Life on the Vine

The one constant presence in our lives and home for these entire 15 years of marriage has been Smokey.  Smokey is our blue-eyed, grey Siamese cat who we rescued during a pet adopt-a-thon in Queeny Park in Saint Louis the summer before we got married.  After four years of living with diabetes and the onset of violent seizures, Tom and I realized late last week that it was time to say good-bye to Smokey. After fifteen years there are sounds that become so ingrained in your daily life that you only notice them once they are gone.  The padding of paws and claws across tile floors or going up and down the stairs.  The sound of back legs crouching and then leaping off the ground into a chair or a cat tree and the thump of jumping down.  Paws banging on the side of a litter box and the meow/mauw that greets you multiple times a day.  Usually an indicator that someone is ready for food.  Siamese are typically very vocal, talkative cats, and Smokey was no exception.  And while we still have H

In addition to the 24 books I read for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge, I've also been reading a wide-ranging selection of other books.  Twenty-six at last count.  The year isn't over yet so I'll probably get another four or five books in before New Years.  I think I can safely say I've never read this many books in a single year.  It's been an eclectic year in the reading department, and the Read Harder Challenge certainly contributed.  My additional reading has included a small number of books from my own shelves but the bulk have been borrowed from the local library system. Twenty-six is a lot of books to do in a single blog post so I figured I'd just do a handful of them today.  I'm staying home today because we're doing a blood curve check on our diabetic cat Smokey.  It's a way of checking his blood sugar levels, which were not good this morning.  I have been neglecting these checks so I'm dedicated today to Smokey.  I'm writing this

In early March Tom and I traveled to the Valpolicella region with some friends for wine tasting.  We wrapped up the day with an olive oil tasting and tour at Antico Frantoio Bonamini in Illasi. Eight different types of olives grow in this part of the Veneto region located near Verona. (PC: P. Zaehler) We were able to see the different pieces of equipment used to process the harvest into olive oil.  The machines were not in operation though because the harvest was still another seven months away.  Our tasting included a couple different olive oils (processed the season before) and two different olive pâtés -- nere (black) and verdi (green).    Our Tasting Saturday I had a chance to revisit Bonamini and this time it was harvest time.  For two months of every year Bonamini runs 24 hours a day -- processing the fruit from their own 15,000 trees, as well as olives from many of their neighbors.  However, their neighbors have to provide at least 600 kilos (about 1,300 pounds) of