Happy 10th Blogiversary to me!

Vinsanity has reached double digits.  It's true, today marks a full 10 years since I started waffling on about nothing in particular - with a little bit of viticulture thrown in.  I had no idea that I had so much to ramble on about, but apparently I do.  This is my 1391st post, whoo hoo!
Thank you to the two peeps who regularly comment on Vinsanity (you know who you are), your contribution to my humble blog is much appreciated.  Discuss...
Roll on year 11!

Excuse me?

What do you think you're doing, Mother Nature? Stop being a nuisance.
I had planned to be out in the Pinot grigio vines early this morning; testing sugar and finalising a plan for harvest.  But no, I woke up to the pitter-patter of not so tiny raindrops.  Today's forecast, for the Bay Area on the news last night, was for a small amount of cloud cover first thing in the morning, with the possibility of sprinkles at the coast.  (Which begs the question: Why don't meteorologists ever get fired?)  Hmmph!
Vinodog 2 and I went for our morning constitutional and got a bit soggy. My ever-happy poochie didn't actually seem to care about the rain, but I did.  The grapes will be fine.  They look very healthy this year, so I don't envision any problems with secondary invaders, e.g., Aspergillus niger or Penicillium spp.  The heatwave last weekend did not seem to have a negative effect on the clusters.  Still, rain, this early in the season, is such a bunch of rot!
On another note, yesterday was Vinsanity's 9th anniversary.  Forgot all about it, I'll celebrate tonight. Whoo hoo!

Happy Blogday: 2016.

Happy 8th anniversary of blogging to me!  Yup, it is eight years today since I wrote my first post on Vinsanity: this post is my 1,181st.  I have had a lot to say.
My niece, the one who sketched a glass of pretend wine for me when I was back home last April, and who is now 7 years old, recently presented me with another wine-themed drawing.  Should I be worried, or at the very least slightly concerned, that each time this child wants to draw something for me it involves wine? Hmmm.  I have been blogging for longer than she has been on the planet so I'm just going to blame it on osmosis.  Or something.
Thanks to everyone for commenting on, and thus contributing to, Vinsanity.
Roll on year 9!

The Midterm Presentation.

Tonight, my little group of marketing-classmates and I presented our midterm assignment to the entire class.  And ours was indeed the littlest group.  I hadn't noticed before, but one of the other groups was comprised of seven people, (in theory, that's almost twice the man-hours that the larger group had to dedicate to writing their marketing project), so we were at a little disadvantage from the start.  And start we did, as I volunteered for my group to go first.  I wanted to get it over and done with. But I also wanted to be the first group to present our marketing ideas; wine pricing, label redesign, promotion, events, social media, etc., because I had a feeling that the three other groups would probably have the same sort of ideas that my group had come up with.  Tactics, tactics.
Speaking in public is not my favourite thing to do, but I can make myself do it.  As it turns out I didn't have to say much.  One member, a mere 25% of our motley crew, who is the lone American and the only one taking this class for a grade, (yes, 75% of my group are not Americans, or taking the class for a grade), did the majority of the presentation.  However, I didn't just stand around twiddling my thumbs, (no, I left that particular presentation skill to the two men in our group).  I busied myself with manning the class computer.  I had decided that the visual vehicle of our presentation should be driven by a blog that I had set up for that very purpose. (Thank you Blogger/Google for free blogging). The blog proved to be a great tactical coup because the other groups, as I had anticipated they would, used PowerPoint (boring) to present their visual content. Our instructor loved the blog format.
The fifteen minutes allotted to us flew by, thank goodness, and the feedback was very positive. Phew!  Then the instructor dropped a bombshell - we have to do it all over again next week for a couple of Napa Valley College-bigwigs, Shark Tank-style.  Not good.