wednesday 12.23.09

i’m home! with my girls! my MG7 (well, MG6 since we are sans sarah this evening). eating a delicious dinner made by ann at her and michelle’s place. shallon telling her ‘best thing of 2009’. we all shared, in turn, our happiest memories of 2009. and this moment was definitely high on the list for me. the pre-christmas eve snow storm cut out evening a bit short, but we certainly packed all our happiness in the brief time together!


-bkh

friday 11.20.09

barriques downtown. wine tasting night! reading up on local activities in the isthmus. waiting for steph birr to come join me so we can get this cali wine train moving. enjoyed a few hours of good wine and excellent conversation before walking (it was a generous tasting this day...) over to the high noon for the haley bonar show.


-bkh

saturday 11.14.09

spanish wine tasting at monroe street barriques with jess & andy. shannon, leah, and liz too. barriques old saukers night on the town. andy getting the nose feel or whatever, trying to find the pencil lead and gooseberries in his wine. enjoyed the eight (plus one times two) wines before heading to meet tracy, travis, cait & others at the frequency for some tunes that sounded like death metal and yoko ono guitars, and looked like a band with my hair and a mess of a dance party through my wine and spotted cow lenses.


-bkh

wednesday 08.26.09

with jen jen! with jen jen! ryan and i landed in copenhagen early afternoon and were met by jenny & jacob. at a park just a few blocks from their place. cooking some dinner on the grill, having some wine and beer, the guys tossing around the (american) football, the gals catching up. perfect perfect perfect.


-bkh

tuesday 08.18.09

london london! on the flight to london! the bro and i started our month-long journey through europe. leaving minneapolis tuesday afternoon and arriving early wednesday morning. our adventure begins in flight with cribbage and free wine.


-bkh

sunday 08.16.09

driving out in the country. just finished up a wine tasting out at a newerish vineyard in delano. the folks tried it out a few weeks back, and wanted ryan and i to experience it. so the five hanson family members piled in the car and had some vino. apparently the midwest is not the place to grow grapes for red wine. but the white wine was mighty tasty. went from wine at the vineyard to wine at biaggi's in maple grove. too much wine! too much wine!

-bkh

friday 07.31.09

for the first time ever ever ever, i forgot! how did i forget to take a picture?? had i remembered, you would have seen my co-worker from uwmf, deniz, tasting a lot of dry and a little bit of sweet white wines at the barriques on monroe street. but i forgot! so here is a picture of me driving home around 9pm. deniz and i were so wrapped in conversation about life, living, loving, working that i forgot!


-bkh

wednesday 07.29.09

concerts on the square. playing a little backgammon, drinking a little wine, listening to a little music with william. eating some dried cherries. jenny mailed them to me on my birthday from corvalis. she said they were good with wine, but even better with friends. i have been saving and taking good care of them.


-bkh

friday 07.24.09

jen & jen. (and finn.) wine tasting at barriques. jenny and jacob were in town stopping by the midwest on their move from corvalis, oregon to copenhagen, denmark. they spent the day with jen and mike, and the four of them met andrea and me for an oregon wine tasting. andrea was in town on her move from delware to michigan. spent the evening drinking beers with me, tasting wine, listening to some live music. catching up on life. can’t believe it’s been… four? five? years since we lived together in the dorms. it was a perfect night.


-bkh

tuesday 07.14.09

claddagh with tracy and liz. tracy – my manager at barriques – hosted a wine tasting for us barriquers. each month the new wine by the glass menu means another staff tasting. a few of us went through the 10-12 new whites & reds, and then the three of us headed over to middleton for ‘power hour’ – half off happy hour prices – for a drink. which meant $1 MGDs and $1.50 rum & diets. happy tuesday.


-bkh

saturday 07.11.09

at a new zealand wine tasting. brought the fam to the barriques on monroe street for some vino before the booze cruise on lake mendota. zach met the hansons and shared trivia about nz and their wine. such as – did you know a gooseberry is a kiwi fruit? to which my mom asked – so, what does that mean for gooseberry falls in minnesota? excellent question.


