Bad Moods, P-I-A Editors and a Salute to Kia

I just returned from a Lexus event in Vegas and am shoving off for Florida tomorrow.

I'm jammed for time and in a cranky mood -- too cranky to manage to write anything even remotely entertaining.

What has me so out of sorts? Let's just say I have a client that is ridiculously stupid and leave it at that. Well, no, let me add that I turned in a piece a couple of months ago that I spent about six hours writing. My editor just returned it to me asking for attributions (named sources) for statements along the lines of "the sun will come up tomorrow," and "what goes up must come down." You know, stuff that you don't really need an expert to tell you.

My choice was to put another two or three hours that I don't have right now into the thing chasing around sources and doing a rewrite or kill it. I killed it.

So on that happy note, here's a link to a blog I wrote for Interest.com about the ever improving Kia:

http://www.interest.com/auto/advice/what-you-should-know-about-kia-%e2%80%93-and-its-all-good/

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Table 301 Wine Sale and the Greenville Wine Meetup: A Confluence of Wonderful Wines and Good People

Once upon a time I attended all sorts of wine tastings.

A number of wine sellers in South Florida would sporadically host tastings throughout the year.

Throwing consistently the best tastings -- and I was in a position to know -- was a small, privately owned liquor store in Delray Beach called The Good Life. Its once-a-month tastings were legendary among wine lovers in the area.

Unfortunately, the owner grew tired of the world of retail and sold the store. She continued hosting tastings at her home on a less grand scale, but still supported by the wine distributors with which she had developed relationships.

I have never found anything that came close to The Good Life tastings.

Until last night...

I am a member of the Greenville Wine Meetup, but don't get to attend very many of its numerous events because of my travel schedule.

Last night I was lucky enough to be around for the annual Table 301 Wine Sale that is done in conjunction with the Wine Meetup.

Held at Devereaux's just off of Main Street in Greenville, the Table 301 Wine Sale was a tasting of 90 or so wines and beers, which were all available for purchase at discounted prices.

I was both surprised by the caliber of the wines offered and their remarkably discounted prices.

Probably half the selections were $50 or less -- some in the $10 and $12 range -- and the other half were over $50. I could have spent the evening at the tasting table featuring Silver Oak, as well as the Kenwood Jack London Zinfandel and Jack London Cab.

I felt like Oliver Twist as I held out my empty glass in shaking hands and begged, "Please, sir. I want some more."

For those in a buying mood, the wines were offered at discounts of 15 to 20 percent from the low prices found at, say, Total Wine. Not bad.

Getting in the door only cost about 12 bucks.

I was more than impressed.

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Tomato, Tomahto: Fruit, Vegetable? I Don't Know....

I did something this week that I don't believe I've ever done before: I bought a tomato. Not just one tomato, mind you, but four of them!

That I had never bought a tomato shouldn't be a revelation to anyone who knows me. That I finally did, no doubt, is a major surprise to those same people.

I know it's odd, but I don't like tomatoes. It's not odd that I don't like them, but that I like stuff with tomatoes in it like ketchup, tomato soup and, of course, red sauce for pasta and pizza, yet don't like tomatoes is odd .

I like eating tomatoes when I don't have to look them in the eye. If they are crushed, mushed or pureed, I'm down with them.

But I don't eat them sliced, cubed, boiled or fried.

I have a good friend who would rather eat a fried green tomato than almost anything else, but he has yet to drag me to the dark side. If I were going to eat a tomato in some form where it still looks like a tomato, fried and green would probably be the way I'd do it. Maybe that will be my New Year's resolution.

So what prompted my tomato-buying spree? I did buy four of them after all. Once a month or so, I make a batch of red meat sauce for spaghetti. I make enough that I can freeze four or so containers that each has enough for one meal.

For more than 30 years I have been using canned crushed tomatoes in the recipe. My Italian friends are probably rolling their eyes as they read this, but hey, I'm a Swede from the South; what the hell do I know about Italian?

Recently someone gave me a small food processor. I decided to give making the recipe with fresh crushed tomatoes a shot. I usually also use processed garlic. I bought fresh this time around. I always use fresh onion, but chopping it up in the processor is a whole lot quicker and less painless than chopping it by hand.

The end result was indeed a better sauce. It was a bit more expensive to make, but the improvement in flavor was worth the extra investment.

That was this week's adventure in cooking and vegetable shopping. Are tomatoes vegetables or is it one of those things you think is a vegetable, but is really a fruit or mineral or whatever?

It hurts my head to think about all of this.

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Ford's Oyster House in Greenville: Another Lesson in Never Letting Your Dumbest Employee Answer the Phone

It's Black Friday!

I couldn't care less, but it seems to be a big deal to some folks. I know people who headed out at midnight last night just to get into the spirit of the season. If I need help getting into the spirit, I'll watch "It's a Wonderful Life" thank-you very much.

Getting mob-rushed by a herd of crazed bargain hunters at 1 AM isn't my idea of getting into the spirit.

But here's the real topic at hand today....

