For wine lovers, Vinology has been one of the best places to go in the Ann Arbor area since it opened on north Main St. a couple of years ago.  With a big cellar and knowledgable wine specialists they held regular wine dinners and could always recommend the right wine to go with a meal.  Unfortunately, until recently the meal side of the equation was a bit of a mixed bag.  The menu had too many options and was of inconsistent quality.  For those who have equal or greater interest in the food rather than the wine, there is now great news.

My work colleague Sara Johns and her husband Brandon, recently bought a stake in Vinology.  Brandon was formerly the chef at the Chop House and practises his culinary craft in the kitchen of Vinology. The menu has been drastically pared down and several new dishes have been added.  We went to Vinology for Jules’ birthday dinner the other night and all the dishes were excellent.  The gnocchi with morels that I had was especially good and Jules loved her pan roasted chicken with a whole grain salad.  The asparagus salad with poached duck egg was also a fabulous appetizer. Brandon prefers to use local ingredients wherever possible and the menu will be adjusted periodically to take advantage of in-season produce.

If you’re looking for a great meal and you haven’t been to Vinology since the beginning of June, it’s definitely worth checking out.

So I started the new job this week and it’s great. I love being part of a small team and the location is great. Among other things I’m writing on DieselForecast and HydrogenForecast.  I’m actually looking forward to work everyday which is a great feeling.

It’s come to my attention that my previous post on opportunity left some readers confused as to what I was talking about.  So let me make this perfectly clear.  I got a new job and today was my last day at the old place.  After 16 years the time has come to move on.  Not being one to torch bridges, I’ll just say that I worked with a lot of great people over my years at Kelsey-Hayes and it’s subsequent corporate incarnations.  As for the company itself, well enough has been said about that.

On Monday I begin my tenure at ICON Creative Technologies and I’m looking forward to a long and fruitful relationship.   I’m shifting from engineering to being a full-time automotive journalist, a role in which I hope to inform and educate readers on the latest automotive technologies and advancements.  And I’ll be doing it from an office in downtown Ann Arbor!

Jules and I stopped by Zingerman’s Roadhouse today with the intention of grabbing some lunch. The food is generally really good at the Roadhouse but it can be erratic at times. Fortunately we had to wait about ten minutes for a table so we perused the menu while waiting. Their prices have really gotten out of line. $9.95 for a burger and $2.50 extra for cheese? Please it’s not that great a burger. Frankly the Sidetrack burgers are better. $19.00 for a sampler plate of five mini-burgers or brisket? After a couple of minutes of pondering these prices we got up and decided to try the Quarter Bistro a few hundred yards away. It was an excellent decision. The food was really good, the service was excellent and the prices were much more reasonable. Franky I have the feeling the Ari and Paul and the team might be reading a little bit too much of their own press. If the quality of the food at the Roadhouse could always be counted on to be outstanding, the prices might justifiable. The reality is that they are not.

I no longer get the Ann Arbor News, but I still check the Mlive website from time to time.  They recently changed the address for the A2 news section from mlive.com/aanews to mlive.com/annarbornews.  That’s fine if they want to do that although changing to a longer url is kind of a dumb idea. However, it should be a no-brainer for whoever did this to at least change the links on the mlive page to go to the right place.  Instead clicking the AA News link from the main mlive page takes to an error page, stating that the address has changed.  If someone manually enters the old address, they should see this, but an internal link should just go to the right page.  Just another example of why they are doomed.

We stopped in to eat at TK WU on Liberty Street in A2 this afternoon and left wishing we hadn’t. About the only thing we had that was halfway decent was the salt and pepper calamari for an appetizer. After that it went downhill. Sofie had the almond chicken which came smothered in a rather unpleasant tasting gravy and that was probably the least unpleasant dish. Max tried the mu shu shrimp and in spite of loving shrimp he was unimpressed. Jules had some hot and sour soup that a really funky flavor and shrimp lettuce wrap that consisted largely of frozen peas and carrots and wet iceberg lettuce. My szechwan beef was the last to arrive and was practically inedible. The black pepper was totally over-powering, but even with that the other spices just tasted all wrong. I’ve had lots of szechwan before and never tasted anything like quite like this, and hopefully never will again. Sometimes when you try a new restaurant you find a pleasant surprise like Taqueria La Loma, other times you find one you never want to see again like Tk Wu.