-bkh

friday 06.26.09

dinner with erin in atlanta. after an afternoon of exploring all the suburbs have to offer, we decided on a local ‘italian oven’ restaurant for our exciting first dinner in atlanta. what were we expecting? not really sure? but certainly not the perkins of italian joints – complete with checkerboard AND paper (with crayons!) tablecloths. we made sure to take full advantage of our special dinner by treating ourselves real nice. wine, fried food platter, bread & olive oil, salad, and two main dishes that easily could have each served four. the table, meant for four, was not big enough for our appetites. we could barely muster up enough energy to collapse on the hotel beds in front of ‘headliners & legends: michael jackson’. (we somehow managed.)


-bkh

tuesday 06.23.09

enjoying a sweet fruit salad (in my handmade bowl!) and wine in the backyard. working on the ‘to pack’ list for the big road trip to nashville, atlanta. brainstorming all the things i could ever possibly need for a four day or so trip. the fruit was delicious and sweet after sitting in the fridge in the sugary minty concoction i put together 24 hours prior. the wine, to my disappointment, was not-so-tasty. perhaps wine does not keep for three weeks after being opened - who knew?


-bkh

tuesday 06.09.09

grabbed my journal, yoga magazine, and thermos of red wine and headed off into hoyt park. the june magazine featured an article on discovering, or realizing i suppose, what you are committed to. the magazine offered journal prompts, which i gladly took. i, unfortunately though, underestimated how much wine a half a thermos holds. and i unfortunately realized this when i stood up to walk home after an hour of journaling. whoops. guess that’s how i roll on a tuesday evening.


-bkh

thursday 05.21.09

in napa! my ma and i met up in california for a memorial day weekend trip of wine tasting. we were greeted with open arms offering virtually bottomless glasses of wine. before checking in the hotel we stopped by a tasting room in downtown napa, only to be told of a street fair going on just two blocks up. we were interested. and what a perfect way to enter napa. we spent the evening wandering the street fair with our wine, checking out the farmers market, eating an italian dinner, and shopping the local main street.


-bkh

wednesday 04.08.09

at a barriques 'wine 101' in the basement of the monroe street store. there was about a half dozen of us at matt's, one of the owners, training session. we learned about whites and reds from chardonnay to merlot, how to open the bottles, and what the heck a sommelerie is. matt was getting ready to pour the first (pinot grigo) of the five wines we were tasting. and one of my fitchburg colleagues was listening intensely on the other side of the bottles and dump bucket.


-bkh

tuesday 03.10.09

drinking a glass of vino at home. there's a slight reflection of a computer screen in the glass. most likely shining something new and exciting on facebook i already looked at three times. one of those nights. my christmas gift to my roommate in the foreground. chopsticks, it turns out, are not indestructible when a person tries to scratch his back with them after eating sushi. fyi. hopefully this psa saves at least one pair of chopsticks out there.


-bkh

friday 02.27.09

the fam came to town! mom dad and meg met me and some of my co-workers at scatz for happy hour before the four of us headed from middleton to downtown madison. we tried to eat at the dane, but a 50 minute wait was less than appealing to our hungry stomachs. we stumbled upon papavero on our way to find a drink. it was a great little find. we were seated right away, had a delicious italian meal, and the highlight for my parents was the bottle of wine.


-bkh

friday 02.13.09

happy birthday meg :)

drinking wine with jen. that's all we do together. barriques on monroe street had a wine and chocolate tasting. the wines were zins, but we were concerned about the chocolate, mainly. and there was no disappointment. the two owners of the store were there and able to give a bit of insight as to what the tasting notes really meant. such as a '30 second finish'. unfortunately, seeing how we enjoyed a happy hour beer prior to barriques, we were only able to make it half-way through the wines before calling it quits.

-bkh

monday 02.02.09

by the garden of the willow tree...

i invited myself over to jen's house. we met for a sushi lunch and i offered a bottle a wine if she'd let me hang out with her in the evening. i went snowshoeing at governor nelson park on the north side after work. jen lives just a hop and skip away. she fed me little ceasars crazy bread and home-made heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting, and i fed her syrah (a vegetarian's dream dinner - other than pasta and cheese, of course). we spent a few hours talking and enjoying the tunes of tiny tim.

-bkh