Rainy Day

Rainy day view from the office.

It’s raining here, supposed to rain all day. At least it’s a break from the sauna-like conditions we’ve had for the past few weeks.

Football season is under way with pre-season games and I’m really looking forward to watching the games this year on our new 60” big-screen TV. It’s HD and I hooked up the DVD player with an HDMI cable and the movies look just like they do in the theater. I also hooked up the HD DVR cable box with an HDMI cable and football and baseball games look amazing in HD. The HDMI cable sends a pure digital signal to the TV.

We’re still looking to get some furniture for our “theater room.” It’s kind of funny, we’re watching this huge TV sitting on lawn chairs. We got rid of our old sofa before we moved and haven’t shopped for new furniture yet. We’d like to get some sort of sectional sofa for the theater room and we still need to get furniture for our other living/sitting room. That’s where we have Lago’s piano. We’re really looking forward to the holidays - and when we have some furniture - that room will look great with the tree. We also have something we didn’t have before and that’s an actual dining room off the kitchen.

We still have lots of boxes around and one room is almost nothing but boxes. We finally got our cable almost straightened out. Three different people have been out here. The first two were sub-contractors and didn’t really know much. Finally, Tuesday an honest to goodness cable guy came and got us wired throughout the house for cable. He needs to come back and do some slight modifications, but everything works. One of the problems was a signal amplifier in the attic was not connected.

Lago and I had dinner last night at the Bonefish Grill. As the name suggests, it’s a seafood restaurant. It’s a chain here and the one we went to is right next door to our new favorite place, the Total Wine store. The food was good and their slightly different take on the mussels with a cream sauce was very good. Lago had twin lobster tails and I had a filet with gulf shrimp stuffed with crab meat. The food was very good and so was the dessert and cappuccino. We’ve eaten twice at another chain restaurant nearby, Carino’s Italian restaurant. The food is very good there also. They have an excellent lasagna and Lago enjoyed her eggplant parmesan. The have big portions so there’s plenty left over to take home for the next day.

The one place we’re really impressed with is the Total Wine store. It’s a huge store filled with wine, beer, accessories and gourmet snacks. Aisle after aisle of wines are grouped by style/grape and by region. They have some wines grouped by other categories like Easy-Drinking Reds and Elegant Whites. They have sections for Virginia and North Carolina wines, but some of our favorites were missing from the Virginia section. I think we can order these online though. One of our new favorite wines is the Clos Du Val Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa Valley. This wine is great with a steak or just for sitting back and enjoying. We first discovered this wine a few years ago at Smith & Wollensky’s in NYC. We didn’t see it again until we had it this year at a restaurant here in town. This wine is little more expensive, but the prices at Total Wine are great.

The beer selection is just as amazing with beers from all over the country and around the world. They had the Harpoon Brewery’s seasonal beer which I haven’t seen since I lived in Boston. Can’t wait to go there next month when they start to carry the Oktoberfest brews.