To divertirse or not, part II

We planned a Saturday evening out to divertirnos, to have fun, or better yet, to divert our minds from the daily grind and for what lays ahead for my wife's mother, when we got a call from my sister in law worrying about the deteriorating state of my mother in law's health-- she, the subject of my previous blog post. I offered to cancel our plans but my wife said in so many words that we needed this night out. We needed this diversion.

Good thing too, as I also did not want to think about that gut punch of 11-10 loss the Rangers suffered at the hands of the Angels earlier that evening. This loss in my opinion was the second worse loss in franchise history, second only to their infamous game six loss in the 2011 World Series. Thankfully they shook off that loss and claimed the AL West title Sunday afternoon.

Any sports game loss pales in comparison to the thought of my wife losing her mother to cancer. And for the first time since we heard this news, I had a couple moments Saturday afternoon where this possibility overtook the hope I have for her recovery.

We did go out Saturday evening as planned, but the dark cloud of doubt and uncertainty joined us at the restaurant and even at the wine bar. So as much as we tried to divert our thoughts away from this, everything landed back onto the thought at my wife losing her mother. And that in of itself will have few, if any, diversions worthy of the situation.

To divertirse or not

One of my favorite words in the Spanish language is "divertido", which essentially means to have fun. For example, "quiero hacer algo divertido", I want to do something fun. But what I love most about this word is that it looks like the word divert in English, which to me is the true essence of the word: "Let's do something to divert our attention from the mundaneness of our daily existence by doing something out of the ordinary."

For the last several Thursday evenings I have had the opportunity to spend time playing softball with some work colleagues. I'll be the first to admit that we are not very good-- just imagine a bunch of librarians playing softball. Yeah. Exactly. However you would never know we were such horrible softball players. We treated each game with such a naivete that even though we pretty much got slaughtered each game, we still had so much fun. For those of us teammates who are knowledgeable of the game or who have played it before, we recognized our limitations but we nevertheless felt excited to play regardless of the final score. We never let our horrible-ness, as it were, divert our attention from the game itself.

Even with that said I spent many a sleepless Thursday night thinking about every single misplay I made over and over until I fell asleep: "If I had only reacted quicker to that groundball" or "If I had only gotten a hit with RISP." Stupid crap like that while laying in bed. Ad infinitum. Over and over again, until my tiredness took over. I wish my mind would not work like that at times.

As bad as this may sound, tonight I would rather to divert my attention directly to my misplays again, over and over again than to think about the horrible news I got late this afternoon. I want to divert my mind away from some of the most completely devastating news anyone could receive. I will not divulge the nature of the news here but it is as devastating as can get.

I do not foresee many things 'divertido' going on here for a while, but I do hope to have a few thing around to divert me from the harsh reality of the aforementioned news.

Setting Down More Roots: Umbra Winery Keeps Growing

Everyone is welcome at Umbra, especially Walkens.

 UPDATE--
The plans laid out in this post never came to fruition. Please visit newer posts for up to date information on Umbra Winery.

A recent visit to Umbra Winery proved to be fruitful in a few different ways. We tried a fantastic new Cabernet Sauvignon. We found out that owner John Wilson is now the winemaker. And we found out that Umbra is expanding its footprint in Grapevine. Excitement is building, and rightly so, since Umbra has only been open several months.

John Wilson greeted us and said we had to try the soon to be released Roussanne. This lesser known white varietal has shown to be another great white wine that pairs well with Texas terroir. The fruit for this new Umbra wine is grown out in the Texas High Plains at Oswald Vineyards. I personally have been wanting to try it since John mentioned it last year, and it is very good. However the wine that caught my fancy was not this one, but the new Cabernet Sauvignon made by John Wilson himself.

Longtime CrossRoads and Umbra Winery winemaker John Otis recently left Umbra for new adventures out in the Pacific Northwest, leaving John Wilson with winemaking duties. So another hat that John Wilson now dons is that of winemaker. His first wine creation is a Cabernet Sauvignon blend of two vintages, plus a smidgen of Merlot for good measure. This vino shows that John picked up a thing or two over the years from Mr. Otis' winemaking prowess as it is fantastic. If you want a a good indicator of how good this wine is, my wife who is not a fan of red wines and makes a point of avoiding them, utterly loved this cab. Well done, John. Well done.

Picture wine-making materiel in this end of the room.

When Umbra opened its doors on Grapevine's busy Main Street last fall, the actual winemaking facility remained in Little Elm. Over the last week or so I caught wind of some future changes from an Umbra Instagram conversation. Even before I had a chance to ask John about the upcoming changes, he asked us to join him for a quick jaunt outside.

Picture fun wine related events in this side of the room.

John is still awaiting final approval from the city of Grapevine, but behind their Main Street location, is a building that he hopes that will not only house Umbra's wine making apparatus, but will also serve as Umbra's event center for wine club and other entertaining events.

In less than one year John and his wife Debbie have done more than settle into their Grapevine location, but have set themselves up for future success. Grapevine is North Texas' wine hub and Umbra Winery will be a big part of Grapevine's wine destination industry.

Selena: Thoughts y Recuerdos

We all remember where we were when a major event or catastrophe occurred. Whether it was 9/11 or the first lunar landing, those moments are tucked away in the crevices of our brains' memory banks. I remember where I was when Selena died like it was yesterday, and cannot believe twenty years have passed since that dark day. Though I am not an adherent of Tejano music, Selena's passing still resonates with me all of these years later.

I grew up in the Corpus Christi area, but I never saw Selena in concert like some of my friends. Tejano music has never been my music or my scene, although I somehow found myself spending many a boring Saturday night at Tejano music clubs in my early twenties. The things we do for friends, right? But just because Tejano music was not my thing did not mean I was oblivious to Selena and her music.

It was not hard at all to miss Selena's beauty, which was on par with her infectious personality: both equally beautiful. Like many others, I found her music catchy, however, what resonated was that she was not much different than me in a few ways: she was not a native Spanish speaker but picked it up along the way; she did her best to straddled two distinct, predominant cultures in South Texas (American and Mexican); and like me, she had a fondness for classic rock. It would probably surprise some, but Selena was influenced by classic rock artists such as Pat Benatar.

But unlike Benatar, Selena's music career was short-lived and to me she belongs in the group of musicians who left this world way too early: Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Buddy Holly, Stevie Ray Vaughan, et al. She had only begun to scratch the surface of crossover success with an album that was released posthumously.

Such as the aforementioned artists, we will miss out on all of the great future-music that was silenced that cloudy spring day in Corpus Christi. I have always imagined how Selena's vocal heft in "Si una Vez" would have translated into rock music, which I think she would've done at some point. Now imagine her covering a Benatar tune. Chills.

Twenty years later, we are left with thoughts and memories of an artist whose life was cut short by a bullet. The sky was the limit for someone whose stardom and talent was partly unrealized. Little did I know that I was only a few miles away from a superstar's demise, a supernova whose presence is still felt all these years later.