Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween. I’ve been up since 4:00 working on homework. No goddamn candy. And even better, I’m going to have approximately 300 booger rolling bastards dressed up as hobos, old ladies and ghosts (sheets with holes) on my doorstep tonight. Can I ask you why parents think it’s ok to dress their kids up in the world’s cheapest and most ghetto outfits one can imagine, and then snap 100,000 pictures of them so they can psychologically traumatize their children over the next 20 years? All for a couple of pieces of stale candy that was probably left in the garage since last year’s 20 lb bag purchase at Costco. And the absolute WORST part? Our parents drove us to people’s house to parade us around for their friends. Hey, Myron, check it out. I dressed up Andrew up as an 80 year old grandma. Isn’t he-she cute? Yeah, thanks a pant load mom. I’m surprised I didn’t grow up with some weird cross-dressing fetish.

(for Carolyn: Yes, I have a potty mouth this morning. 7 cups of coffee will do that to you. I'm also shaking like a fat girl in a snowstorm.)

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Wine

Forgive me, this will be a long, rambling post about everything under the sun. I'll start with a side note - anonymous comments are back now that Blogger supports word verification.

Week 1 of term 2 is finally over. It wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be, but finance, accounting, marketing mgmt (100% case analysis) and speech can definitely take its toll. To make life worse, I tweaked my back playing volleyball on Tuesday, got sick on Wednesday and had to help the wife with the partner/faculty Halloween party on Friday. Rest assured I had a large glass of Woodford Reserve before I passed out on the couch last night... As far as grades go, I ended up with an SP, 2 HPs and a P. The P REALLY pissed me off, given I did well on the final. I guess that's life and I need to stop being so damn competitive.

Couple of current events that I just can't gloss over. Was anybody else waiting for Ahmadinejad (President of Iran) to take off his shoe and beat it on the table as he screamed "Israel must be wiped out from the map of the world." Gotta love that one. And this comes after Iran has repeatedly refused to stop their nuke program. The only thing more amazing is the fact that I have a very good friend who is Iranian, fluent in Farsi and she can't get the time of day from the FBI. She's applied twice over the last 2.5 years and her application keeps "getting lost." Now I don't know about you, but one would think that any application that rolls into the big bureaucratic morass with "FLUENT IN FARSI" might get somebody's attention. Add her MBA to the mix, and I am left, once again, completely disappointed in the way our government does things. I'm not even going to start with the whole Rove/Libby scandal. I still expect Rove to take a federal indictment bullet in the relatively near future. I just think they're going to staplegun Libby to the wall first.

Speaking of poopoo, Morgan has been potty training seriously for the last week or so. You have not experienced life until you go through this with a 2 year old. It starts off with "I have to go poopoo, Daddy! I have to go poopoo, Daddy!" This requires an instant response; Morgan isn't wearing diapers any more, so the only thing worse than having to jump up from whatever you are doing is cleaning up the near miss. After the revelation of a turd from on high, we run at lightning speed to the plastic potty, rip off her pants and then I have to leave the room. A couple minutes go by and then I'll hear the pitter patter of running feet, followed by "I made a poopoo! I made a poopoo!" While seeing my kid running through the house with no pants and an uwiped bottom is usually a little unsettling, I'm still obliged to jump up and down, start cheering, give her a high-five and pray that nothing else hit the ground during her run across the house. We then grab a chocolate pretzel (have to reward the little monster) and celebrate some more. Ironically enough, Morgan just farted incredibly loudly, laughed, and ran to the potty. Ahhh, the joys of being a dad.

On the wine side, I completely broke my budget and picked up a bottle of Turley 03 Earthquake and 2 of the 03 Old Vines. I couldn't help myself and the fridge is down to 29 bottles right now. I think I'm going to hold off from drinking anything for a while and see if I can make it until Thanksgiving without opening any good stuff. This school budget stuff SUCKS. Until next time.

