I think this is year 5 of Taste of Atlanta that we’ve been to. And our fourth year with VIP tickets.

If you haven’t been to Taste of Atlanta, it’s a large food festival with booths from many Atlanta area restaurants providing samples of their menu. With your ticket purchase to the festival, you get a set of “taste coupons” that you can redeem for the tasty samples being offered.

The VIP tickets get you additional food coupons and exclusive access to the tasting tent where you can sample wine and beer. As many wine and beer samples as you want. This usually makes for a fun time.

The first two VIP experiences we went to were really cool. Murphy’s Wine Shop was a major sponsor, if not the only sponsor, and provided a list of wines that were available for tasting. As you made your rounds tasting the different varieties, you could reference the list, which also provided pricing information. Try a wine variety, and if you liked it, make a note. Once through the tent, you were given the opportunity to place an order for the favorites that you indicated. After a week or so, you would then be able to stop by Murphy’s and pick up your order.

That was awesome. We ordered two cases on those occasions.

But things changed. A new sponsor appeared and the tasting tent seemed to become less about sampling and more about drinking. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy drinking! And, as much as I enjoyed sampling the offerings of the various restaurants and plan to visit a few in the coming months, I don’t have that same feeling for any of the wines. Yes, there were some fine tasting wines, but there wasn’t a one-stop-shop atmosphere as there used to be when Murphy’s was part of the deal.

Yes, I still enjoyed the festival and plan to return next year, most likely with a set of VIP tickets in hand again. I expect we’ll still have a great time, although we probably will not make any wine purchases based on our tastings.

We’re fostering a doggie, Theo. He came with two bags of Kibbles ‘n Bits dog food.

Already having decided to feed him the same type of food (Natural Balance, Duck and Potato) that we feed to our dog, Truffles, we looked at the ingredients list.

Kibbles ‘n bits’ main ingredient was corn, as I suspected. But then there was also corn syrup. Really? Why?

Later there was animal digest for chicken flavor. First I thought this might be chicken guts…but then I read a wikipedia entry. Gross!

Propylene glycol. Salt. And hydrochloric acid!

Plus caramel color and several other food colorings. I guess that’s what makes it pretty enough to entice people to want to feed to their pets.

We then double-checked the ingredient list of what Truffles gets. None of that icky stuff.

Kibbles ‘n bits (Original):
http://kibblesnbits.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_digest
http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/substances/toxsubstance.asp?toxid=240

Natural Balance (Limited Ingredients- Duck and Potato):
http://www.naturalbalanceinc.com

There’s the blog, which has been feeling like the unwanted stepchild. It probably started off more as a venting/rant&rave platform (aka condo drama), grew into a photo gallery (which I have since migrated to Picasa), and now sits mostly unused by the sidelines. There’s no fancy web development, even though I wanted to use it, too, to teach myself new tricks. It used to link to netflix and twitter and facebook, until those RSS feeds broke.

There’s Linked In, which really isn’t a regular platform for posting, but something I need to consider for that career track. I find it’s really a place to keep track the coworkers and bosses and other acquaintances that you didn’t like so you know where not to go look for a job.

There’s Twitter, perfect for those quick, attention-deficit disorderly shout outs, but which don’t tell a lot about a person. I’m not all that witty in the moment. I’m not that thought-provoking and philosophical in 140 characters or less.

There’s Facebook, which is great at seeing what others are up to. Even people you don’t know, family members you didn’t know you had (and still don’t speak to much). Maybe facebook is really more to make others envious? Sure, the pictures of a friend’s exotic, sun-drenched, beachy, beautiful place-he-calls-home in a foreign country are nice to look at, but is he just thumbing his nose at my poor, work focused, debt ridden, tanked economy lifestyle? Plus he works out, is younger, and has a better body?

Foursquare, which is just another “I’m here and you’re not” envy producing tool, which I use frequently, because I want to gain points.

GetGlue, so I can really let everyone know how much of a couch potato I am, and which gets me these cool stickers, which are completely useless, but I want something for free, damn it!

Google Plus, which has these nifty hangout tool. hell, I don’t know if it’s nifty. I’ve not used it. I don’t know what to say to people in real life, much less with them staring at me or talking to me in real time. It takes time for me to formulate my thoughts and to come up with nonsense. I like posting pictures of my dog, though.

Oh, and youtube. I’ve two videos there. Two. On a bright note, hangouts has/will have an option to record and post to youtube. that would be useful for me, you know, because, um….

And my latest obsession, Klout. Only because of that stupid Wired.com article that says it can lead to free stuff and jobs. So now I have to tweet, facebook, and g+ more.

I even have skype on my computer and phone. I’ve used it once to talk to my mom (who lives 20 minutes away) as an experient so she can contact Germany. I’ve my partner in my contact list. And I have one twitter/google+ peep in my skype contact list, whom I’ve never spoken to IRL.

HELP ME!

P.S.: I’ll post this on google+, and tweet and facebook about it.

P.S.S. : I forgot why I typed this. Maybe the brand names I’ve dropped will give me more klout.