The One About Wine

Category: weekleez

The One About Wine part I
October 8, 2002

hi kids!

first, some very important news. very, very important news. this news will knock your socks off. then it will steal your socks and bring them to me. then i will have your socks. and you will have the news. and together we will have socks and news.
the weekly. is now. TWO YEARS OLD. OMG!! LOL!! ROTFLMAO!! DERP!

for last year’s weekly birthday extravaganza we (as in, some people i know) gave unto you, the gentle weekly reader, a message board free of charge so that you could all post your own thoughts and opinions. of course, only six of us ever post there. you could be posting there if you wanted to. do it. DO IT!

but this year we’ve gone and done a crazy thing. it’s crazy with a capital Z! craZy!
we have made FLEEGAN T-SHIRTS! there really is a fleegan now! a real fleegan! and it is the cutest thing in the world! and it’s on a t-shirt! a t-shirt that you can buy!

what?! but how?
please, don’t ask us something like that, just be comforted knowing that there are fleegan shirts out there… clothing the world…one person at a time…in soft cotton.

so anyway, next week i’ll have a picture of what these lovely, awesome, totally modcore t-shirts look like and a price, and i’m sure that everyone will want two or three of them (one for yourself and one to give as a christmas present).

Happy Birthday Weekly!

and guess who else had a birthday this week? the world famous Cookie Magoo! she also turned slightly older than two years old! yay cookie!
three cheers of cookie! hip-hip-hooray! hip-hip-hooray! hip-hip-hooray!

well with all of the birthday bonanza and shameless plugging out of the way (t-shirts!) i guess it’s about time for this weekly thing to happen.

Wine.

i’ll admit it, i am intimidated by wine and wine drinkers.
there. i said it.

they are a foreboding lot. they take their drink seriously and they drink it noisily. and also they sniff their beverage. and if they are just tasting wine and not drinking it they tend to spit it out.
in a bucket.
my god, that’s intimidating.
i mean, these sniffing, slurping, spitting people are practically vikings! but they make it all seem so sophisticated and glamourous! and of course i’m picturing these people in horned helmets, furry boots, and expensive Italian suits gulping and slurping and smelling and grunting in the mead hall harrumphing about the politics of the day and, of course, using silverware and charger plates as they discuss destroying the grendel monster.
and now so do you.

quick tangent: when i sit and think about it, it’s really quite amazing how much i think about Beowulf on any given day. i mean let’s face it, that’s one of those things that you’re forced to read in high school and should promptly forget about after taking the test, just like the Scarlet Letter or that play about the kids that fall in love and kill themselves, or that one about the witches in colonial america, man i hated that one.

so these wine drinkers, i mean, they’re hardcore right? and for the most part i stay away from wine and vikings. to be perfectly honest the only wine i consume on a regular basis is the communion wine at church y’know? i mean, it’s not great or anything but i know where they stash it so i mean, free wine! ha ha!
that was a joke.

but the other day a really interesting thing happened which of course, caused a series of odd events to occur which then led to this weekly. like always this thing should be titled “the really craZy thing that happened to jaimie this week”.

so liz says to me, “hey. i’m going to cook dinner for you guys on friday. be there at seven.”
so i says to liz, “ok. i’ll bring the wine.” what? did i just say i’d bring wine? we don’t drink wine. don’t know the first thing about it. why would i bring wine? that’s craZy. maybe i didn’t say wine at all. maybe i said something else. maybe i said Hrothgar or something.
meanwhile liz is saying something, “….great! see you then.”
then i says, “wait! what are we having so i know what kind of wine to bring.” like i would know what kind of wine to bring. she could say anything and i wouldn’t have a damn clue. roasted pteradactyl on a bed of asparugus and sea weed pasta with quail eggs and a salad with a boysenberry vinegrette. i mean, really it won’t make a difference what we eat i won’t have a clue about the wine. did i really say wine? because i was actually thinking mead hall. wine? really?

so anyway we were to have greek chicken with an alfredo pasta, garlic bread, caesar salad and cookies for dessert. i mean, not floreos or anything, bakery cookies from some er, bakery. did i say wine?

