Week 51
December 17 to December 23, 2000 

	Monday December 18,  2000 Football is a lot like baseball and basketball. You say how can I say that. Well my explanation is that there is definitely one or two dominate players on the teams of all three of these sports. Sure the pitcher in baseball is King. And the Center or Scorer in basketball can control the game. In Football again it is the Quarterback that is dominate, but that is where football can deviate and be more interesting. Baseball can be influenced by coaches as the other two sports, but in baseball a lot is in strategy and statistics (like left hander vs right hander) while football and basketball is into statistics also, but more into spontaneity. Football is my passion! I think it is more unpredictable. While baseball is unpredictable with a home run, it is slow most of the time. Basketball is the most exciting, but fails because a defensive player can make a mistake and only give up 2 % of the game. A mistake in baseball with a home run  or in football with a  touchdown will give up on average 20% of the game. Tonight's football game between the Rams and Buccaneers was one of the great unpredictable football games. Great defense against great offense and the decider is coaching. Let your team play! Don't play safe! Each time the team playing safe lost momentum. Just like my Raiders did Saturday.  Our new building is coming along fine, but Pat and I are trying to figure out what we want to ultimately do with it. Do we rent it out?  Well we can't charge a fee according to the County. That means we will have to be creative if we want to rent out and pay for our maintenance. Pat and I have agreed that we could charge a cleaning fee or a bottle of wine for the stay over night. The most concern that has come up recently is the question of our privacy. Do we want customers around in the evening. Unless some of you have been in this type of retail operation, you can't imagine what customers assume. As I have said before I didn't think I had the personality to deal with the day to day relationships with the public(customers), but I find I enjoy it immensely if I am prepared for it. The problem comes when some customers assume they can come after hrs, like 5 or 5:30 after they have been to all their other favorite wineries on the weekend--or most often without calling especially during the week when we are busy--Futures take up a lot of time and paper work. I can understand they feel we live here and will be home for them to socialize or pick up wine in-between their time for a restaurant dinner reservation or time in-between other wineries during the day. We understand that some forget they even have FUTURES until they are up in the area so we try to be very accommodating. Of course the problem for Pat and I is that we have two teenager daughters that require attention. We our trying to be patient, but I can see that some of this is brought on by us, because we encourage FUTURES, which require shipment or pickup at a later date. Pat is encouraging me to sell more through retail, but that will cause all of you to pay higher prices, because the middle men will take a big cut. Of course it will give us more privacy. BUT  I started this whole FUTURES thing because I wanted to save all of you money; AND I will fight high prices to my grave. I am willing to put up with some inconvenience as long as you are willing to put up with my moodiness. I am a curmudgeon.
	Dave
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