Doing as the Romans do

Now that I'm moved in, I feel this responsibility to learn about what fuels this area. This means, I'm going to have to drink a lot of wine. Last weekend, I took a basics wine class from one of the wineries here. This weekend, I went to help a local backyard wine club bottle some of last year's crush. I sat on an assembly line, filling bottles or using a device to push a cork into them. All the while, I pestered the guys in the club with questions. That showed great patience with my amateurism.

Lessons learned: Winemaking is way above my head at this point.

Fitting in

I've been settling into my new home the past couple weeks. I have a great place near downtown that actually has a spiral staircase in it. No joke. The job is fun and interesting, with great people. My first day my boss brought me to a desk with a typewriter and a kitchen chair and told me to have at it. Once they replaced it with a computer, I noticed they'd also left me a vase with two roses. I've been busy trying to adapt to the differences and meeting all of the new people my beat includes. It is a little bit like going from eighth grade to high school. I'm suddenly at the bottom of the food chain. But it's a fun challenge.

Lesson learned: A new one every day.

Power wedding week

One of my best friends got married a couple weeks ago in Montana. In true Joe and Anna style, the week prior was packed with climbing, hiking, swimming, etc. Anna's bachelorette party was 16 hours long, including lunch on Flathead Lake, boating, a fiesta, and a band. By the day before the wedding, we were all a wreck. But we managed to rally, and their wedding was beautiful. They had the ceremony on the top of Big Mountain, with the reception at the base lodge. We rode the chair up, then the bridal party rolled into the reception on scooters down a slide that goes the length of chair 6. It serve as a pseudo high school reunion as well. It was great to see everyone.






Lesson learned: Clare and I are power bridesmaids.