Booze

Last weekend Yahtzee and I got together on Friday. The plan was to open some of our favorite wines from his cellar--bottles laid down years back--and celebrate our upcoming trip to Holland.

It's usually a wonderful thing to lose count of the bottles opened, but this time it wasn't. Bottle after bottle opened was past its peak, and dramatically so. We're talking vinegar. All of these wines were excellent last year when we did the same thing. What a difference a year makes.

I was particularly disappointed, because I'd planned last Friday as a kind of final blow-out until Amsterdam. I wanted to ease up on the liver and kidneys for three weeks, taking a ride on the wagon to prepare for eventual debauchery.

Tonight, however, I stopped at The Wine Source in Hampden. I couldn't hold out. Mr. C asked me why I was so restless this morning, and I couldn't bring myself to say "I have the shakes." Then in Teaching Reading in the Content Area class tonight I told Chuckles how dry I was and he laughed, pulled his flask out, took a swig, and replaced it in his hip pocket.

I'm enjoying my cabernet sauvignon. I toasted the dead soldiers above, poured down Yahtzee's kitchen sink. Ouch.