The Wino and I Know

When I was growing up here in the state of Maryland, the drinking age was 18 for beer and wine and 21 for any hard liquor.  Shortly after I turned 18, the state raised the age to 21 for all alcoholic beverages, but those of us that already had been able to buy beer and wine were grandfathered and were continued to be able to buy beer and wine.

I took full advantage of being able to legally buy beer.  My favorite in those days was Molson Golden Ale.  At that time, I was also working in a grocery store that sold beer and wine.  They eventually gave me full responsibility for taking care of the beer and wine department of the store.  I became very interested in learning about wine during those days.

One of my store managers in those days started to refer to me as "The Wino."  Not in a derogatory way or implying that I was heavy imbiber of wine, but because I knew more about wine than anybody else in the store.  My friends and I started to really enjoy having wine with our meal whenever we went out to dinner.  They relied on me to pick the wine.

After I turned 21, I did start to buy some hard liquor, but not very often.  I remember the night I turned 21, my best friend and I went to a movie and wanted to take advantage of my newly coming of age.  We didn't have a clue what we would want and browsed around.  We saw some Cherry Brandy and a bottle of Coke on display for Cherry Coke.  It sounded good to us, so that is what we bought.

Eventually, wine became my beverage of choice.  I do still enjoy a beer now and then or even a drink made with liquor, but there is something special about wine for me.  Once, I was on a business trip to California, and the group I was with went to a Sonoma wine tasting for dinner.  The great thing about having dinner at the winery is they really know the best wine and food pairings.

If you ever have the opportunity to go to a winery for a tasting, I highly recommend it.  It is a great opportunity to learn firsthand about the wine you are trying.  They usually will have several different varieties for you to try.  At the end of the tasting, you can buy bottles of the ones you like the most to take home with you.

Doing My Part for the Environment

I have been doing something for the last few years as part of my everyday life that I recently found out was beneficial to the environment, and I never even knew it.  My intention when I began this particular habit really had nothing to do with being "environmentally friendly."

Being green is not something that I necessarily set out to do, but if it is something that I can do that is not inconvenient or more expensive, then I will "go green."  So what is this habit of mine that turns out to environmentally friendly?

I enjoy a glass or two of wine in the evening.  I particularly enjoy red wine.  I used to open a bottle of wine and drink two glasses, then put the cork back in and finish the bottle the next day.  Soon, I was expanding my drinking to a third glass, but that meant just one glass left in the bottle so I would just finish the bottle off.

As I have become more frugal, I started looking for less expensive ways to enjoy my wine.  I started buying boxed wine.  It was much less expensive than buying individual bottles of wine, and took up less space in the house.  I also thought it would allow me to cut back to three glasses instead of four, but that didn't happen.

Tonight, I was fixing dinner and just happened to look at the side panel of the 5-liter box of Franzia Merlot that I bought last night.  That is when I found out that my penchant for boxed wine is environmentally friendly as the side panel proudly displayed all the ways that Franzia boxed wines are good for the environment.

Below are all the ways that according to Franzia, buying boxed wines are environmentally friendly.  Now, whenever anybody asks me what I am doing to help the environment, I now have something to tell them besides recycling.

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Time to Get Serious

Image via CrunchBase

Well, today is the big day. It's time things get serious. No, it isn't the New Hampshire primary that I am talking about, though that is important.  It is something else entirely.  On New Year's Day, I posted about how I normally do not use that day to make resolutions to change something in my life.  I need to be mentally prepared to start that quest.  Today is that day.

As I said, I have to be mentally prepared for the task at hand.  I also have to clear away all of the obstacles that could potentially block the path to success.  One of my big stumbling blocks is having alcohol in the house, particularly red wine.  When I have it, I drink it, and when I drink it, I tend to eat a lot more junk food rather than healthier snacks.

