been out of commission for several weeks. It makes a god-awful noise when it’s plugged in and the cooling feature is non-existent. Basically, it’s currently a glorified wine cabinet.

To see if we could diagnose the problem, we pulled the unit out of it’s snug little area for better access to the back. Upon doing so, Eric discovered that the fan unit was entirely coated in dust. Embarrassed that this could be the problem, I tackled the fan with the vacuum, then got the brilliant idea of taking the fan out to clean the blades with a damp paper towel. Except, the screws wouldn’t go back in properly and what the heck are those tiny silver nuts doing on the floor, oh.

(Eric is either rolling his eyes or strangling me at this point of the story. Or both)

And did I mention that the motor on our vacuum cleaner choose this exact moment to die? Yeah.

So after some creative maneuvering with a flashlight and a tiny screwdriver we managed to secure the bottom part of the fan back in place. We plugged in the wine fridge and (amazingly) there were no rattling or groaning noises!

We went to bed praying that when we woke up, the unit would be at a lovely (and quiet) 58 degrees.

Well, the unit is not maintaining a cool 58 degrees and it sounds like it’s being slowly tortured to death. It’s not the fan, so I’m afraid it may be the motor which means we needed to decide if it’s worth spending (enter some obscene amount of money here) to fix a seven year old wine fridge.

Turns out no one will even give us a chance to spend money to fix it because I’ve called eight places with no luck: one made an appointment with me and never showed up, four didn’t deal with wine fridges at all, one never called me back after I left two messages, one said he would come look at it but couldn’t do anything if it was one of three (likely) problems and one guy was just plain weird.

So, as of now, we are wine-fridge-less. :(

Eric was going through our stats today and while I think it’s great that we have received over 1,000 hits to this picture of wedding cakes from 2003, I laughed out loud when I discovered we were the #1 hit on Google for “worst motel experience“. Yes folks, we have the worst experience out there, we even bested TripAdvisor!

Recently, we decided to try out Six Plates winebar in Durham and take advantage of their half-price bottles of wine Monday night special. We were the first people there at 6:30pm and were cheerfully greeted by the owner. We sat at the bar and perused the menu deciding that a sparkling rose (Cava Avinyo) from Spain would go with just about anything we liked. The decor is both comfortable and modern with couches and low tables for lounging.

Unfortunately, they were out of their signature lamby joes, so instead we had the flatbread of the day and the ribeye steak. The flatbread was delicious. Piled high with fresh tomatoes, blue cheese, arugula and local pork sausage all atop a creamy balsamic glaze. While the ribeye plate was tasty (garlic potatoes, local squash), I thought it was a little skimpy on the meat portion. I also noticed that after our visit, the meat had changed into tenderloin on the online menu and that certainly seemed more like what we were served. We finished our meal with a flight of gelatos. We could pick from flavors such as olive oil, green tea, chocolate, thai basil, roasted garlic and blackberry. We went traditional with chocolate and blackberry but I just had to try (and loved!) the thai basil.

Our overall experience was good, but I didn’t feel that the food was an excellent value for the money if you want to have an entire dinner experience here. The next time we would go back and enjoy a bottle of wine and try the lamby joes but finish the night elsewhere.

Last year, I volunteered by handing out t-shirts and this year, Eric and I were in charge of the getting the scheduling grid up on the wall.

Between the beers at Tyler’s on Friday night and the five sessions we attended yesterday, I met a ton of great and interesting people that I hope to see again.

As a designer (surrounded by programmers) at this event, I need to work on my focus and learn how to pitch my skills to these folks. Next year I plan to propose a session on how to work with designers.

Georgia ranked No. 1 in preseason coaches’ poll

“Georgia was named the No. 1 team in the country in the preseason college football coaches’ poll, which was released Friday. The Bulldogs received 22 first-place votes and 1,438 total points, edging No. 2 Southern Cal by eight points. Georgia finished last season ranked No. 3, while the Trojans ended up No. 2.”

We cannot WAIT for football season to start!

One (of the many) nice things about heading to Long Island in the summer is the chance to play a little clay court tennis in the comfort of the backyard. We managed to fit some play in between the gobs of people using the court (seriously guys, you should start charging!)

Here is a shot of Novak Djokovik Eric’s overhead smash. :)

Eric and I played twice and he got to play for 2 hours on Saturday morning before the party. Even he admitted his legs were a bit sore the next day!

Eric sent me an airfare deal to Bangkok/Singapore with a free layover in Hong Kong and what postcard shows up in our mailbox that day?

(Also note the beautiful stamps!)

This morning marked our first time at the Raleigh farmer’s market this summer and we had one main goal in mind… sweet corn! We also picked up some peaches, sweet peppers, cucumbers (4 for $1!) and zinnias.

As soon as we got home, Eric set up his shucking station outside and Riesling supervised. This is the look I got when I asked her to sit.

Mama, can’t you see I am trying to beg for corn here?

She managed to get a few stray kernels and I’m sure she’ll get another chance to finish our leftovers after dinner.

Finally, AFTER FIVE MONTHS, Delta granted me the double miles for our Zurich trip from their Europe winter promotion. Eric received his miles at the end of May only after emailing them several times. I actually had to fax the head office (after they sent me an email stating that ‘they didn’t think’ I had registered for the promotion), but we’re talking about almost 10K extra miles here, so you better believe I’m not going away.

While I was at it, I faxed AA regarding our codeshare miles for the roundtrip flight to Barcelona. The tickets were purchased on Iberia.com, but we flew American metal over there. Granted, we’ve only been back a month, but I’d rather get the miles into my account before I find the need to use them!

We also both have a free roundtrip ticket anywhere Southwest flies that we have to use before the end of March. Any suggestions? :)