The Blog of Many Hats

When I got my Cigar Aficionado Top Fifty Cigars poster earlier this month, I was a little surprised to see the Puros Indios Viejo 1999 No. 4 Especial ranked among the highest of the Honduran offerings with a rating of 91.

I got three Puros Indios cigars in my Cigar Dave Officer's Club package a few months back. I smoked two of them (the Viejo and the Cuba Aliados) at a party a couple of days later. I remember that they were very good, but I don't remember any specifics. I was smoking outside in very cold weather and was very drunk, so it's not surprising that I don't remember all that much about them

Still, I had one cigar left from that package: the flagship Puros Indios cigar with the Ecuadorian Sumatra wrapper and a blend of Nicaraguan, Brazilian, and Dominican tobaccos for the filler. I decided that I would pop my cigar review cherry with it.

Some cigars have what I call "snob appeal". Puros Indios is not one of those cigars.

They are not a particularly attractive cigar. Their wrappers are not nice, shiny, uniform colors; instead, they have imperfections and almost look like there are twigs under the surface. The label is not anything to write home about either. It's fairly plain: just a big green background with some writing on it.

Contrast this with the Rocky Patel Vintage 1990 cigar I smoked last night: the wrapper is a deep,  uniform color and the label is pretty and embossed. The Rocky Patel offering looks amazing.

Even though the Rocky Patel cigar looks great, it kind of sucks. I wasn't impressed with it at all.

The Puros Indios, on the other hand, was excellent.

I often say that I put up with the first third of a cigar -- which is usually not all that exciting to me -- so that I can luxuriate in the last two thirds. But the Puros Indios started delivering excellent flavor to me from the moment I lit it.

If you're a fan of leathery cigars, this one is for you. Smoking this cigar is like smoking an entire cow. It delivers full on flavor from the time you light it until it starts burning your fingers. It finishes off  with a little spice. I'm going to buy a box of these as soon as I can. They're really just that good.

And did I mention the price? These sticks can be bought for around $3.00 in my neck of the woods. It's very rare to find a cigar this good at those prices.

So go out and try one of these babies. You may find that, like me, you need to add a box of them to your collection.

So, the wife and I have been worrying about whether or not our as-of-yet-unborn daughter will get into the "right" pre-school.

Today we toured one, and it's the best we've found so far: it's close to us and the people there are clearly total pros. We observed an incidence of projectile vomiting. The ladies in the room sprang into action like...ladies dealing with vomit. They soaked it up with some sandy material (like an oil spill), swept it up, and in less than a minute, things were back to normal. As a rookie dad, I was very impressed.

Everything seemed to be going great...right up until the end of the tour. I noticed that there were whiteboards on each classroom door. These whiteboards are how the teachers communicate to the parents what the kids did that day. At the top of this whiteboard it said, "Today, we talked about Kwanzaa."

Dammit. <bang head on desk>

So, last night was just a little bit unexpected.

My wife and her co-workers got together for a sort-of Christmas party. Spouses were not included, so I told my wife that she should go out and enjoy herself and that I would be at Villa Antonio, our favorite restaurant, smoking cigars and drinking scotch until she was done.

When he's not crazy busy, I like to chat with Chris, the bartender. Chris was definitely crazy busy on Friday because he had a party of 80 "cocktailing" in the bar area when I showed up. But he got a few minutes to breath and tell me that Sammy Hagar was in the restaurant.

Woo hoo! I can't drive 55, baby! Half of Van Hagar inna house!

Now, I'm not one to fawn all over celebrities, but I do like to at least say "Hi" if I get a chance. I've met Congresswoman Sue Myrick and our esteemed mayor in this same restaurant.

Unfortunately, Sammy was cordoned off from the masses and was unreachable. But Chris told me they'd purchased a bottle of Sammy's tequila just for the evening and he suggested that if I wanted to meet Sammy, I should buy a round and have one of the waiters escort me to Sammy's room with it.

So, I had him pour out 5 glasses of Cabo Wabo with little lime wedges and off I went with Anthony -- the sommelier and son of the eponymous Antonio -- to meet Sammy.