Last night, I finished off the last of the red wine that I had in the house.  If I don't have it around, I generally do not miss it.  I also have gotten rid of just about all of the really bad food and have several healthier snacking options available should I need anything more after dinner, though I am going to try to not eat anything after dinner.

This morning, I stepped on the scale and weighed 228 pounds.  It's not the heaviest I have ever been, but it's close to it.  I have to lose 30 pounds, at least in my mind. I want to lose 50 pounds, and I would be extremely ecstatic if I could manage to lose a total of 60 pounds.  It has been several years since I have been in that weight class.

I have decided to keep track of everything I eat during the course of the day.  I have downloaded a calorie counter app for my phone and tablet from MyFitnessPal.com.  I enter my current weight, goals, and other data, and it gives me a target for number of calories to eat each day.  It has a huge data base of calorie and nutritional counts.  You can also scan the UPC code on a package and it will search for all the nutrional data to add to your daily diary.

Having the mobile apps is a great help for tracking things.  It shows how many calories you have consumed that day and how many more towards your goal for the day.  I think I will also be checking out the MyFitnessPal website as they have a large community to lend support in your weight loss goals.  As they say, the first step of any journey is the toughest.

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Cutting the Crap

Cover via AmazonI am rapidly approaching my 50th birthday; OK it's tomorrow.  Like a lot of people, I am a good bit heavier than I would like to be.  Now I have never been what you called slender.  I played football in high school and used to do a lot of weight training so I have always been a little more muscular.

Even though in my youth I was more active and athletic, I haven't always made the right food choices.  I have always liked junk food, and ever since I became old enough to drink alcohol I have had a love affair with beer and wine.  To be quite honest, a lot of the reason I did so much weight training when I was younger was so that I could indulge more frequently in those bad foods.

Unfortunately, as the years have passed, my activity level has decreased steadily.  There are a number of reasons/excuses for why this is so.  There is the added responsibility of being the father of a special needs child. Due to career changes, I have a much longer commute that eats into my spare time that could be used for exercise.  Then there are the financial issues that won't allow me to splurge on a gym membership.

Anyway, over the years the pounds just started to add up and led to a variety of issues.  One is the need for medication for high blood pressure.  The other has been just an overall decline in the quality of life in general.  It isn't really an appearance issue, but just a general feeling like crap all the time; no energy, assorted aches and pains, and frequent headaches.

So, two weeks ago, with the realization that my 50th birthday rapidly approaching, I finally made the decision to do start taking better care of myself.   In my job as a candy and snack buyer, I have a lot of junk food around my office.  Instead of taking a lunch, I would frequently sit at my desk and eat whatever I had around the office.  It was never anything of any nutritional value.  For the past two weeks, I have packed a lunch, usually a salad with some chicken or tuna, and taken the time out of my day for lunch.

It has been over two weeks since I have had any beer or wine.  When I do not have beer or wine in the house, I do not miss it.  Unfortunately, if I have it in the house, I drink it.  I never drink to the point where I would be drunk, but I would drink more than I should.  It was never so much that I would wake up with a hangover, but it was enough to make me feel sluggish the next day.

When I started this, my plan was to cut out the junk food and eat only nutritious food.  It has only been two weeks, and I already feel a huge difference.  My overall energy level is improving and more stable through the day.  I also started reading a new book on my Kindle, The Primal Blueprint by Mark Sisson.  It teaches us that we need to eat more like our hunter/gatherer ancestors by making the diet mostly meat, fruit, and vegetables, and to avoid grains, sugars, and highly processed foods.  I will be incorporating a lot of the books teachings in my plans.

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This Just Doesn't Seem to be My Day

Image via WikipediaThere are some days when you just think you would be better off just staying in bed.  Yesterday happened to be one of those days.  I am going to show my age a little bit, but yesterday reminded me of the old Monkees song, "This Just Doesn't Seem to be My Day."  The song starts off "Well I guess I should have stayed in bed.  My pillow wrapped around my head."  The song is embedded below.

