I’ll start with an L.M. Montgomery quote that I “stole” from Jasmine:
“I’d like to add some beauty to life. I don’t exactly want to make people know more…though I understand that is the noblest ambition…but I’d love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me…to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I had not been born.” — L.M. Montgomery
I never read any of Montgomery’s works, but since she and I share a birthday I feel that I should.
In the daily News:
- Anna Nicole Smith (39) died
- Frozen toddler’s father also faces sex charge: read this disgusting description of what it is alleged this sick excuse for a member of homo sapiens did: “Page told police he woke up early Saturday and found the girl awake and playing near a mirror in the hallway, according to a criminal complaint filed Wednesday night. He said he got angry when the girl wouldn’t go back to bed and he hit her so hard she lost consciousness, the complaint said. Police said Page told them he took the girl outside wrapped in a blanket and left her, still breathing, beside railroad tracks near a bridge.”
- Alli Becomes First OTC Diet Pill Approved by FDA: “It is also only approved for use by overweight adults in conjunction with a reduced-calorie, low-fat diet, ‘alli helps people lose 50 percent more weight than with diet alone,’ according to GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, the marketer. The FDA says exercise should also be part of the program.” Alas: “Alli is expected to be available in stores nationwide by summer,” so you can’t just go out tomorrow and get it. However, “the price, not yet final, is projected to be less than two dollars per day.”
This afternoon I went to the laundromat with a big bag of clothes to wash and managed to fit everything into one front-load washer, $2.25. I splurged on a whole 40 minutes ($1.00) once the time came. Not many washers were in use, but more than half the dryers were employed when I first walked in.
It was above freezing today (and currently 9, which is warmer than it was this afternoon), so the walk was not too unpleasant. A new burrito place has gone in next to the laundromat; they deliver.
I dropped my washed and dried clothes off at home and caught the next bus to Woodman’s, where I first stopped by the liquor store before heading for groceries. I picked up a Camelot Shiraz and a Smoking Loon Syrah. Shiraz, syrah … same thing, except that Shiraz is also a city in Iran (the city of flowers, wine and poetry), which lent its name to the grape.
The name of the grape Shiraz was taken from that of the city of Shiraz in Iran, near where the process of wine making possibly originated 7000 years ago. Historic accounts state that the Syrah/Shiraz was brought into southern France by a returning crusader, Guy De’Sterimberg. He became a hermit and developed a vineyard on a steep hill where he lived in the Rhône River Valley. It became known as the Hermitage. In 1998, a study conducted at the University of California, Davis concluded that the grape variety in its modern cultivated form originated in the vicinity of the Northern Rhône valley of France, as the result of a cross of the “Dureza” and “Mondeuse Blanche” grape varieties; and in 2001, using DNA analysis, this was proven to be the case.
source
I first encountered the Camelot in 2001 when Leena first visited me in Madison and we picked up a bottle (probably a merlot) from the store down the street from my place on Old University. The guy who ran the shop was bald and knowledgeable (the two have nothing to do with one another), and pointed out that it was a good cheap wine, the the “other” brand put out by a more famous winery we were told. I cannot back that up.
The Smoking Loon 2004 Syrah (“Medium plum color, with rich cassis and blueberry aromas. Very supple and mouth coating on the palate with bittersweet chocolate, allspice, sweet wild raspberry and cassis”) is a nice, cheap wine (or nice cheap wine), worth the $7.49 at Woodman’s. I had this or another year over x-mas with my brother and it was quite enjoyable. I think that might have been a different, sweeter year than this, but it’s a tasty bottle. I would love to spend $20 a night, $40, no $80 a night on wine but that is out of my range. But $6, $7, $8? Once or twice a week? I can handle that.
It’s just fermented grape juice I was reminded a few months back.
Tonight I’m finishing “F” by ending with Fury in the Slaughterhouse, to which I still have quite a lot of sentimental attachment. Like Bobo in White Wooden Houses this is a German group I cannot use in class because they sing in English. I have two albums along with a concert CD, “Pure LIVE!” I heard them in concert in September or so of 1991 near Hannover (Hanover in English) and for the first time attended a concert where during some sort of soft ballad the audience pulled out an army of cigarette lighters, which they lit and waved rhythmically in the air to the beat of the music. Typically German. I’ll end with the lyrics to the song “Trapped Today Trapped Tomorrow” —
The days are gone when the girls
Used to kiss his nose
To wake him up in the morning
He looks at his wife once she was young
But now shes older
Than himself and all that happend without warningTrapped today, trapped tomorrow
Trapped in love, and trapped in sorrow
Sorry my train, wont stop at your station
Trapped today, trapped tomorrow
Trapped in love, and trapped in sorrow
Sorry my train, wont stop at your station
And no explanationsThe days are gone when the boys
Used to bring her flowers every night
Just to please her
There was this man, now shes his wife.
Theyve got two kids
He works from 9 to 5
He put her in a freezerTrapped today, trapped tomorrow…
