Catching Up - The Rest of 2009

First, my apologies for neglecting this blog.  I've been engrossed with Twitter and it has consumed my time.   My tweets keep you up-to-date with what's going on.  Hope you can join me there.   If you don't tweet, you can follow my tweets from my homepage at www.adancewiththedevil.com.
 

  

             Dennis Murphy interviews Barbara                                          Dateline NBC - Friday and Sunday nights

Let me fill you in with a little bit of what's been going on since June of last year.  My Dateline show aired in prime time on Sunday at 8 pm, opposite the Tony Awards.  The Tony's got a rating of 10, my show got a rating of 9.  I almost beat the Tony's!!!!!!  I watched my Amazon.com rating shrink to 850; the lower  number means that I'm selling more books than people with a higher rating.  This is good.  The show aired twice more in the fall and each time I saw more hits on my web page and lower Amazon.com numbers (but never as low as 850 again).  I just learned this past Monday that Peacock Productions (NBC) is thinking about retooling my Dateline story to sell to the cable TV market. 

 

   

                        Three Sisters in the Background                                                             Coast near Newport

 

In late June - early July, we spent several weeks in Oregon.  I did book signings in Bend (Barnes & Noble), The Dalles (Klindt's - oldest bookstore in Oregon), Portland (St. John's Bookstore), and Newport (Canyon Way bookstore).   It only rained one day.  The weather was gorgeous, although we did have fog for Fourth of July in Newport.  The city fireworks were cancelled but we still saw some fantastic personal ones on the beach right below our room.
 

 

In July, we entered the Napa Home Winemaker's Classic and poured our wine for a charity event (the Dry Creek Lakota Volunteer Fire Department on Mt. Veeder above Napa).  It's an annual event held on the grounds at St. Supery in the Napa Valley.  We got a blue ribbon for our Sparkling Wine!
 

 

In August we went to Davis for our white wine grapes.  It was a tiring, hot day of pressing chardonnay, viognier, and sauvignon blanc.  By the middle of September, the charonnay must had settled.  It was separated and the wine cold stabilized.  We still haven't gotten around to bottling it.  Maybe we should have a straw party and by-pass the bottling step.  LOL

 

                          

      Paul H. Chapman Award with $10,000 Check                                 Barbara and Rex at the Award Dinner
 

In September, we went to Atlanta, Georgia,where I accepted the Paul H. Chapman Award from the Foundation for Improvement of Justice for my work in legal reform.  A long time friend nominated me and she got to attend the ceremony, too.  The award came with a special medal and a $10,000 check.  I had promised my friend that if I won I would donate half the prize to Community Violence Solutions, a charity dear to her heart.  Not only did I keep my promise; but  I found out a way to leverage the $5,000 donation into $9,000 for them. 
 

In December, I won the gold medal in the Wine Maker Magazine International Wine Label contest
with my Hareitage label.   It was published in the magazine's December issue.

    
 Bracebridge Dinner                       Garden of Santa Barbara Mission                       Garden of Carmel Mission

In December, we spent two weeks roaming around Central and Southern California.  We started off at the Bracebridge Dinner in Yosemite, a fabulous affair that lasts four hours.  It's been a tradition for 72 years and famed photographer Ansel Adams was a part of it for many years.  We moved on to visit friends in Fresno,  Bakersfield, and Palm Springs.  We moved to the coast for a couple of days in Santa Barbara and ended up with three nights in Monterey.  Friends came down and joined us for a Happy New Year celebration.