The day started fairly innocuously.  Traffic was a little heavier than usual due to the end of the three day weekend and all school systems in the area back in action.  Still, I was making pretty good pace to the office.  I got to my exit about 8:30 only to discover that the police had blocked off all the exits.  Fortunately, I had my Garmin in the car.  Unfortunately, the alternate route got me to the office 40 minutes later.

Turns out, some asshole decided that if he couldn't have the girl, nobody could.  After his girlfriend broke up with him last week, and got a protection order against him, Joshua Prince allegedly took a shot at her with a high powered rifle.  Fortunately he missed her, and she was unharmed.  Unfortunately his selfish act created a major hassle for commuters in the areas.  He later surrendered to police in Pennsylvania.  Why is it that dumb fucks like this guy, or people who threaten to jump off bridges always do it during rush hour so as to inconvenience the greater number of people?

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful.  Traffic was pretty light for the evening rush hour, and I got home fairly quickly.  I decided to unwind with a couple glasses of wine.  I took a swig of wine, and felt something in my mouth.  I was snacking, so I didn't think too much of it.  However, I decided to spit out what was in my mouth and discovered a fly.  It apparently had landed in my glass of wine.  It either drowned, or was too drunk to fly away.  Either way, I didn't bother to finish that particular glass of wine.  Instead, I went upstairs to find a bottle of Listerine to rinse my mouth out.  Truly not the best of days.

A Few Random Rants

It is a cold, rainy night here in Maryland with temperatures in the 40's.  I just finished an eight hour shift of delivering fresh hot pizza.  I am sitting here enjoying a nice bottle of 1998 vintage wine from the Cotes de Castillon region of Bordeaux.  Life is good, but I have a few little rants to get off my chest.

The cleaning crew in my office does a really nice job.  Seriously.  They do a particularly nice job keeping the rest rooms clean.  They probably come through at least three times a day.  The problem though is that sometimes they do too good a job.  There are three stalls in the rest room.  To change the roll of toilet paper in one of them, the cleaning crew opens a panel in the middle stall to change the roll.  Unfortunately, they will change the roll even if somebody is sitting in the stall.  It is rather disconcerting to be taking care of business and have a panel open up next to you while somebody changes the toilet paper.  You'd think they would wait until the coast is clear, so to speak.

Tonight was actually a pretty good day delivering pizza, so I really shouldn't complain, but I am going to.  As I said, it was a cold and rainy night.  It still amazes me that somebody will order $51.51 worth of pizza and hand me $52.00.  Then there are those that place a $30 order and put $1.50 tip on their credit card when placing the order.  Sometimes I just want to tell those people that if I have two deliveries to make, and I see $1.50 tip on one slip, and $3.00 or more on the other, who do you think is going to get their pizza first?

Lastly, why is it that liberals take offense to calling illegal aliens "criminals?"  Let me see if I can explain this simply.  Let's think back to basic algebra and the following mathematical theorem.

a=b

and b=c

therefore a=c

Pretty straightforward. So using this same logic:

Illegal immigrants have broken our immigration laws.

People who have broken laws are criminals.

Therefore, Illegal immigrants are criminals.

Again, seems pretty simple to me.

Beer in a Box

Image by bunchofpants via Flickr

I enjoy a nice glass of wine every now and then. Over the years, I have gotten to know a decent bit about wine. I am partial to reds. For special occasions, I will splurge for a good bottle of wine. For everyday, however, I am definitely not a "wine snob." As money has gotten tighter and tighter over the past few years, I started to economize and started buying boxed wine. $15 for a 5 liter box of wine (equivalent to over 6 bottles) is a lot easier on the budget than $5-$10 for a bottle.

In addition to the occasional glass of wine, I also enjoy an ice cold beer. Now the MillerCoors company has started testing a 1.5 gallon beer in a box of Coors Light and Miller Lite. They are targeting the occasional home user who would like to have a draft beer in the comfort of their own home. Now that is a product innovation that I can stand behind.

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