bordeaux morveux
Shobhit and I went to a Total Wine & More wine class last night, focusing on bordeaux. It's the third wine class we've done now, I think. This was the first one he did not bother actually signing us up for, but we got there ten minutes early and the class was not filled to capacity so we easily got in.
My favorite thing about these things is that they provide food, so it's a free dinner. It's never the best stand-in for dinner, but it works when it's free: usually breads and cheeses, sometimes crackers, one or two fruits, one or two salads, often at least one dessert. Our last class had pumpkin pie and this one featured cheesecake brought out near the end -- and it was delicious cheesecake. This one also had meat slices to have with our small baguette bread slices, which of course Shobhit and I skipped, and Jayne, the British woman who co-hosted the class, brought out some of the salad that had shrimp on it, without the shrimp, at Shobhit's request.
They also provide free booze, of course. Or wine, specifically. I think we tasted at least six different wines last night, probably cumulatively coming to one full glass of wine. I only particularly liked two of them. My evolution of taste regarding wine has been rather odd, as I see it; until just a few years ago, I spent my entire life detesting both beer and wine in equal measure. I still hate beer, but in 2010 -- okay, I guess that was nine years ago now -- when Shobhit and I went on the Whidbey Island tour that Dad had designed for us as a gift the previous Christmas, I tried my first dessert wine and quite liked it. For a few years after that, it was only dessert wines I could tolerate. But gradually I began to taste white wines, which tend to be sweeter, that I found surprisingly palatable as well. And just within the past couple of years, I somehow suddenly prefer red wines to white.
Even those seem to vary pretty widely, though, and I only particularly liked a couple of them last night -- the much more expensive ones that retail closer to $50 a bottle, as it happens. I suppose that's not a huge surprise, although I have also tried several $10 or $20 wines that I liked fine as well.
This one was much more like the first one we attended back in May, with a classroom-like setup, tables and chairs set it rows facing front. The last one we went to, I think, was labeled a "mixer," and had a few tables set up in small groups for us to stand around, and no chairs. For that one, wine pourers were at like three stations and we walked to them to get our wines. Last night, the hosts walked around to give us each a pour of each wine.
I had walked home from work, and then took dry cleaning to drop off as well as pick up; it was while I was doing that when Shobhit got home from his shift in Northgate at Big 5. Within minutes we then left in his car for the Interbay Total Wine & More for this 6:30 class, which lasted a bit more than an hour. Then he walked around the store for a little while just to make sure he was sobered enough to drive us home.
We spent some time online for a while looking at hotels for the two nights we plan to spend in Melbourne in March. We wound up not booking anything just yet but we probably will this weekend. We still need to book those two hotel nights, one on Kangaroo Island, and a flight from Melbourne to Adelaide. We're looking at staying in what is kind of vaguely known as a gay neighborhood in Melbourne, quite close to the waterfront which will be convenient.
So last week I said something insanely naïve, when I said I had a feeling this would be a short-lived cold.
I haven't missed any work, although taking another day off last week might have helped. I had already taken Monday and Tuesday last week off for the trip to Las Vegas. I suppose my cold had not fully taken hold until the weekend, but that would still mean it has persisted for a full week as of this weekend, and since I'm convinced it started in Las Vegas, it's been a week and a half.
I mostly feel fine, actually. I just have this persistent "wet cough" that seems to be getting a tiny bit better every day, until yet another inevitable coughing fit comes. It's very annoying. Shobhit has a history of catching colds and then coughing a lot for what feels like months, and it struck me last night that, amazingly, he hasn't been coughing for several months, actually. We'll see if that changes any time soon. I sure get sick of hearing him cough, and now all I can think about is how irritated people must be by hearing my consistent coughing, especially at work. No one has outwardly acted like they're even noticing it, so I guess there's that.
Scott occasionally will clear his throat right back at me after I clear mine, but that's about it. He did ask me the other day if I needed a cough drop, and I told him I already have some. Cough drops barely do much for it, really; those help way better for sore throats. I suppose they do help with coughs too at least a little bit.
In other news, I got out of "Facebook Jail" as of 8:30 this morning. I've been posting (and commenting and liking, both of which had also been blocked features) happily since. Do they think I've been sufficiently "cowed"? I guess I know never to post the phrase "Men are pigs" again, even if it's merely in a screenshot. The whole thing still irks me, as it was so clearly not the "hate speech" their algorithms flagged it as. And of course, anyone can easily post the most horrible shit imaginable so long as they just know how to avoid using certain keywords. It's all so stupid.
But, I guess I should move on. I'd say at least I can post it all I want on Twitter, except Twitter is just as complicit, if not more so, as Facebook in allowing rampant hate speech just generally. They are contributing to the downfall of our society in equal measure and I can't quit either one of them.
[posted 12:45 pm]