My apologies for the dull administrivia, but I thought it would be a good idea to let everybody know that we've added a few new interesting technical features to the Leisure Nouveau weblog lately.

1. reCAPTCHA is now being used to help screen comments.  This is a great feature that uses your CAPTCHA input to help digitize old books, newspapers, and other media while also blocking spam.  This also allows us to accept anonymous comments now.
2. We are now using Gravatar's global avatars in comment postings, which allows our commenters to finally have nice little icons next to their posts.
3. Various behind-the-scenes optimizations and changes have been made that hopefully speed up the performance of the website.  It should be loading faster and running smoothly.

We hope these various changes provide our readers with a more positive, easier, and leisurely reading experience here.  Please leave us your thoughts and comments and let us know if there are any other handy changes we could make.

We recently added a new domain alias to Leisure Nouveau, so that all of us (including myself) no longer need to remember how to spell the damn thing.  The new domain name, LNouv.com, is easy to remember, easy to type, and fun to say.

Next week we plan to return to a Monday, Wednesday, Friday publishing schedule again.  Expect to see some interesting interviews, lifestyle articles, coffee and wine reviews, and even some articles about travel.  Thank you all for your patience, and we at Leisure Nouveau are very sorry we've been away for so long.

This is just a quick note to direct your attention to my first article on The Local Dish, which is a review of the Caldera Tap House in Ashland, Oregon.  You can read it here!

Once again, our fine pals over at Wine.com are having a really great one-cent shipping sale from January 12th through the 16th! Enter promo code STOCKUP at checkout to pay just a penny for shipping on all orders of $99 or more.

If you're making a slightly smaller order, then you can save $5 on your order of $75 or more by entering code JANFIVE at checkout. Expires 1-31-09.

Last night as I was enjoying a cigar and a movie with some friends, I was admonished by one of the chocolatiers of Lillie Belle Farms, who said to me, "Jeff wanted me to tell you hello, and then he wanted me to berate you for not reviewing any chocolate on your new website!"  I was then treated to some delicious samples of a couple of 65% cocao single-origin chocolates so I could start to wrap my brain and taste buds around how exactly to taste chocolate.  It was rather astounding.  The first chocolate was from Madagascar, and had strong fruity notes of apricot and a very long, sweet finish on the back of the palate.  The second was from somewhere in Latin America (I didn't take notes, unfortunately, so I can't remember the exact country) and had a dark, earthy flavor with notes of licorice and a chalky, mid-palate finish.  It was an interesting experience, so indeed I've added a chocolate reviews category, and you should expect to see some articles there in the next week.  We will of course feature Lillie Belle Farms chocolate first.

It's currently Oktoberfest, by the way, and so next week Leisure Nouveau will also focus on German beer reviews!  Do you have a beer to recommend?  If so, please leave us a comment and we'll do our best to get to it.

I read some excellent news over at the Mutineer Magazine blog, which is that Amazon.com is going to start selling wine! Pretty spiffy, if you ask me. Read more here.

Loyal readers, this is just an announcement to let you know that, thanks to our partnership with Wine.com, we are able to offer you a code to get one-cent shipping from now until September 12 on orders of $99 or more. Once you're going through checkout, enter ONECENT in the appropriate box, and you should see the special deal.

If you're looking for some good wines to try, look back through our wine reviews for some excellent and affordable ideas, or treat yourself to something special, like a delicious bottle of Veuve Clicquot, or if you're feeling particularly flush, perhaps even a bottle of Dom Perignon.