The End of Term 1

It's finally over. Term 1 has come to an end, I'm done with finals and I am anxiously awaiting my grades. Whoohoo! I know I got an SP (Superior Pass - 4.0) in Computer Skills, but given it's a self-paced class that relies on your ability to read directions and take on more assignments for a better grade, I guess it's not all that impressive. Econ, Stats and Managerial Effectiveness are going to be the biggies. I'll be satisfied with HP's (High Pass, 3.7) for all three, so keep your fingers crossed!

Supposedly, I have a break this week. I say "supposedly" because I've got 200 pages worth of material to work through before class starts on Monday. They're called "pre-assignments" and designed to help us hit the ground running. Maybe they should call them "jack up your break and make you do homework" assignments, because I've been putting them off and dreading them. The sad thing is that I'm laying around the house for most of break, so I might I actually complete them vs. all of the guys I know that are flying home to see girlfriends, attend weddings or do a Wall Street week-in-cities trip. They're REALLY going to love reading a FedEd case and putting a presentation together.

On the home front, the wife's sister is visiting from Stockton, CA. I have not thrown myself in front of a bus yet, but I did manage to drink myself to sleep last night. Given today is Wednesday and her departure date is Saturday, I'm kind of thinking I'd rather switch places with Matt in Iraq right now. At least I can shoot back at the bad guys. I got a lecture last night from her about Fetzer merlot being better than any bottle of wine I have and that she'd like to do a blind taste test with one of my "fancy pants" bottles of wine to prove her point. This followed a full day of diarrhea of the mouth, including highlights like "wow, that was immaculant," "the ride was bumpy because of the turbo-air" and last, but not least, "Andrew, I'm going to give you a lesson on how incorporations work. They let you keep everything at arm's distance." In that context, my response of "I'd sooner sip urine through a straw than drink a bottle of your Fetzer merlot" wasn't quite as bad as it sounded. If she thinks I'm going to open a $30 bottle of wine for her to drink through one of Morgan's sippy cups, she's mainling heroin.

We're going to take a tour of campus today, and I can't tell you how excited I am to have her walking the hallowed halls of my b-school making comments like "wow, the archutecture (sic) is incredibly elavogant." The wife could tell I was getting a little testy yesterday, but after her sister explained how to raise our daughter correctly, I'm guessing I have free reign to let loose on her today.

Just typing this is making me look at the clock. It's 9:41 AM now, but I'm sure it's 5:00 somewhere. If I start drinking now, I'll pass out, wake up after 5:00 and then won't feel so bad about drinking even more. Maybe I'll go buy some Fetzer merlot; it's cheaper than bourbon.

For those of you following along with Matt - talked to him for 30 mins on Saturday and he's relatively bored. This is a good thing. We sent him a couple of care packages filled with Red Bull, York Patties (some cockandballs stole his last batch) and other stuff... If anyone is interested in "adopting a soldier," send me an email and I'll hook you up. I've asked Matt to put together a list of some of the guys in his platoon that are single/don't have family/have family (see above) but don't want to talk to them.

Why I Fell in Love With Wine

I just finished Term 1 at b-school and decided it was a great time to relax, open a bottle of wine and toast the fact that I am still alive. It was probably a little presumptuous, given finals are coming up this week, but technicalities smechnicalities. I opened up a 2001 Bressler Cabernet Sauvignon (~$70), grabbed a nice big Riedel glass and poured away. The nose from this cab was amazing, and the first, long sip nearly knocked me off my feet. I fell in love with wine all over again.

I know, I know. I need a wine habit like I need a hole in the head. Going from a great salary to poverty level has been "culture shock," to say the least. Even then, if I was content with a $19.95 Vouvray, life would be bearable and my Costco card would be shredded from overuse. There's just something about a fantastic bottle of wine that blows me away. Some art lovers can look at a Jackson Pollack painting and declare it a masterpiece, scant moments before succumbing to an uncontrollable seizure from the day-glo colors arranged in a projectile-vomit like pattern on a piece of canvas. I get that same sense of euphoria from a spectacular bottle of wine, get to skip the seizure AND I find myself appreciating Jackson Pollack the closer I get to the end of the bottle.

