In Need Of Christmas Cheer

Okay I must be a Grinch, I am so not in the holiday spirit this year. My best friend moving to another planet…aka Texas, (if I have any readers in Texas, it’s a lovely place…really) our beloved mascot Bear, (Amy and Sexy Bitch’s one-eyed Retriever) being diagnosed with Cancer and working like a seriously insane schedule, I’m just not feeling it at all this year. This blows because I love this season, love the lights, the music, the energy and yes, as a retailer…I love the flurry of cash that is being tossed at us. I wait for this all year long and here I am feeling all, “Meh” this year. Cannot figure it out. Personally I have had one hell of a year…I was offered a wicked cool job, in a town that I adore, but passed it up to stay here with the people I love, the people I need, for a job that I love and simply cannot imagine leaving by choice. I had a major breakthrough with a friendship I had been pouring over for years, I found something that I had been missing…waiting for, for like ever, my blog readership, (there is that fancy word again) grew, all my old friends and a bunch of wicked cool new ones. Then there was the “Fancy Pants” crowd that showed up; Charlie Olken, Alice Feiring, Ron Washam, that tree guy, Alder somethin’…I even think Steve Heimoff and Tom Wark showed up this year…dropping, I am so name dropping, helps to picture a deep knee plunge with a saucy snap of my fingers here.

Maybe it’s the hours I have been, and will be working…I see nothing ahead of me but scanners, tissue paper, lines, price tags and panicked faces…it’s getting to me this year people. So tonight I found myself with little to do, I am like saving my energy for work and stuff so I am off the, “let’s go do something” list, that in itself is enough to push me further down my, “woe is me” rabbit hole. It’s eight o clock, on a Saturday night, (okay this is me being a tad dramatic because I kinda hate going out on Saturday nights…all those freaking newbies and people looking to hook up and stuff, yuck…but still) and I am bloody exhausted, in a T-shirt and my ugly gray sweatshirt, (damn, that’s two ugly sweatshirts in two posts, maybe I need to stay out of Target) my most favorite baggy jeans, drinking a glass of Sancerre worshiping at the altar of sloth and lazy indulgence…um, and maybe redundancy.



I got some stuff done, I figured out that I prefer the Progressive girl to the Geiko lizard, reaffirmed that I am over the Food Network, and did my best to annoy the shit out of my facebook friends…posting shit like, “Samantha Dugan thinks lotion is a gift from the Gods…or fancy pants lab dorks, either way a gift” is sure to make some folks click whatever button or tab it takes to make me go away…hey, maybe I should have figured out how to do that, some of those “friends” just bug. None of the real people but those fan page fuckers, ugh! I did have to laugh when I was alerted that NyQuil has a fan page…NyQuil. The message said, “Become a member of the NyQuil Nation, now that sounds like a fun bunch, sign me right the hell up. See all the important junk I got handled on my, “save your energy” night.

The one upshot of the evening? This freaking gorgeous Sancerre! I’ve been doing my part to tighten the household budget…well aside from my December Champagne habit…been loading up on wines that are $12.00 and under for my nightly drinking. There are tons of fun little wines in that price point and I have been happily sucking them back every night without much of an issue. Oh sure I always want something a little finer, more complex and interesting, but these wines do what they were intended…they please my palate, go with my food and ultimately give me a nice little buzz. Things like Chidaine Touraine, Veramonte Sauvignon Blanc, La Cabotte Cotes du Rhone, Piron Beaujolais Villages, these wines thrill for their tiny little price tags and like I said, I have been enjoying more than my fair share for months now, but sometimes…sometimes you just need more, ache for more than comfortable and gulpable. Tonight, tonight was one of those nights.



2007 Domaine des Vieux Prunieres Sancerre, ($21.99) So as you see not exactly breaking the bank at $22.00 but more than I have been spending on a, “loafing on the couch night” kind of wine. The second I poured the wine I could see the difference, even the way it landed in the glass, (a little slower to splash up the sides, settling on itself with a calm dignity) let me know that this wine bore a finer bloodline, pedigree. I could smell the minerality long before I buried my nose in the glass; it was so intense I could smell it just by spinning the glass on my kitchen counter. On the palate it was cold, wet stones, flint, pink grapefruit and lemon zest, all with a full mouth feel…the wine spread wide across my tongue but the brilliant acidity seemed to almost constrict or pull the coating of wine right off my palate….which of course made me want, made me ready for, more. So guess what this slothy girl did? In the words of the noble Sir Charles Olken, "you can bet that sweet ass of yours" I did...I went back for more.