Sammy was an extremely cool guy. He shook my hand and insisted that I sip, not shoot, his tequilia. So I sipped it, and I was glad I did. Cabo Wabo has a very mild but interesting flavor and it goes down very smooth. A little bit of lime right afterwards is the perfect complement. I usually only do a few obligatory shots of tequila on Cinco de Mayo when they send the hot chicks around to sell shots of Cuervo, but I could see myself drinking Cabo Wabo often and enjoying it. I'm almost certainly going to add a bottle to my liquor cabinet.

I chatted with Sammy and his entourage briefly, and then I got out of their way so they could enjoy their evening. No sense wearing out your welcome.

About an hour later, they disappeared out the door with a few cute chicks from the bar.

All in all, it was a very fun evening, although I paid dearly for mixing the tequila with the scotch. That's an experiment I will definitely not repeat.

I'm a full grown man and yet, somehow, I still can't resist cute animal pictures.

The Sacramento, CA zoo has 3 new tiger cubs on its hands.

This image says "You can handle me now, but in just a short while I will be able to eat your head."

The rest of the images can be found here.

This blog is powered by the dasBlog. I like it because it's the most comprehensive blog software I've seen that's written using Microsoft's .NET platform. Plus, the source code is available, which is a huge plus for me.

As of this post, the blog is using one of the default dasBlog skins: Project84Grass. It's pretty enough, but I have grand plans, grand I tell you!

Over the next several geek-oriented blog posts, I intend to build my own dasBlog skin so that the blog will look the way I want. Theme development is somewhat difficult because you can totally destroy the blog in the process and not be able to navigate it. That kind of danger level holds great attraction for me.

I intend for this blog to have several sections:

• The Chef, because I love to cook and feed people.
• The Geek, because that's how I make my money and I'm a damn fine one.
• The Epicurean, because I love food, wine, and cigars.
• The Jester, because I am an incontrovertible smartass.
• The Philosopher, because it just wouldn't be a blog without pontification.
• The Political Junkie, because, try as I might, I just can't tear myself away from thinking about politics.

There are those would would argue that splitting one's focus in a blog is a sure way to keep readers away. To that I say "Bah!" And then I say "Bah!" again because it's so much fun. Go on. Try it. You'll like it. Say "Bah!" to the next person who tells you something you don't want to hear. It's therapeutic.

Oh, and let's not forget the most important category of all:

• The Horse-Hung Playgirl Model, for all my lady fans.

A particularly uninteresting post. The author pauses for a moment, deciding what to write, then decides he has nothing important to say. "This is," he thinks, probably just so that I can see what a second post on the main page would look like, with a separator after it.

Suddenly, a second paragraph occurs to him. I know, he thinks, I will experiment with the idea of using italics to indicating that I am thinking.

The post ends, anticlimactically.

This is the first sentence of the first post. This is the second sentence. This sentence serves to augment and clarify the preceeding two sentences.

This sentence of the post is here to point out that the final sentence of the first paragraph failed miserably at its job. This sentence serves to point out the the previous sentence is engaging in mindless bickering and is not actually contributing anything constructive to the post.

This sentence attempts to take the post in a whole new direction, but fails. This sentence tries to back up the previous one, but fails as well. This sentence comments on the awkwardness of having each sentence of the post refer to itself, to previous sentences in the post, and even, in some cases, to future sentences like the punk ass bitch of a sentence that begins the next paragraph.

This paragraph takes charge of the post and tells the preceeding sentences that, henceforth, there will be none of this self-referential nonsense going on. The previous sentence failed to note that the average blog reader will be put off by this drivel, but is promptly cut off in mid

Sensing that no good can come of this post, this sentence decides to end things, hoping that it will be construed as a commentary on the fragility of life and the need to live with one another in harmony. This sentence sneaks in, just before the post editor is closed, and tells the previous sentence to go back to communing with all the other pinko commie leftist sentences, noting slyly that perhaps it would find a home among the writings of Michael Focault or Noam Chomsky.