One of our favorite local wineries, Silvertip Vineyards, is closing down and selling their inventory at half-price. They’ve been holding sales and tasting events at the winery, deep in the Santa Cruz mountains, every month for the past few months – today was the first time we’ve been in the area for one of those events.

Going into the Santa Cruz mountains on a Saturday afternoon is always a challenge because of beach traffic. Silvertip was kind enough to open at 9 – we didn’t leave the house nearly 10, but that still put us onto Highway 17 well before it got crowded.

We enjoyed the tasting and bought a couple of cases of wine; by the time we were finished, it was late enough to go to Silver Mountain and Burrell School and pick up our shipments there, too.

As we drove home, we saw how packed and slow 17 South was; I’m happy not to have had to contend with all the beach-goers.

Silvertip will probably have monthly sales on the 3rd Saturday for the rest of the year; they also ship, and if you’re a local, they may be able to deliver or arrange to be open for a pickup at a more convenient time. I’ve really enjoyed their wine – and at half-price, it’s even better.

In a normal year, I would have started working on the High Holy Day Honors at Shir Hadash in July. There would have been meetings with the Rabbi and the Rabbi’s assistant; there would have been other discussions with the Temple President; I’d probably be creating new handouts for new readings.

This isn’t a normal year. There’s a new sheriff Rabbi in town, and he’s been making a lot of changes to our services ever since he arrived in July; the High Holy Day services are no exception.

We’ll be holding services on our own campus for the first time since we’ve been members of the congregation (we expect a significant number of members to livestream the services from their homes, which should let the rest of us fit into the space available). Rabbi Nico wants the services to flow better, so he’s reduced the number of honors at each service (which means getting rid of almost all the readings from the prayerbook); the plans for that just got finalized this week.

I spent some time at Shir Hadash this afternoon to do a walk-through of the plans with the High Holy Days chair and the Temple President and President-Elect. It’s going to be exciting! I still have to get the Honors invitations out to people, but it won’t be until after Shabbat.

To prepare for the new year, I finally finished the peppermint bark I’ve been hoarding since December – Trader Joe’s already has pumpkin spice products on the shelf, so a new supply of peppermint bark can’t be too far away, can it?

Shabbat Shalom!