Let me just start by saying, this is NOT pronounced San Loo-ee.  If you pronounce it San Loo-ee, you WILL be corrected – by EVERYONE, even people who do not live there!  🙂  FYI, just say “SLO”. Now that the pronunciation is out of the way, let me also say, I am so behind on my blogging!  I am going to catch up!  Between traveling to spots where the internet connection pretty much does not exist, and then prepping for Thanksgiving, and then eating Thanksgiving (Tryptophan 🙂 ), and now with the start of everything Christmas, I am falling behind.  I did not even get a picture of Scout with…

“…There between the hills and sea, I looked down and saw a Monterey morning, sprinkled upon the surface of the earth like dim fireflies in a shifting fog.”   View From The Hill – A poem About John Steinbeck’s Monterey, California I have always said that if I ever went to California, there was really only one place I would want to see – Monterey.  I guess I first heard about Monterey when I was a teenager growing up on the east coast.  I had a reading assignment in my ninth grade English class to read John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men.  We were assigned a certain amount of chapters each day…

This has been a busy week! With, unfortunately, a LOT of hit or miss wifi and internet!  You know the saying – “when life gives you lemons…” in this case, it would have been grapes – so we decided to start the week off with a visit to a winery and do a little wine tasting!  Both of these were a first for me, and Napa just happened to be the perfect place  – since Italy wasn’t available ? My grandfather is from Italy, and, even though I have never been there myself, I feel like I come by my love for  wine, naturally.  I am not a wine expert…