Vinomania, My Favorite Wine Store

Vinomania is awesome and well worth seeking out.

When I first moved here and didn't know the area well, I kept seeing signs for this place and then forgetting where it was when I wanted to go back. I finally did see the signs when I was ready to buy some wine and I stopped in. I'm glad I did.

I'd had this wine at Alto Cinco, a 2007 Callera Chardonnay. I tried to find it in a couple of wine stores, and I finally found one that would order it for me, if I ordered one case at 19.00 per bottle and paid an ordering fee. But when I went in and asked Gary, the owner of Vinomania about it, he told me if I liked that one, he had one that I would probably like just as much and it was only 9.99 a bottle. He was right!

He explained to me that the vineyards were in the same part of California and produced similar grapes because of the weather conditions. So now I know that if I like a type of wine from a certain area, try that type of wine from nearby areas and I'll probably like it too.

That seems very elementary but how long have I been shopping in wine stores and no one ever told me that?

Gary is good at recommending wines that go with certain foods too. It's not just expensive wines either - I've been in stores where they seem to steer their recommendations to pricy bottles. One of the wines he pointed out to me was a 6.99 Savignon Blanc from Australia, and my guests raved about it.

Vinomania is officially the coolest store in Syracuse. Would you look at this place? I just love it. The first time I walked through here I felt like I was home. Gary has a collection of cool stuff to rival mine, and he's got a better place to display it.

This is my current favorite - it's a nice buttery chardonnay from the central coast of California. It's very similar to the wine I first came in for and it's only $8.99 per bottle!

The store is located in Nettleton Commons, which is an old shoe factory that was converted into shops and offices. It's close to the Columbus Bakery and Thanos Greek imports.

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Great RENT TO OWN Opportunity on ACADEMY HILL, Manlius Village

This is a great house! My favorite thing about it is the huge finished walkout basement. There's a big sliding glass door out to the back yard. It doesn't feel like a basement! I can totally imagine putting my home gym there - perfect! There is also a separate room for an office or hobby room.

The house has a sunroom off of the kitchen so you can enjoy the beautiful back yard in all seasons. There's a small deck too, just the right size for a kitchen table and chairs.

The house is close to shopping in the Village of Manlius and very near Fayetteville Manlius High School.

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Call Melissa at 315-395-7523 for more information on the house or to schedule a viewing!

2000 NYSAR Grants for first time homeowners now available!

The New York State Association of Realtors is providing 2000 first time homebuyer grant for low to moderate income households in the state of New York.

For this program, a first time home buyer is someone who has not owned a home for 3 years and does not own any income or investment property anywhere in the world.

In Onondaga County, buyers must have an income of no more than $49,049. You are also required to qualify for a mortgage before applying for the grant.

If you are in this income level and have been thinking about buying a home, you owe it to yourself to call me. I'll help you find a lender and get you pre approved and then you can apply for the grant.

The grant application is not that long or hard, just one page of filling it out, you need to submit your 2009 taxes, fill out a one page form, and answer 3 questions:

1. How has your volunteerism affected your community and what to do you plan to
contribute to your new community?
2. How would receiving this grant affect your ability to purchase this residence?
3. How would purchasing this home affect your quality of life?

Even if you are not sure if you can qualify for a loan, call me at 315-395-7523. I will set you up with a lender who will be able to tell you what to do in order to buy a home. Even if you don't qualify right now there are steps you can take to repair your credit in order to become a homeowner. It might even be sooner than you think!

Just Rented! Great Onondaga Hill house.

This is on Fay Road, a great 5 bedroom house! The people were just thrilled to find it and it rented very fast. In fact I didn't even have time to put it on my blog before it rented.

Call me at 315-395-7523 if you are looking for a house to rent in the Syracuse Area, including Onondaga Hill, Manlius, Fayetteville, Dewitt, East Syracuse, Liverpool, North Syracuse, Clay, Cicero and more.

Click here to see some of my rentals. I do have more than are on this page though. Because I'm a licensed Realtor I have access to a lot of other ones.

If you have a house to rent, please call me. Don't pay to heat your vacant house this winter. Call me and I will find you great tenants. 315-395-7523

House for sale - a great price for TIPP HILL!

This is my listing on Tipperary hill. It's in a great location, right across the street from the zoo and Burnet park with skating rink, swimming pool, golf course, baseball diamonds and more.

Great location by Tipp Hill's Irish Taverns. Close to Coleman's (about 3 blocks) Nibsy's pub, George O'Dea's. But you are still far enough away that the noise of patrons returning to their cars at night will not bother you.

Close to downtown, about a mile and a half. 5 minutes in car. It's about a ten dollar taxi ride home if you decide to go to the clubs and bars in Armory Square in Downtown Syracuse.

