Kindling

You know, as I scroll down through my life, er, I mean, my blog, I find that I haven’t been doing much in the way of reviewing wine lately. Why?

Because I’ve been spending all my freaking time trying to figure out Kindle, that’s why. And at last, I think I got it.

You DO know about Kindle, don’t you? Anyone who saw Jeff Beezos guffawing on Jon Stewart a couple weeks ago, couldn’t help but be intrigued, if not amused. Beezos was introducing the new ‘edition’ of Kindle, the hand held electronic book reading device. I had already made up my mind to ‘publish’ a book on Kindle, but that cemented it.

Before getting onto Kindle, however, I had to first wrestle with Bill Gates. And Word. Specifically, how to convert a Word document to HTML. And I think I got it. I think. We’ll see in about 72 hours.

This whole experience has taught me one thing; Microsoft is kinda like Sadie. Sadie is a Golden Retriever who lives next door. Well, ‘lives’ is a relative word. Sadie actually thinks the whole world is her backyard. If she sees me out working in the vineyard she comes up with a tennis ball in her mouth, bumps me, nuzzles me, climbs all over me, just trying to get me to toss that slobbery, gooey ball.

But don’t do it. Once you toss the tennis ball, your life is over. Sadie will never leave you alone. She’ll hound you, chase you, she’ll stand outside your window while you sleep, drool dripping from the disgusting ball.

And that’s Microsoft. Once you got it, they won’t stop bugging you. Dial up! Connect. Redirect. We’ve got updates! Come on, throw the damn ball. While I’m sleeping it secretly downloads files to my computer. Then laughs at me. Haha, see what I did.

But, I think I got my book converted to HTML and uploaded to Kindle. I’m a little nervous about it though, because when I tried to preview it, Microsoft didn’t like the file and wouldn’t let me open it. But I thinks it’s there.

So, what is this book? Thanks for asking. It’s called A Ruminant on Spudders Crest; A Year of Growing, Making, and Enjoying Wine. It’s about a year-in-the-vineyard. My vineyard. Me. It’s quite amusing, I think. But then, I’m prejudiced.

I’m serializing the book, publishing it in four segments, pretty much following the seasons it chronicles. Part I takes the story up to bud-break, and sells for $5.

In any case, now that I’ve Kindled, it’s back to doing what I do best –sloughing off. And reviewing wine.