We went to Russian River for the weekend with some folks from my company. It was fantastic! We rented a house and enjoyed the stay doing pretty much nothing. Well, that’s not true exactly.

We went wine tasting, and something that we have not done before - champagne tasting. It was a wonderful sight - the vineyards were yellow at the top from the changing colors of the fall season, and greenery in general in the background made it look very pretty.

Inside the house, we played some poker, some bridge and a variation of bridge. It was good break from work and the usual uneventful weekends.

What was surprising was that there was no cell phone signal in the area. Our house had the river on one side and a golf course on the other side, and given the proximity to San Francisco, I would have imagined that there would be cell phone signal. Anyway, it was not that critical to get the signal, except that one of our buddies was coming in later on Saturday, and if he were to get lost, it would have been tough for him to get in touch with us. Fortunately for us, he did not get lost and made it fine.

But there was cable TV available and that meant that we were able to watch Stanford getting drubbed by USC. It was an superb display of a highly efficient offense. I loved it.