It's an easy drive down the hill to get to shopping in Western Lights for Wegman's Market, Price Chopper Market, a liquor store, dry cleaning and a bunch of other small stores and restaurants.

This is at a great price and would make a perfect rental property. A lot of grad students live on Tipp Hill and will pay good prices for a single family home. I do a lot of rentals and I get asked all the time for houses on Tipp Hill!

Please call me at 315-395-7523 for more information or to view the house.

Thinking of moving my blog to wordpress

Note: Blogger has now changed the way you put photos in and it's much, much better.  You can put captions on them too.


There are also apps that let you post to blogger from an android phone.  Yay!


So thanks Google/Blogger/Blogspot for changing this.


Original post below:

I really want to like blogger, (the service I run this blog through). It's free, and I have had the blog for a couple of years now. I keep hoping they will improve it.

The limitations are huge. Posting photos, you can't move the photos around easily. If you are writing text and I want to put a photo in right where I am writing, it's difficult. That should be easy. However, uploading a new photo puts it at the top of the post. Even though the new photo goes to the top of the post, it should be easy to just drag it down. Not so. The window where you write the post is very small. It's very hard to drag a photo down because there's no room. So I have to upload all the photos in the opposite order I want to use them, before I start writing the text.

Blogger is a Google product. I'm using their own browser, Chrome. It shouldn't be hard like this.

Also, I have an Android phone. It's a Google operating system. It integrates with my gmail account and Google Voice. But it doesn't integrate with blogger. I can edit posts on blogger but I can't take a picture with my phone and upload it to my blog.

However, if I had wordpress, I could do that.

I keep thinking Google will change this. I've talked to a lot of other people who have been frustrated and for several years now I've been thinking it's got to get better. Still waiting.

Ocean Sushi in Liverpool

Ocean Sushi is a small sushi restaurant in a strip mall on Route 57 in Liverpool, New York. It's right next to the Starbucks.
I have heard this place gets really crowded. My husband and I went there at around 5:30 on a Saturday in September. There was only one other table occupied when we got there, and only one other party came in while we were eating.

It's basically your average upstate NY sushi bar. The sushi was good, not great, average in price. Service was prompt and pleasant. You'd expect service to be like that if the place is pretty much empty, however that is not always the case. The server was a young man who seemed very confused by me ordering a glass of wine - like this had never happened before. It was an average house wine type chardonnay for about six bucks and it was not chilled. But as I frequently drink white wine at room temperature, I didn't really care.

Ocean sushi also has a full bar, where they were showing sports. Thankfully the sound on the TV was off. I don't mind watching sports but I don't like listening to them while eating, and I sure don't like listening to TV commercials while dining out. Thanks Ocean Sushi, for keeping the sound down.

We got a tempura vegetable appetizer. It was good, not fantastic but we enjoyed it.
Sushi is served on a big boat. The menu has a mixture of fancy rolls like dragon rolls and caterpillar rolls and all the regular rolls like california rolls and plain fish rolls.
One roll that was unique was the spring roll, sushi wrapped in a spring roll wrapper like Vietnamese cold rolls come in. It had sweet sauce on it.

For 2 glasses of warm chardonnay, a soft drink, tempura appetizer and sushi it was around 70 dollars. I felt we got good value for the money and I would return.

I would post a link to their menu or web page here, but as far as I can tell they do not have one online.

They do however, have a Facebook page. It's an example of how not to do a Facebook page for your restaurant.

Social media is about interaction. What they did was just put up a page and ignore it. It's got people asking questions, people posting photos of the food, people saying they like the place and it even has the CNY Menus guy asking for a menu to put on his site! Also, it's got spam.

We have been thinking of eating at this place for a while now. I actually joined their Facebook page back in April and asked them if they had a menu online! No answer. If they had answered, I would have been reminded of their restaurant and probably eaten there sooner.

Added July 1, 2011 Link to Ocean Sushi Liverpool NY Menu from CNY Menus -

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Oneida Lake in Brewerton

Yesterday I went on a fall foliage cruise on Oneida Lake. It was supposed to go through the Erie Canal but the water level was too high from the recent rains. We went around the lake instead. It was a beautiful day, the sun kept going in and out of the clouds and the lighting was majestic.

I was on the open top deck of the boat and the open view of the sky and water was worth the slight chill. There wasn't a lot of Fall Foliage though, it's still a little early. I think the tours shut down for the season in mid-October so if you want to do it this year better hurry.

One of my goals was to go on a canal boat cruise this season and I'm counting this even though we didn't actually go on a canal.

Seaway Navigation and Tours

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Half and Half

I love the symmetry of this tree! Leaves are really starting to change now. This is my favorite time of the year.