Yes, late, but here's the kids in their Halloween getups.  We went up and down one end of my peeps' street.  There were a few houses that (in Nichoals' words) were 'too angry'.  He only wanted to go to the 'happy houses'.  =)

Without further ado...

The Princess:



The Hero (Spiderman)



Nicholas looting his night's take...



Isabelle displays her formidable 'spin' powers (note the extra grippy shoes for extra oomph!)

Look at the time difference between these two journal entries.  Believe it or not, we spent most of the intervening time waiting for the license to be issued.  Then we found out that someone was holding it up, but no one knew why, yadda yadda yadda.  Fast forward to today, where we finally have our license (yay!) and we had our first wine tasting event last night, and Thusday night (yay again!).

Turnout was pretty low because we didn't have a whole bunch of time to advertise.  We were notified of the license being issued, and we had like a week and a half to throw everything together (mainly because we were tired of waiting for everything.)  The first night, only 3 people showed, and then last night almost 10 people showed up to drink and nosh.  Cool beans.  We about broke even vs. the bottles we opened, and we sold a few bottles on top, so we came out ahead, and overall, it was good to finally get our feet wet, and see what it would be like.  We've got a few things we need to change before our next event (Oct 5,6) but we should be getting better every time.

Can I get a 'halleleujah!'?

Yay!

Our construction is complete, and our furniture has arrived!





In retrospect, the tiling was (I thought) very do-able, but the grouting was a royal pain in the ass. I hope I never have to do any wall tiling. The bar was made for us by Jenny's FIL.  Solid oak!  And it's even on wheels, to make clean-up a lot easier.  We just have a few more small knick-knacky things to get, and we'll be set to go.

As soon as the Alcohol Beverage Control people give us the go ahead, that is.  Yep, still waiting on them.  Never rely on the government to do anything quickly.

Anh and I took the kids to the OC Fair yesterday and had a blast.  Our only mistake was bringing only one stroller.  But the kids had a great time, saw a bunch of animals, did the pony ride, and even a couple carny rides (the few they were tall enough for)!



Ah, happiness, thy name is corndog.



Why does she look so sad?  I don't know.  After she got off the pony she was all smiles and pleased as punch about the whole ride. *shrug*

I finished altering the archway that's going to be the entrance to the wine tasting area.



I had to narrow up the entrance, and lift the canopy a bit.  I lifted it from the bottom (you can see the 2x4 blocks underneath).

Funny, thing, the whole piece is held together with allen screws.  I figured I was set, because I still have my prosthetics tool bag in my trunk, and I have a complete set of metric and allen wrenches in there.  So when I started out pulling it all apart, I went to my trunk and found...that I'd taken out the allen wrenches and neglected to put them back.  All I was left with was one 4mm allen (the prosthetists' best friend).  I'm thinking, what are the chances that they used 4mm allens for this thing?

Well, whaddya know, they're exactly 4mm.  =)

Now we just need some grape vines to hang off this thing and it will be perfect.  Tomorrow starts the paint!

I would have been at this stage about a week ago.

DIY Tip: If you need to drill into concrete or masonry, go rent a hammer drill. Walk right by those 'masonry bits' for your regular drill, and spend the extra scratch on the tool rental. I tried two weekends ago with a masonry bit, and managed to cut one..count 'em, ONE! hole in the floor. Last weekend I rented the aformentioned hammer drill, and cut half a dozen holes in about 30 minutes (including time to move wine displays, etc.) Right tool, right job. sigh

So, this week was devoted to joint compound. Yay!





And, here's the tile that's been picked out for the floor...



This weekend will either be painting or tiling. Not sure which. But regardless, large steps in advancement! Woo! We're looking at being ready in about 3 weeks. There's still a bunch of little details to attend to, but it finally feels like we're making good progress. We should have ABC come out to inspect us soon, as well. [fingers crossed]

New Beers:
Lost Coast Great White Beer
Lost Coast Downtown Brown
Monty Python's Holy Grail Ale
Stone Brewing Vertical Epic 06.06.06 (coming Friday!)

Ah, what a crappy photo.

Well, this is a shot through where the doorway will be.  You can see I finished putting up the walls this weekend, and I put up the drywall as well.  The next couple weekends should be anchoring the walls to the floor, and then spackling the drywall, and then painting.  

And we saved the hardest part for last: tiling.  Fun!



Yesterday Anh and I went to a wine tasting event sponsored by one of our major distributors.  They basically packed a hotel conference room with all their top wine suppliers, and had them all bring 3-5 of their highest quality wines to dole out to everyone who showed up sporting an empty glass.

One word: YUM.

So many good wines, so few words to describe them with.

Unfortunately, we can't get everything we tried, because it would just be ludicrously expensive, and we don't even have that kind of room.  But we will try to get in a few select gems, like this one.  Yummy.

Things are taking shape here...



You can see here that the wine stacks now go all the way across, closing off the future wine tasting area.  Ideally, they should all be 4/3 stacks, but I ran out of boxes.  The 3/2 stacks just look really sad next to the taller ones.  

Here's the reverse angle.



You can get a feel for how much inside space we'll have from this photo.  The two racks on either side of the archway used to back up against the racks in the upper left.  You can also see where we've started to rip out the carpet.  Unfortunately, the floor beneath the carpet is not considered suitable for a food service environment.

We've also got to finagle the archway a bit, narrow it up so it will fit between the two racks.  We're also going to lift it so there's a bit more clearance.  It's fine for us, but a few white people are taller than us Asians.  

New Beers:
Anderson Valley Summer Solstice Cerveza Crema (finally!)

If only they were this 'buddy-buddy' all the time....



Taken with my SIL's RIM.  Too bad the res is so crappy.  Great shot, tho.

Ok, last weekend we got started on putting in our wine tasting area.  It's going to be pretty slow going, as we're only going to be working on Sundays.

Last weekend, I removed the large central display piece that dominated the floorspace.  It was a large tiered shelf, built of plywood and covered in red felt.  It wasn't too bad, just moving enough wine boxes to slide out the two halves of the piece, and then out the door.  The tough part was that the whole thing was screwed together, and I had to pull all the screws to fit the thing in the dumpster.  

And, of course, my drill battery wasn't charged.  =(  So I worked for the first hour with a regular screwdriver, and about lost all feeling in my arms.  ow.  Then the drill was charged up, and things went a whole lot faster.  

So now our place looks like this:



And from the back:



It's kind of hard to tell if you haven't seen the place before, but taking out that big display has really made the place feel more open and spacious.  The wooden archway you can see in the second photo will be our entrance to the wine tasting area.  The wine boxes will define the outer edges.  The interior space will be about 10x7 so we'll be able to fit maybe half a dozen people inside.

Right now, there is an aisle going through the middle, but this weekend, that will get closed off.  This weekend I'll rip the carpet out of the interior, and mark the floor where the wall is going to be built.

The next two weekends should be spend building the wall.  The following weekend drywalling, then the next two weekends tiling the floor inside.

At least, that's how it's going in my head.  =)

New Beer:
Pizza Port Shark Bite Red Ale

ooy.  Gas is now $3.29/gal and I need to fill up on the way home tonight.  =(

New Beer:
Unibroue La Fin du Monde