Wine, Women, and (Beatle)Song

This weekend was the Oktoberfest at our local winery, Lynnfred Winery, in Roselle. We weren't able to go last year since we were still away on our honeymoon, so this year we definitely wanted to attend. We arranged to meet with some friends of ours -- a fellow Beatles fan and her husband--there. Although we had some heavy rain in the afternoon, we were fortunate in that the rain stopped and held off for the evening.

I brought my camera but didn't take any pictures, so I'll have to describe the setting. The winery is in a large house covered with vines, with a covered porch next to the tasting room and a balcony overhead for the bed-and-breakfast suites. A tent covered the cobblestone parking lot for the occasion, with a smaller tent set up for the German band playing polkas at one end of the lot. Under the tent were lots of tables and the food and beverages; additional tables were set up outside. Behind the stand was a pig on a spit (I meant to take a picture of it, sorry.) Lots of people of all ages--even kids--stood or sat at tables or passed back and forth with bottles of wine.

After buying tickets for the food and drinks, we bought a bottle of white wine to share. I had a pulled pork sandwich and sweet corn, and Eugene bought a pork dinner with sauerkraut and potato salad. (I'm a bad German; I don't like sauerkraut.) The four of us sat at one of the tables, talking, eating, and drinking. Eventually we bought a second bottle of wine, this one a mixture of red wine, port, and spices. It was supposed to be warm, but they don't warm up the bottles, just the glasses. I still found it pretty potable for a red. While we told our friends about our trip to England and listened to my friend's husband tell us about his recent vacation in Ireland with his family, darkness fell. On the other side of the fest, children participated in a grape stomping contest; we heard the MC announce it but didn't watch. Our friends could only stay for a couple of hours, but it was great to see them. Hopefully we'll be able to get together with them soon.

Today was just a chore day for us; we did laundry and made a Sam's Club run for meat. The morning started off wet and overcast, but it cleared up nicely in the afternoon, after we'd already decided to postpone apple picking for next weekend. Hopefully the weather will still be nice then. I also uploaded over 360 photos from our vacation to Snapfish so we can start creating a photo book for our coffee table. I'd post the link, but you'd have to register with the site to see the pictures.

Writing: I finally finished my epic game last night, so I have no excuse to not work on Lennon's Line. I did some edits on it this afternoon, just trimming it down a bit. Time to pull out my OWW crits and start incorporating them too. I'd like to finish this project by the end of the year and start submitting it to agents, so it's time to kick things up a notch.

I feel as if I need to write in addition to editing, but I'm still a little uncertain as to what I want to work on. Catalyst in the Crucible, the sequel to Lennon's Line, is calling me, but I need to look at the plot and figure out how to simplify it. The first draft is over 200,000 words and needs some restructuring.

Heather e-mailed me this evening and said she wanted to read about the places I visited in England in LL. I hadn't planned to have Jo spend much time in London, but now that I've made the trip for myself, I realize I need to mention the jet lag from the trip. Maybe Jo can lay over in London for a day or two before taking the train up to Liverpool. I'm not working on that section at the moment, but I can think about it in the meantime.

Well, Eugene told me he blogged, so I have to check on it and see what he said about Oktoberfest.