Back home

It’s good to be home but I must say, I have a pretty darn good job. 3 days in New York isn’t a bad way to spend the week. It was hugely successful and a good thing I went. Besides eating at top restaurants, the highlight of my week was reconnecting with a good friend who left the city to go to Westchester County to open his own restaurant a year and a half ago. We first met when he called a cult estate in Italy who referred him to a 70 year old cult winemaker in Napa who then told him how to get to me in Denver, and then I went to New York a couple of 3 years ago to meet with him. At that time Stephen was the wine buyer for the Danny Meyer restaurant group which is the most prestigious group in NY and has probably a dozen or so properties in the area. It was a real coup for us and my distributor to get into this group as one of the lead investors is also an importer so normally they don’t even look at wine from anyone else. Anyhow to cut to the chase, we hit it off and developed a good friendship. A year or so ago he moved upstate a bit (45 minutes out of the city) to one of the most exclusive counties in America, and opened his own place called Restaurant North. He’s killing them and is doing very well. Bill and Hillary were in for diner 3 nights ago, Michael Douglas the night before that, a bunch of NY Yankees are regulars and the list goes on and on. We strolled in (Lorenzo and I) and smiles and man hugs were on like long lost brothers who hadn’t seen each other for years. He had his chef whip out all kinds of delicacies and although we had no time, we caught up fast. I tried to pay but of course, he’d have none of it (he never let me pay for anything when he was at Gramercy Park Hotel in Manhattan either). The cool thing about his place is it’s all farm to table meaning everything is from local farmers. Oh well, enough said but it was great to see him and we agreed I’ll come back for dinner mid February. I think cousin Chris and Julie live close so I’ll have to let them know.

I arrived home around noon and had about 30 minutes before a Bocelli event conference call. Outside of the hotel contract, the misses has pretty much handled everything so I wasn’t really up to speed. I have to say, she has 99% of everything covered and despite navigating through our CFO’s “spend nothing” mentality, she’s put together a great event.

I have a lot of work to do this weekend (when don’t I?) and next week as well. I tend to compartmentalize things or break them down into pieces to get things done, so I’m always thinking in terms of what do I have to do in the next few days, then weeks, then months, etc.

It’s great to be home with the family, the house was sparkling and we were once again all together. Today we have some errands to run around 10am and then we’ll be home for the day. It’s now 5am which is not too bad as I’m still on NY time. I wish I could get my Mom to go with me for a two night trip there as she used to love going to NY and I’m sure she’d love it again. Maybe I can convince her sometime this Spring. I know she doesn’t like to fly (she and John Madden have a lot in common) but I could get her in first class, get her a great room on Park Avenue (all through points) and she’d eat at the finest restaurants through my connections. Maybe she could even take in a show! I’ll have the misses work on her as she seems to be bagging out on Paris in May. I need to get up and see the ageless one this weekend just to check on her.

I’m going to head off to the gym. I sure love the misses posts. She sees the beauty in the World like the colors of the sky that she always mentions. And how about all the 80’s music in her head. This is 100% true, we need to find an 80’s music game show as she’d win for sure! Time to run, I’m on a big cardio kick, trying to run a couple of miles a day (it’s half walk half run as no way I could run two miles non stop if my life depended on it) so I have to “run”. Hope you all are well, have a great weekend and God Bless.

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