2002-10-20 - 10:24 a.m. welcome to winter By the view from my front window, I'd guess it was a foggy/cloudy 54 degrees...in February. In Napa Valley, this wintery weather gave way yesterday to glorious warn sunshine... not too sure what we'll end up with here in SF today... This made it an excellent decision to stay in bed reading the newspaper (by which I mean the NY Times) and sipping Dean & Deluca's house blend coffee. I've long been smitten with Mexican Altura, and really love their blending of it with Guatemalan Antigua beans... really tasty stuff. As an aside, I think that if I lived within walking or subway distance of a Dean & Deluca retail store, I'd surely go broke, but would be eating the most magnificent meals along the way... I watch almost no television, unless I wake up in the middle of the night unable to sleep and flip on the TV and get glued to elimidate or some other evil dreck. I have had one show that I have watched fairly consistently for the past few years though (Maira, don't tell on me!) but I'll refrain from naming it...when I was in the midst of my do-it-yourself divorce forms preparation, I'd frequently miss out on watching this show as it was frequenlty the one night a week my friendly process server and soon-to-be-ex-husband and I could all agree upon for paper signing and witnessing and wine drinking. That's when I stumbled across Television Without Pity. I subscribed to the newsletter for my fave show...and read the scathing summaries even if I've somehow been at home to watch it, just for the snarky comments. The Remote Controllers" article in today's NY Times should introduce a whole new slew of folks to the site which makes me happy, since I'd like them to stick around for a while. I just wish my yahoo mail account would stop delivering their emails to my SPAM in box, especially since I keep on telling them it's not SPAM... The other article that caught my eye this morning was how, thanks to a silly, short-sited money grab attempt, many college radio stations are scuttling their Webcasts. As a former college radio DJ, this bums me out on two levels -- first it keeps the listener base and interaction very local (often no more than 10 miles around campus), which then keeps people like me who want to hear new local music from NYC, San Diego, and L.A without a reliable way to do so... when your local radio stations are all owned by huge conglomerates, and you don't make enough money to buy ever cool new release that comes in at Amoeba records, how the hell are you supposed to discover new music? Spending hours scouring the 'Net for downloads doesn't appeal either -- not even if I had a fast connection to the Web... I can't make the world a better place for music listeners all by myself, but I can make an heirloom tomato tart with the Summer's last gasp of the tomato crop 9courtesy of my local farmers' market)...back later today with a round up from yesterday's wine country jaunt... any comments? (0 so far) previous - next recently on almostgoldsf... in defense of an email box I came to do battle with SPAM - 2008-05-17 hello 2006 - 2005-12-31 Happy Thanksgiving - 2005-11-14 bon voyage - 2005-11-05 October already? - 2005-10-09