In case you thought parking was hard to find in downtown Ann Arbor before, It may be about to get a whole lot worse. Yesterday it was announced that Google is going to build a new headquarters for their AdWords business in Ann Arbor and hire a thousand people in the area. Although having a thousand new jobs in the area is awesome, they apparently want to build in downtown Ann Arbor and need 200,000 square feet of office space. Where the hell are you go to put another 1000 cars in Ann Arbor especially if some of the proposed sites are used which include existing surface parking lots.

I have an idea, how about Ypsilanti? The Corner Brewery has bought part of the old Motor Wheel plant, maybe the rest could go to Google. Or how about the site of the soon to be vacated Ypsilanti Public Schools bus garage? Or the Water Street site? Or the current site of the former Visteon plant that will soon close? Come on Ypsi needs the tax revenue and there are plenty of spaces that might be suitable. What do the mayoral candidates think? Steve Pierce can you here me?

Yesterday the 2006 Washtenaw Elementary Science Olympiad took place at Forsythe Middle School in Ann Arbor. There were 1300 students competing from 16 schools including 15 in Ann Arbor and Estabrook in Ypsilanti. There students from 2nd to 5th grades. Estabrook only had 5th graders competing. We have been practicing since January. I coached the team competing in the Write It, Build It event. The Estabrook team worked extremely hard and although we didn’t win any single event outright, we did well in most events, including 2nd in Straw Tower, 3rd in Name that Scientist and 4th in Write It, Build It. Our team had no result worse than 10th. As a result the Estabrook team came in third overall among all the schools. More importantly, the supervisors of each event voted on which team showed the best combination of politeness, conduct during events and behavior toward others and teammates. Estabrook won the sportsmanship award for 5th grade. Today there was an article in the Ann Arbor News and they had a picture of one the kids I coached Destiny Mack. I put up a bunch of pictures here.

Congratulations to all the kids who worked so hard to prepare and learned so much new stuff, to head coach Lisa Lava-Kellar and to all the parents who volunteered to coach the teams!

I recently wrote a post in response to an article Mike Ramsey wrote in the business section of the April 9, 2006 Ann Arbor News about a looming labor shortage. I took issue with the tone and content of Mr. Ramsey’s article. From all appearances Mr. Ramsey only spoke to some corporate managers and not to any skilled employees actually trying to find work in Michigan right now. I posted a full copy of my letter in that previous post. Yesterday the Ann Arbor News decided to publish the letter I wrote. However, they edited out all references to the writer or the original article. This change caused a fundamental change to the meaning of my letter, which was meant to not only challenge the assertions of the article, but also criticize the writer. Letters to the editor are supposed to reflect the opinions of the readers of a publication. The editors of a publication have their own space for expressing their opinions on that page. The letters are supposed to provide another view. If the editors are going to change the meaning or intent of letters, they shouldn’t even bother to take letters. This disregard for the readership and the common good is one of the main reasons people are abandoning newspapers.

The only reason I even still get the AA News is because I want some local news. As I have seen more and more of the content of the paper being taken straight off the wires and the pages of the NY Times and Washington Post verbatim, I see less and less reason to subscribe. Worse yet is that this re-purposed content is often published locally days or weeks after appearing elsewhere. Often it is also incoherently edited, to fit into the available page space in the local paper. Since the net is my primary news source, I have usually seen most of this content on the day it was initially published. Newsvine, digg, and the other sources in my blogroll provide me much more timely and complete content and allow me to contribute my feedback immediately rather than 2 weeks after the original publication. The immediacy of the net also allows for almost real-time conversation, although this also allows for abuse, it is a small price to pay for the benefit of true mass communication.

So this morning YpsiDixit had a a post about the apparently squishy housing market in Ypsilanti. Then this afternoon the Ann Arbor News had an article about the rapidly increasing number of listings combined with stagnant sales, and actually falling prices. While most economists would blame this on rising interest rates as I did until recently, I think the real reason may be something different. Have you noticed anything new about many of the for sale signs in the last couple of years? Why is it necessary for real estate agents to stick a big photo of their mug on the for sale sign? I am not buying the agent, I am buying a house. What I want on the sign is the words “For Sale” and the phone number in big bold type so I can easily read it. I don’t want to see the face of some schmuck trying to sell houses all over town. Ann Arbor until just a few years ago used to prohibit for sale signs from realtors, only owners were allowed to put for sale signs on their houses. I used to think this was ridiculous. Now after seeing all the signs with agents pictures I think it is time bring back the sign ban.