Yesterday was a disaster. Without question, it was the most miserable Thanksgiving I've ever spent -- and I've been around for a bunch of them.

Here's the crux of the problem: There are regions of the country where you can go out for Thanksgiving dinner and regions where you can't. Although there were restaurants in Greenville offering some sort of Thanksgiving buffet, basically the city is shut down for the day.

Greenville is a Thanksgiving-at-home sort of city.

We could have gone to one of a handful of restaurants between, say, 11 AM and 3 PM and had a very decent dinner. Cost at these places averaged just under $30 -- a little pricey for turkey and stuffing even if it was "all you can eat."

The cost was a moot point, though, because some of our group decided 3 PM was too early a cut off. They wanted to play golf in the morning.

So far our criteria included a dinner price somewhere south of $25 and a late-afternoon-early-evening timetable.

One of the key players in our little band of four holiday orphans decided another key criteria for choosing a Thanksgiving dinner venue was the ability to watch football. This, of course, required a bank of TV screens spread across whatever restaurant we chose, further limiting our options.

Okay, so dinner had to cost less than $25, be available after 4 PM and be in a place with a lot of TV screens.

All four of us are from South Florida. In South Florida, nearly every joint is open every day come rain, shine, Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Thanksgiving turkey. I remember having Christmas-day brunch with a bunch of friends in South Florida the only Christmas I didn't go to my sister's for the holidays. That's Christmas brunch at a restaurant!

Finding a location for Thanksgiving dinner in South Florida, regardless of the number of qualifiers invoked, would be as easy as getting into your car and stopping at the first restaurant you see.

We recognize Greenville is different -- and believe me, most of the time I praise that difference -- but we had no idea how different. Three years ago we ate Thanksgiving dinner out in Greenville and had a great dinner at a wonderful restaurant. Sadly, it is no longer in business. Little did we know what a rare bird Thanksgiving turkey is in Greenville.

Compounding our situation was our pre-Thanksgiving search for a dinner spot was cut prematurely short when some idiot at Ford's Oyster House told our researcher that they would be open and serving a Thanksgiving buffet beginning at 4 PM. Come on down; no reservation is necessary!

I wasn't thrilled with the idea of a Cajun Thanksgiving, but was willing to give it a shot.

However, when we attempted to go at 4 PM, we were turned away. Yes, they were serving a Thanksgiving buffet between 4 and 6 PM, but it was for a private function. Ford's would open to the public at 6, but the kitchen would be closed.

I halfway expected the manager, or whomever it was we spoke to, to spread his arms and say with a big smile, "Hey, face it, you screwed up; you trusted us."

As with many businesses, evidently Ford's Oyster House leaves answering the phone to the newest and least knowledgeable employee. In any event, we were screwed.

The BBQ joint Sticky Fingers was open, but when we attempted to enter there, we were told only people with reservations could be seated. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that the place was empty -- completely and totally empty. Zero, zip, zilch people were in the place. It was scheduled to be open for another 45 minutes and we couldn't even get a beer at the totally empty bar.

A couple of other places downtown were scheduled to open at 6 PM. We hung around downtown waiting for the magic hour. Finally, we were granted admittance to Wild Wing only to learn that it was only serving from its late-night bar menu.

My Thanksgiving dinner, that I cooled my heels on the streets of Greenville for two hours for, consisted of fried chicken fingers, potato chips and beer.

Never again....

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Thanksgiving With A Little Spice

I like Thanksgiving, but living a couple of thousand miles away from most of my family means I don't get too carried away with the turkey holiday.

In fact, I have Florida friends who are in town and we intend to go out for dinner and football. I'm not optimistic about the joint where we are going. I like the place, but I'm not sure about its suitability for Thanksgiving. It's a relatively new place downtown called Ford's Oyster House.

See what I mean about the "Thanksgiving" part of it? I'm not a seafood eater to begin with and this place specializes in Cajun. I lived in or around New Orleans for a year or so and never ate so much as a fish stick while I was there.

No, I'm not at all sure about this joint for Thanksgiving. I sure won't take the chance of going there hungry. I'll snack a little before going and if I have to, I'll just tough it out until I get back home to eat.

Not cooking holiday dinner at the Casa Heaps, I haven't had to waste a lot of time planning, food shopping, preparing stuff ahead of time or any other task associated with throwing a Thanksgiving dinner.

No, my time has been spent this week doing chores around the house. The temperature has been rather moderate and I've been taking advantage of that.

I've replaced the kitchen and guest-bathroom faucets, I've done the final raking and mulching of leaves, cleaned out the gutters, painted a bunch of the outside trim and even put up outside Christmas lights.

Busy, busy, busy....

Also not stressing over a big family dinner, I have my evening free tonight to attend the weekly meeting of the Peddler Wednesday-Night Irregulars. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor gloom of night, nor the threat of Cajun turkeys can keep a serious Irregular from the Wednesday gathering.

On that note, have a great Thanksgiving!

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Man Versus Faucet: A South Carolina Cage Match

It was a death-defying struggle of monumental proportions. I am speaking, of course, of my toe-to-toe South Carolina cage match with my kitchen faucet.

