Look on my works, ye mighty, and giggle like delighted children


How does your average William & Mary student spend his Saturday? Don't ask me. Do I look like an average W & M student to you?? This is how I spent MY Saturday:


















I am not alone in my expertise, however. Julia demonstrates her proficiency even as a neophyte in the school of bubble-blowing:














To those of you who have harassed me about my major, I can only respond: "Better living through chemistry--winemaking and bubble-blowing." Top THAT, you doubting Thomases (and English majors).



(I, like my bubbles, am still flying.)

"These are crazy days, but they make me shine..."

Or not. You'd think, that with all my midterms out of the way before Spring Break, that things would be relatively quiet. But those complications have a tendency to crop up, as Mal Reynolds once noted. Of course, the complications in his life--getting in a shootout at a whorehouse, that sort of thing--were a bit more exciting and somewhat less adolescent. C'est la mundane vie.

It looks like I might be working at a place called Blenheim Vineyards in Ablemarle County come summer (keep your fingers crossed for me). The owner and I have been playing an unsuccessful and frustrating game of phone tag. Apparently I've been sold quite heavily to him by a wine critic/writer friend of a friend of my dad's, so I have reason to be optimistic. Hopefully it will be full time work; besides the steady paycheck, I prefer the feeling of being fully occupied rather than just part-time help. "Summer help, some're not," and all that.

This being my last semester and all, I had hoped there would be more to talk/write about, but there isn't. I've had some random ideas for stuff to put on here, but nothing concrete has really emerged yet. I think part of the reason posting on here is such a gumption trap is that I never really gave this whole site a purpose. I mean, yes, it is a journal/outlet for my thoughts, but I'd like there to be other things as well. I'm toying with the idea of doing amateur wine reviews, news, and things of that nature. Eventually I'd like to make that the venue for a more serious blog.

At one point, early in my search for information on wineries and vineyards, I ran across the blog of a man who'd just started up a family vineyard. He wrote about how it was named for his late mother, the design of the first label that was going to go on their wine, and what it was like actually going into business for himself. That's the kind of thing I'd like to have: a written record, for myself and people who share my interests (coffee, wine, truth, beauty--you know, the usual), of the voyage I'm on. Because, as a wise man once said, when asked why he didn't care too much about where he was going: "How you get there is the worthier part."




(I'm tore up plenty, but I'm still flying true.)

Happy Saint Patrick's Day, Adam. Be at peace.

I cannot write a fitting epitaph
For you, my friend; I fear that I would not
Do justice to the sad and lonely path
That culminated in a single shot.
No one else could share the load you bore,
No one could drive the demons from your mind
Because you never let us past the door
Where all the secret monsters were confined.
So what's to say, my friend? I wish I knew
The words to use so that I could explain
The torture that no comfort could undo,
The only way you had to end the pain.

Instead, I seek a passage underground
Like Orpheus, on the road of endless night
To Hades, nightmare figures all around
Consumed by flame and shadow's hellish might.
And soon I reach the wall of ancient clay,
Those bricks you fought with fists of dust and ash
But never broke, and never found what lay
Beyond the wall, on that forgotten path.
And here I'll leave those things I have of yours
To mark this spot--a shrine, I guess you'd say.
For when I think of you, I think of doors,
The walls we build to lock ourselves away.
But now I have to let this heartache go,
And say farewell from where I am below:
"This isn't much--and yet I've done my best;
I hope your final journey brought you rest."