So I promised the state of things since the fall (of last year, for God's sake), and here it is.
Late November - Early December
This is the period of time I'd rather not remember. I'd just quit working at the winery, and my departure was, shall we say, not rung about with fondness and warm wishes. Rather, it was a leave-taking accompanied by a sense of relief and finality. It's been a policy of mine to studiously avoid bashing or bad-mouthing anyone at the winery--and I intend to keep that policy active. But I won't lie and say that I felt bad about leaving. Anyway, it took me a little while to find a job, and the next one was a very short stint at a local coffeehouse called the Mudhouse. I washed out of training before becoming a barista--it turns out the environment was just too high-stress for me to be any good at what was required of me. The manager I was working under sympathized, and told me while he didn't think I was cut out for it, he would give me a good recommendation for any place I applied to work. So at least *that* leave-taking was amicable.
The rest of December
I started working at the wine retail shop. Since I started right around the Christmas season, I got thrown into the middle of it all. If you will recall, I started work at the winery on July 4th, so starting work in the middle of a busy period isn't exactly foreign to me. I enjoy it, in a weird sort of way. It necessitates learning things a lot quicker. Anyway, it all went fairly smoothly, and my boss told me he was pleased with how I was coming along. By the end of the year, I felt pretty good about where I was.
Other than starting my job, nothing much else of note happened until...
January
Since early November, I'd been talking to a lady named Naomi whom I met through eHarmony. We decided the volume was right and that we'd like to meet, so we arranged to get together in DC right around New Year's. Friends of my family have a New Year's Day Brunch every year, and they were kind enough to let me stay overnight so I could meet Naomi at the National Gallery the next day. It was a lot of fun--I hadn't been to the National Gallery since a school trip in (I think) 2002. We ate at the Garden Cafe in the Gallery and then went out for drinks later at the Capitol Grille. Then, in mid-January, I went up to New Jersey to visit her (which marks when the relationship "officially" began).
It's been nice--nice? No, great, amazing, and refreshing--to be in a stable, peaceful relationship for once. My college relationships were marked by a sort of frenzied excitement. It's great as a temporary drug, but when the passion mellows it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that the relationship is dying. Part of the more adult approach, I think, is modulating that initial "fire" with cautiousness and prudence, rather than leaping into full-blown passion right away.
Which I suppose is good segue into..
February
The only real item of note here is that I finally got to have a Valentine's Day where I wasn't single. Naomi came down and stayed with Harry and Jane over that weekend. We went to Barboursville to taste wine, and watched "Ratatouille" and "Star Wars: A New Hope" (I needed to remedy her not having seen it) on Harry's home movie theater. Without going into too much sentimental, sappy, detail--it was a nice visit, and it was lovely to be able to spend Valentine's Day with her.
That's pretty much the state of things, to date. I know I need to update the Wineblog, and I have plenty of material what with work at the store. I just need to find a way to put it all together into a coherent narrative. Or barring that, at least some sort of P.J. O'Rourke-ian gonzo journey down Blotto Lane.
Late November - Early December
This is the period of time I'd rather not remember. I'd just quit working at the winery, and my departure was, shall we say, not rung about with fondness and warm wishes. Rather, it was a leave-taking accompanied by a sense of relief and finality. It's been a policy of mine to studiously avoid bashing or bad-mouthing anyone at the winery--and I intend to keep that policy active. But I won't lie and say that I felt bad about leaving. Anyway, it took me a little while to find a job, and the next one was a very short stint at a local coffeehouse called the Mudhouse. I washed out of training before becoming a barista--it turns out the environment was just too high-stress for me to be any good at what was required of me. The manager I was working under sympathized, and told me while he didn't think I was cut out for it, he would give me a good recommendation for any place I applied to work. So at least *that* leave-taking was amicable.
The rest of December
I started working at the wine retail shop. Since I started right around the Christmas season, I got thrown into the middle of it all. If you will recall, I started work at the winery on July 4th, so starting work in the middle of a busy period isn't exactly foreign to me. I enjoy it, in a weird sort of way. It necessitates learning things a lot quicker. Anyway, it all went fairly smoothly, and my boss told me he was pleased with how I was coming along. By the end of the year, I felt pretty good about where I was.
Other than starting my job, nothing much else of note happened until...
January
Since early November, I'd been talking to a lady named Naomi whom I met through eHarmony. We decided the volume was right and that we'd like to meet, so we arranged to get together in DC right around New Year's. Friends of my family have a New Year's Day Brunch every year, and they were kind enough to let me stay overnight so I could meet Naomi at the National Gallery the next day. It was a lot of fun--I hadn't been to the National Gallery since a school trip in (I think) 2002. We ate at the Garden Cafe in the Gallery and then went out for drinks later at the Capitol Grille. Then, in mid-January, I went up to New Jersey to visit her (which marks when the relationship "officially" began).
It's been nice--nice? No, great, amazing, and refreshing--to be in a stable, peaceful relationship for once. My college relationships were marked by a sort of frenzied excitement. It's great as a temporary drug, but when the passion mellows it's easy to make the mistake of assuming that the relationship is dying. Part of the more adult approach, I think, is modulating that initial "fire" with cautiousness and prudence, rather than leaping into full-blown passion right away.
Which I suppose is good segue into..
February
The only real item of note here is that I finally got to have a Valentine's Day where I wasn't single. Naomi came down and stayed with Harry and Jane over that weekend. We went to Barboursville to taste wine, and watched "Ratatouille" and "Star Wars: A New Hope" (I needed to remedy her not having seen it) on Harry's home movie theater. Without going into too much sentimental, sappy, detail--it was a nice visit, and it was lovely to be able to spend Valentine's Day with her.
That's pretty much the state of things, to date. I know I need to update the Wineblog, and I have plenty of material what with work at the store. I just need to find a way to put it all together into a coherent narrative. Or barring that, at least some sort of P.J. O'Rourke-ian gonzo journey down Blotto Lane.