A few months ago my kitchen faucet stopped functioning properly. The only way I had sufficient water pressure to rinse some eggs off a plate was to use the spray gun; but even when the spray gun was off, the water only trickled out of the faucet as though the spray gun was on.

I've put up with this because, well, I'm lazy; that and I have dreams about redoing the kitchen and I just hate to spend money on something  that I might replace when I do a full-blown redo. That's the same reason why my front yard looks like West Texas during the 1930s dust bowl. I have grandiose plans for the front yard and I'm not going to seed or sod just to tear it all up in a couple of years if I have the money to do what I really want.

With a sudden influx of cash -- some clients actually do pay their invoices -- I decided this weekend was the weekend to replace the faucet.

I've been shopping faucets on the Internet, at Home Depot and Lowes for a month or two, but now I had to pull the trigger. I found a faucet I can live with at Home Depot. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the one I liked was out of stock at the Home Depot right up the street.

I decided to make a final run by Lowes and stopped at another Home Depot that was on the way. That Home Depot did have the faucet I wanted. Lowes didn't have anything more appealing. I went back to Home Depot and bought a new kitchen faucet, as well as a new faucet for my guest bathroom. My current guest bathroom faucet has a single lever setting temperature and volume. If it isn't put in exactly the perfect position, it drips.

With the low water costs in Greenville, the damn thing could have dripped for 20 years and not exceeded the cost of the replacement faucet. Bottom line: It was more annoying than anything else.

So there I was on a Saturday afternoon, ready to spring into faucet-replacement action. I removed all the cans of bug spray, spray oil, plant food and assorted other junk from under the sink. I pulled up the shelf paper and prepared to set to work.

I turned off the water to both sides of the faucet, got some channel locks and pliers, and crawled under the sink. Even with the water shut off, there was water everywhere. I crawled back out, located a couple of towels and went back in.

The old faucet disconnected easily enough, and, at first blush, it seemed the entire project was going to proceed without incident.

Here's the first law of home improvement projects: You never get away with just one trip to the home-improvement store.

When I attempted to reconnect the water lines to the new faucet, I hit a wall. The previous installation was a jerry-rigged affair and the cold water line wasn't long enough to quite reach and make a sealed connection. This wasn't entirely obvious at first. I hooked it up and turned on the water.

Lying under the sink was like being on the catwalk under Niagara Falls. I was drenched from the waist up.

I headed off to Home Depot for a longer hose. It was only a $7 fix, but cost me about 30 minutes. The new hose connected perfectly.

Two and a half hours after I pulled the first bottle from under the sink, I put the last bottle back under the sink.

I'm happy to have some water pressure again. It takes so little to make me happy.

Now, it's on to the guest bathroom.

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The Volvo V60 Hybrid: The Swedes Are Slighting Us

Volvo is busy readying a hybrid version of its sleek V60 wagon.

So what? you might ask. There are lots of hybrids out there, right?

Yes, there are, but the 2012 V60 will be one of the few charging its battery array with a plug-in system. The really big news, however, is the electric motor won't be teamed with a gasoline engine, but rather a diesel.

For those keeping score, a diesel-electric hybrid is an industry first.

Being developed within the same group as the all-electric C30, the V60 hybrid is said to travel up to 31 miles with just its battery-powered electric motor.

Recharging will take just over seven hours when using a regular 110 household outlet. As is typical with hybrid cars, the V60's braking system will also help charge the batteries.

So sophisticated is the recharging setup that it offers the driver the option of preheating or precooling the passenger compartment as the car is charging, requiring less pull on the batteries at start up.

By itself, the 2.4-liter five-cylinder diesel produces 215 horsepower and turns only the front wheels. Adding another 70 horsepower to the mix is the electric motor that powers the rear wheels alone.

If you need all-wheel drive, you just push a button to activate the wagon's electric 4-wheel drive. Then the electric motor and the diesel each do their share.

Another area where Volvo is showing us something in the V60 hybrid that we haven't seen before is its three-driving-mode system that lets the driver choose the different degrees of the diesel-electric mix. It is controlled by three buttons on the instrument panel.

In Pure, the car runs on its electric motor as much as possible, getting a little help every once in a while from the diesel. Hybrid is always the default setting when the car is started and it creates the optimum blend of electric and diesel interaction for the lowest environmental impact. Power delivers the maximum excitement drawing on both the electric motor and diesel. In Power mode, the V60 Hybrid will race from 0-to-60 in 6.9 seconds.

Volvo doesn't have much to say about pricing as yet, but its CEO and president Stefan Jacoby admits the hybrid will cost more than the gasoline-powered version, which shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.

Here's the thing: Volvo isn't bringing the V60 Hybrid to the U.S. Well it is, but not until 2013, and with a gasoline engine in place of the diesel.

I'm no fan of hybrids; I think anyone trying to operate on a budget is throwing money away on a hybrid. But if you are going to make one, diesel seems like the way to go.

The Swedes have let us down.

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