{"id":1439,"date":"2014-02-02T18:29:55","date_gmt":"2014-02-03T01:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/?p=1439"},"modified":"2023-10-21T15:13:05","modified_gmt":"2023-10-21T23:13:05","slug":"an-abbsolutlyy-great-day-with-abbyy-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/an-abbsolutlyy-great-day-with-abbyy-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"An ABBsolutlYY great day with ABBYY USA!"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past Saturday, January 25th<\/sup>, was the ABBYY USA Winter Holiday party held at Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California.\u00a0 Founded 130 years ago, Wente Vineyards is the country\u2019s oldest, continuously operated family-owned winery.\u00a0 The Vineyard itself is absolutely gorgeous with other excellent attractions such as a Bar & Grill, full service restaurant, wine tasting tours and, my personal favorite, a stunning 18-hole Golf Course!<\/p>\n

\"vineyard\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The party itself was scheduled to start that evening at 6pm with a pre-dinner wine tasting\u00a0 tour starting at 5pm so a couple ABBYY golf addicts and myself were quick to put two-and-two together and a morning golf tournament was born.\u00a0 There were a grand total of fourteen players that joined the tournament and we played best-ball format.\u00a0 My group consisted of two long hitters and myself.<\/p>\n

\"golf<\/a><\/p>\n

Hole #10 was particularly noteworthy.\u00a0 Our strategy was for me to tee-off on each hole because I could generally put the ball \u2018in play\u2019 although I wasn\u2019t terribly long.\u00a0 Then the next two guys could be more aggressive and try to put us in a better position.\u00a0 It worked out well and especially on the 281-yard tenth hole.\u00a0 I tee\u2019d off and put the ball \u2018in play\u2019 about 180 yards, leaving only roughly 100 yards to the hole so this gave us three additional chances to improve.\u00a0 The next guy in our group, Steve, had a very nice shot that traveled roughly 210 or so yards which only left us about 70 yards, so this was a slight improvement.\u00a0 Therefore we had two shots to be most aggressive.\u00a0 Our next guy, Ruben, took the third shot and drove it out of bounds but we had one more chance.\u00a0 Ruben also took our fourth shot.<\/p>\n

\"hole<\/a><\/p>\n

We all agreed that he would \u2018grip-it and rip-it\u2019 and he did just that as we had little to lose.\u00a0 His shot ended up only about 10 feet from the hole making his tee shot roughly 270 yards and directly on target. It was nearly a hole-in-one on a par 4 hole.\u00a0 It was an amazing shot by Ruben and one to remember for a lifetime!<\/p>\n

\"ruben<\/a><\/p>\n

After a great morning of golf with the group that went a bit longer than expected I had less than an hour to rush back to the hotel room I had rented, shower and return for wine tasting.\u00a0 So Marc, who was also staying at the same hotel, and I hauled it to the hotel to check-in and get ready.\u00a0 Since Marc wasn\u2019t planning on attending the wine tasting he was nice enough to lend me his car which was much appreciated.\u00a0 I made the wine tasting event just as it was starting at 5pm so a bit a relaxation or short nap was, obviously, not in the plans.\u00a0 The wine tasting consisted of a guided tour where the history of the Vineyard and Wente family was explained which was interesting.\u00a0 Then they took us into the \u201ccave\u201d (their terminology), which was actually a large storeroom\/warehouse which stored all the barrels of fermenting wine where the process was explained in detail.\u00a0 It was a great experience.<\/p>\n

\"wine<\/a><\/p>\n

Lastly, after the wine tasting tour, it was time of the main event and the Winter Party\/Dinner.\u00a0 There was all the usual chit-chat and conversations you might expect.\u00a0 At about 7pm we all sat down for dinner, which was absolutely delicious.\u00a0 Drawings for prizes were held through-out the evening and many people won wonderful items but, unfortunately, I was not among the winners.\u00a0 Nevertheless I got around to say hello to nearly everyone which I sincerely enjoyed.\u00a0 I also had the chance to meet many of my co-workers significant others and\/or family members for the first time which was great as well.<\/p>\n

\"dinner\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Overall it was a busy, but wonderful day\/afternoon and evening.\u00a0 Thanks to ABBYY USA for sponsoring such a terrific event and especially thanks to all the organizers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This past Saturday, January 25th, was the ABBYY USA Winter Holiday party held at Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California.\u00a0 Founded 130 years ago, Wente Vineyards is the country\u2019s oldest, continuously operated family-owned winery.\u00a0 The Vineyard itself is absolutely gorgeous with other excellent attractions such as a Bar & Grill, full service restaurant, wine tasting tours […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1447,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[44,92],"tags":[85,424,422,423],"class_list":["post-1439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business_and_finance","category-friends","tag-abbyy","tag-golf","tag-wente","tag-wine"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole-150x150.png",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole-223x300.png",223,300,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false],"post-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",156,210,false],"coral-dark-medium-large-2x":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false],"coral-dark-large-2x":["https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ruben-and-steve-10-hole.png",537,722,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Kevin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/author\/kneal\/"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"This past Saturday, January 25th, was the ABBYY USA Winter Holiday party held at Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California.\u00a0 Founded 130 years ago, Wente Vineyards is the country\u2019s oldest, continuously operated family-owned winery.\u00a0 The Vineyard itself is absolutely gorgeous with other excellent attractions such as a Bar & Grill, full service restaurant, wine tasting tours…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1439"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13470,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1439\/revisions\/13470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}