Father’s Day is an interesting “holiday”.  Usually I don’t worry too much about it.  A card for my dad, and a phone call to him, are usually the extent of my responsibilities.  My theory on Father’s Day is that our wives care so much about getting their recognition on Mother’s Day (deservedly so!) that they project this same level of caring onto us for Father’s Day.  Well, not that I don’t like Father’s Day, but I’m not sure I’d miss it if it were to disappear from the calendar. 

Unless all Father’s Days start to turn out like this most recent one, which wasn’t a Father’s Day, but a 3 day process. 

First there was the Sunday, the actual day of Father’s Day.  First, Lori dropped me off at Oakland Coliseum to meet Brandon and Jacob and oldest grandchild Elli for an Oakland A’s baseball game.  It wasn’t Elli’s first game, but she did have a pretty good time at the game.  And while the boys were going and getting us some food and beer, we managed to get a reasonably good self-photo of the two of us.  (Degree of difficulty is a bit higher on this because of my ancient phone.)  We stayed through the 5th inning, when the A’s took the lead for good over the Mariners.  Then we headed out, all of us heading up to Santa Rosa, to have dinner with their wives, and the other grandchildren (at the table with us, but at 4 months and 6 six weeks old, they really didn’t participate), and my wife, who had driven up there after dropping me off.  Great barbeque rib dinner, with everyone contributing a dish.  The new recipe was from daughter-in-law Brittany, who cooked potatoes wrapped in bacon.  Essentially this was medium sized red potatoes, quartered and wrapped in a slice of bacon, then baked for 45 minutes.  Oh yeah.  Add in a bottle of 2011 Armida Zinfandel, Russian River Valley, Goldmine Vineyard, and it was a great meal.  Only 1 glass though, since I was driving home. 

The next day I drove back up to Napa Valley, for a round of golf with Brandon.  It was customer appreciation day from a couple of his vendors, and they set up a golf tournament at Eagle Vines Golf for their customers.  Bruce, the Armida co-owner, was supposed to go with Brandon, but he couldn’t.  So my next Father’s Day present was a beautiful day playing golf, where all I had to do was buy the raffle tickets for their benefit event.  Great way to spend the day. 

Then on Tuesday, since Sunday was with the kids and Monday was golfing, Lori made a special Father’s Day dinner.  Serious comfort food:  meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas.  One of my all time favorite meals from when I was small.  Add in a bottle of 2011 Auriga Zinfandel, El Dorado (“Uncle Bud and Chuck’s favorite” it says on the label), and it was a great cap off to my 3 day Father’s Day celebration.  By the way, this was another very good Auriga wine.  They are fast becoming our go-to winery for the Sierra Foothills. 

I don’t think this one will be topped any time soon.

L’Chaim,

Larry