We're planning a vacation!  A REAL vacation!  If I can get all the details worked out (and the budget!) Ralph, AJ and I will be taking a cruise next summer to Alaska.  There are a ton of details though.  It is an 11 day cruise sailing out of San Francisco.  Meredith is putting it together, and her family, including her sister, Veronica, and family, will be going.  I can think of a thousand reasons why it won't work, but...I'm going to try to get it together.  (One of the details is that Veronica and Ralph work together, and cover each other for vacations - can they both be gone for 2 weeks???  Another little detail is Allison, but she's actually a BIG detail!))

Ralph and I went out on the town last night - sort of, at least,  The bank sponsored a table at Haven Humane's Bark & Wine & Brew, so 5 people from the bank, and their guests, spent the evening at Red Lion Inn.  At least the company was good!  They had a lot of baskets you could buy a raffle ticket for, but not a lot for a silent auction (at least not a lot that I would put in a bid for - lots of jewelry and clothes, and none in my taste or size), and the live auction was seriously slow.  I didn't win anything, and neither did Ralph - he bought in to the 50-50 drawing,  I did donate $3.00 and spun to win a wine glass with the event logo.  (Actually - Ralph won that one for me - my hero - I won a coupon for BOGO at Chipotle's - a good deal too, but I wanted the glass!)

It was a beer and wine tasting event, and I think they should have liquored everyone up more - no one was really bidding on things,  (The lowest price anything went for was $200, so I wasn't in the running.  The most expensive was $4,000 - and the average was probably $500-$600 - not my price range!   The most bidding was done for a case of wine that was valued at $500.  Not!!!  The beer and wine tasting was fun - 3 local wineries and 2 local breweries were there.  I had fun talking to the people at the booths.  They were all happy to talk about their winery/brewery.  Since it was a tasting event, dinner was hor dourves.  It wouldn't have taken much to liquor everyone up, they were not encouraging people to eat!  They had enough food, I'm sure, but we had little tiny plates and a huge line to wait through.  What the served tasted great - all finger foods - egg rolls, cheese and crackers, shrimp, tiny quiches, deviled eggs, etc.  I felt like a pig coming back to the table with a plate over-flowing!