The Clean Green Machine

It is 11:47 Saturday morning and it is a great great weekend so far. We had a block party last night at one of our neighbor's homes. These are great people hailing from the great state of Utah. They are Mormon's and as a result it was a "dry" party, but I was on the wagon so it did not matter and we had a great time. Good folk, good fun, and good food. We stayed much later than we originally planned and as a result , we did not post last (Friday) night.

I got up this morning and made it to a 7:00 breakfast with an abbreviated gathering of the guys at the club. I wisely chose not to play golf and being the strong leader I am, every else chose not to play either. Actually, we all had things to do. One of our gang is Mike Ameel, realtor extraordinaire, and he was telling us things are busy, perhaps a good sign for the economy. Mike is to Real Estate as Dave Hanna is to dining. It was a good breakfast we solved many of the world problems.

I got home to hear my wife on the phone with some urgency in her voice. Apparently the alarm in our Utah home went off last night. The alarm company contacted our first line of defense Brian and Elizabeth who told the alarm company we don't come to Utah anymore so they don't need anything in the house and don't worry about it. (That was just a test to see if Elizabeth is still reading the blog. As I know she is opening the blog but does she read it?) They asked Elizabeth if they wanted to drive up the mountain and check things out or should they send police. Mmmmmm, let me think. Oh year let's get out of bed and drive 20 minutes up the side of the mountain and see if there are armed burglars in the Cronin house? Does anyone actually say, yeah we'll go check it out? The police went and it was an apparent false alarm. Devin was talking to the alarm company.

When I asked what happened, I got one of those answer that define the difference between men and women. I am sorry to generalize and I kid you not I know if a woman ran this country we would be in a much better place. But Devin started the download by saying our house in Utah alarm went off and the basement window on the south end of the house was maybe broken into. Now I jumped right to the what and the how. What was taken? How bad is the damage? What kind of vandalism was done? How much is this going to cost? Devin went right to, Why didn't I hear the call last night? Why would they just send someone right to the house? Why didn't the police call us? Why won't the police tell the alarm company what they found? After it all was out in the open it was a false alarm and Brian and Elizabeth are going to check out the house later today. Thank you guys if you are reading today.

After that mini drama, I got dreaded yell from some corner of the house, "Get The Green Machine". Now this is never a good thing. The Green Machine is the greatest invention of the 20th century. It is a steamer portable vacuum cleaner that literally gets anything out of a carpet or almost nay fabric. But, you never use it for a good time. Well for the last couple of days, one of our dogs has been very flatulent. We don't know why, but something has crawled up inside of Max and it has died, or at least it has been smelling that way for the last two days. This morning Max's behind exploded in our guest bedroom. (Keep that in mind for those who visit the Chateau Cronin in the future. Be sure to ask for the Max's ass explosion discount.) Well the cry for the green machine is met like a yell CODE BLUE in our house. We get the machine and we have towels and sprays and haz mat outfits and wait for Captain Devin Cronin to get into action. She triages the damage, chooses the right cleaner sets the adjustments on the machine and does her thing. It is amazing to watch. In a matter of minutes, the carpet was clean (still ask for the discount) and the smell had left the room.

Like a good Sherpa, I picked up the Green Machine and took it to the Laundry where I, for the first time since we started buying Green Machines, decided to clean the Green Machine like it had never been cleaned before. I cleaned the hose, the brush, the reservoirs, and the wrapped the cord properly, and hung the hose meticulously as good as the picture on the box. I then returned the Green Machine to its rightful place in our single car garage. I was quite proud.

After that feat, I was going to reward myself with changing my clothes into something comfortable, finish reading Barron's, and then start my blog. As I made my way up the stairs and headed down the hallway towards the Office, I saw a little pile of cat barf, followed by a larger pile of cat barf soon followed by what looked like a bag of cat food mixed with a lions stomach bile shaken, but not stirred and then poured across the floor of the office. "Get The Green Machine" I called, but Devin had left for her walk and Man Child was doing what most teenage children do on a Saturday Morning at 9:30, nothing but sleeping. It was me, the cat barf and the newly clean Green Machine. Who says God does not have a sense of humor?

Upon her return I told Devin of my wonderful 40 minutes or so, and she said, welcome to my world. Well that was not the type of empathy I was looking for. I then helped with some other menial Sherpa chore and asked, "Does anything I do really help you?" And she came over to me and hugged me and said, "I love you, you are a good husband, a great father, a great provider (I swear I am not making this up.), you are amazingly smart, and you are really good at the stock market, you are a great lover (Ok, I did make that up but it seemed to flow nice), you are a great writer, and your blog is great." Yeah, I know. I was speechless. I got my Christmas present early. Cool.

We worked on packing and wrapping a few Christmas presents. Then she grabbed a bit of lunch and I grabbed a slice of cold pizza and started this blog. About 30 minutes into it, (about 2 paragraphs and 2 hours ago) I was feeling kinda yucky. Nurse Cronin came to take my vitals and after a few minutes decided I was just feeling crummy. Much better now and ready to get in the car and head to Anaheim to watch our Santa Margarita Catholic High School Eagles have their way with the kids from San Clemente High school for the CIF South Conference Finals.

We saw we went we conquered. I did not get the chance to post yesterday and by the time we got back from the game, it was too late. The final score was 27 13 Santa Margarita. We had 14,200 people at a high school game. If that was not enough, we found out today we are going to state. This is unusual as we had two losses in the season, but we have been chose to go up to Carson (near LA) to play Belmarine Prep next Friday night. Go Eagles.

We got up about 8:00 this morning as we are getting ready for a quaint Christmas Dinner party we have every years with a few friends. We simplified the menu down to Pan Fried Boneless Rib Eye Steak, Sweet potatoes, asparagus wrapped in croissant and crème cheese, and one of Devin's delicious salads and bruschetta as a starter. I will be enjoying two glasses of wine this evening as I picked a couple of "got to haves". The first will be a 2007 Domaine du Pégaü Châteauneuf-du-Pape Cuvée da Capo and the other is a 2005 Rubicon which should match well with the steak. We will also be unleashing a 2005 Lucien Le Moine Saint-Aubin 1er Cru Le Charmois, which is the more affordable cousin of some of the phenomenal Chassagne Montrachets of the same vintage. It should be very special. I will hopefully provide some tasting note later tonight or in tomorrow.

The tasting notes will come tomorrow and so will the photos. It is 11:50 and it time to wrap up this note tonight.