I think the greatest thing is that Bressler's cab didn't get rave reviews from the press. I believe Parker gave his 2001 an 89, which I think is a travesty. I can honestly say I have never had a glass of wine that just exploded with fruit like this one. I would agree with Parker to a degree that the finish was a little lighter than I would expect from a rock-star Napa cab, but I wouldn't score it less than 93, which brings up one last point - wine isn't about ratings. Can I tell you how irritated I am that Andrew from A.P. Vin scored a 92 from WS on his inaugural release (2003 Garys' Vineyard)? Don't get me wrong - I agree 100% with the score. I picked up 9 bottles and have ONE left. That said, his mailing list doubled over the summer as a result of the article. I was fortunate enough to find him before WS did, but now 10,000 people are going to crowd out my allocation because some wank at a magazine gave him a 92 after drinking 100 other glass of pinot that same day. Parker wants to give Bressler an 89? I'm ECSTATIC about that. Give him a 75 next time, for all I care. Granted, I need to figure out a way to afford Bressler and A.P. Vin this year (*cough* and Turley and Match), but at least I'll be smiling.

Thanks to Bob and Andrew for reminding me why I drink wine! Thanks to b-school for reminding me why I drink at all.

Ranting and Raving

Ok. I've had it. Great story from one of my profs.

"There will be some days where you look around and say to yourself 'Lo, it is I that brings fire down from the gods to the natives.' Other days, you'll wonder to yourself 'If there are 426 people in my class, surely I was 427 and one of the others got hit by a bus, which explains why I'm sitting here today.' Then, there will be days that you're sure you were number 426, but looking across the table at the dumb son of a bitch on your team, you're absolutely certain he was 428."

I'm convinced that the dumb son of a bitch on my team was number 600, but stole number 425's student visa. Surprise, it's the one knob that I wrote about on my thread 9 months ago when I got his email.

Speaking of potty mouths, Morgan is now peeing like a world class champion. She no longer wears diapers during the day, so we're clapping and cheering about that. In fact, we're clapping and cheering every time she takes a whiz, which gets her excited, resulting in her going whiz some more and, of course, more clapping and cheering. If she finally gets around to taking a crap in the potty, I'm thinking we'll do cartwheels on the front lawn and play "Celebrate Good Times" by Kool and the Gang.

Heard from Matt this morning and he has officially reached FOB Oryan after an exciting truck ride from LSA Anaconda. He is now 1/20th of his way through the tour. He posted some cool pics, but I don't want to post the link. If you want to see them, send me an email at my personal account (not the wbfw address above).

Other news - I signed up for the World Series of Poker MBA Championship in Vegas in January. Who knows? Maybe I'll win some money. I'm 4-0 in both of my fantasy football leagues and am have lasted 4 weeks in our school survivor league, which has gone from 28 to 7. Whooohooo! Until next time...

Wine, Weather and My TI-89 Titanium

Finally, a homework assignment I can get excited about. One of the supplementary readings for my Prob Stats class is an article by Orley Ashefelter and company on the "Bordeaux Equation," which appeared in Chance magazine several years after the original study. Specifically, three profs collected quite a bit of data on sale prices and vintage quality of young vs. old wines and then compared them against weather patterns. They than ran regressions against the data to determine what vintages would be spectacular, based solely on weather - no tasting involved. Parker's response - "a Neandrathal way of looking at wine" and he was slammed by several others. Ironically, Ashefelter's research is based on Bruno Prats's observation of how weather affected his juice at Chateau Cos d'Estournel in the St-Estephe region of Bordeaux.

One of the most common complaints was that applying his equation back against his data set couldn't accurately predict the known data. My take on that is that people don't understand that regression forecasting gives you a general idea of where a value will land, but can vary by a standard deviation in either direction.

Article Link

Interesting summarization appears in the NYT on 3/18/1990 (Wine Equation Puts Some Noses Out of Joint), where Ashenfelter puts it all on the line, declaring the 1989 Bordeaux crop will be the greatest of the century. Again, look at the dates; the NYT writes "these wine are barely three months in the cask and have yet to be tasted by critics."

NOTE: If you want to leave a comment, you'll need to register with blogger.com. I got 3 anonymous comments within 5 minutes of posting and I'm tired of it. Make up a a name and an email and you're good to go...