Week One of Eight - Part One

I’m finishing up my leg in Chicago working with our new associate Ricardo and staying at the home of Ricardo and his lovely wife J. I started the trip with a lovely visit with the Motherrocker household. Everyone in Motherrocker land seemed mellow. Miss Dukes was very lovable and we had a chance to play around and we capped it off with a wonderful cook out with steaks and halibut from Whole Net Worth (I don’t think the moniker Whole Paychecks really captures how much you can spend at Whole Foods). Unfortunately, I bombed out on my selections of wines with two less than inspired bottles.

Monday was a day of networking calls with Ricardo. He did a great job in identifying people and he seems to clearly have the knack for this type of thing which is critical to our success. We met up with Lakeview Coffee for dinner at one of our favorite hangouts, Tuscany on Clark where I had another poor wine selection. “I’m in a slump!”

Tuesday was work with client day. We have are placing financing for two and have a buyout/buy-in going on with another. Ricardo’s wife J wanted to cook dinner and we had grilled scallops, grilled veggies and couscous. We bought some one and I proffered an Italian Verdiccio and and New Zealand Sauvgnon Blanc. The first was another dud and my wine confidence was ebbing fast. But the second was very good. I capped it off with bringing a very nice bottle of Madiera that everyone but J (even Lakeview) thought was great.

Did I mention that Ricardo likes to have a drink on occasion? You might want to reference Lakeview’s blog on this subject. I always thought that Lakeview was the instigator for these bacchanalian escapades. However, having spent two nights with Mr. Ricardo I’m beginning to see Lakeview as a victim. This morning as I was trying to restore my energy level with large doses of caffeine in Ricardo’s kitchen, he announced to me that we were going to need to tone things down in future trips. I would have made a sarcastic remark on calling the kettle black but I didn’t want to take the extra energy to lift my head off of the counter.