so that evening i run out to the grocery store (the only place in town what sells wine) to get the wine. and so i bought some and it was good! ha ha!
yeah, like it’s ever that easy.

so i did the first thing that anyone else would have done. i checked online to see if i could find any sites about wine for rookies. i didn’t find anything impressive. but i did learn that white wine is a chicken wine so i was pretty excited that i had narrowed my choices from 95,000 bottles of wine to about 38,000 bottles. life is so good to me sometimes.

so i went to grocery store #1 and stared at all the bottles. for 15 minutes. i finally just blindly picked two sort of an eeny meeny minee moe kinda thing. then i went back to the car and thought, “hmm, these aren’t the wines i need.” and i sat there for a moment and said, “O God! O most Holy Father! dude, i need some wine. help me. please. amen.”
so then God was all, “jaimie i kept trying to tell you, go to grocery store #2 for the wine.”
and i said, “really? you told me that? i didn’t hear you.”
and he said, “yeah. you were pretty loud with that whole eeny meeny minee moe thing.”
“was i saying that out loud?”
“yeah.”
“sorry.”
“i forgive you.”
“thanks God.”
“your welcome.”

so then i went to grocery store #2 and stood in front of the wine and stared. and stared. and stared. so then i was all, “God, um, i don’t want to sound ungrateful or anything, but um, what am i doing here?”
” *sigh* see, that sounds ungrateful.”
“i know i just, i don’t know what wine-”

then this voice from behind, “so, what are you having?”
oh my goodness! god is behind me.
i turn to see God and he’s an older gentleman with a shopping cart filled with light bulbs. i’m not exaggerating. his cart was full of bulbs. heh, so like, how many light bulbs does it take God to screw in? heh, i’m gonna stop talking about God now.

so this old man takes pity on me and starts talking to me about wine.
he says, “whatcha having?”
“chicken.”
“well, they say you need a white wine with chicken, but really, you can drink whatever you like.”
“oh. well, okay.”
“so what wine do you like?”
“er, i dunno. i mostly drink um, other things.”
“not a wine drinker, eh?”
“um, more like vodka.”
“i see. well, i can tell you what my lady friend likes to drink and what i like to drink.”
“oh thank you so much that would be very nice.”
god has a sense of humor, and i’m usually the butt of his joke.

and so this guy (he actually said lady friend) talked to me about wine for a full half hour. it must’ve looked bizarre to anyone who walked by. a blue-haired punk with a wine bottle in each hand talking to an old man with a cartful of light bulbs.
a slice of life.

so anyway i brought 4 bottles of wine to the dinner and we drank them all. and the two that the old man picked out were the best. so now i’ve decided to try all the wine i can get my hands on and make a list of the ones i like so that i can at least have a semi-knowledge of wine that i will drink so that if the occassion ever arises and i’m stuck talking to a wine nerd, i’ll at least be able to tell the nerd what i like and not say, “i drink the vodka not the wine.” (i want a t-shirt that says that)
also, i checked out Wine for Dummies at the library. so pretty soon i’ll be a wine genius. er, or a dummy that has a vague notion of what wine is anyway.

so i bought some more wine last night, but on the way home i realized that i don’t own any wine glasses and i really don’t want to drink my wine out of a coffee cup because that just enhances the “no, i swear i’m not an alcoholic” look that i’m so going for. well, that’s not entirely true, carla gave us some nice wine glasses but they are hand-painted and really nice and they are more for decoration and if i broke one i’d probably cry like a big baby, so i bought some cheap glasses at k-mark. martha stewart of course, but this way i won’t cry if i break one.

so i bought this wine last night and it has a definite black pepper taste to it, which isn’t unpleasant, but for the first 10 minutes i was sneezing my head off every time i took a sip. weird huh? eventually i got used to it. still it was funny. i mean, i can’t even buy wine without something stupid happening to me.

maybe when i write part II of this weekly i’ll actually know the names of the wines that i’ve been talking about. otherwise i would’ve been describing the wines like this:
the pink one.
the one with the baby jesus on it. (it’s german and delicious)
the other pink one, it was pretty good.
the red one that gave me heartburn.
the white one that made me sneeze.

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