The Next Vintage of Our Lives

Morticia’s Cellar will be one of the few blogs this week who will NOT recap 2008 as we move on to the great year I hope 2009 to be. All I aim to do is tell you about what we drank on New Year’s Eve and this morning. Hope you all had a wonderful New Year’s and that this year is one of your best!

Rather than spend a quiet evening home alone this year my husband and I decided to have a semi-quiet evening home with family, so his brother, his brother’s fiancée and a few of their friends came over from Queens for some Rock Band and Dick Clark. Though much of it became an exercise in Making Dennis & Stefanie Feel Old — for any of the Rock Band songs that were older than 20 years the kids handed us the mic, and I didn’t recognize most of the acts on Dick Clark’s NYE special — we certainly had fun. This time I mulled some wine a little differently than the party in December: our Zin was a NV HRM Rex-Gloliath Free Range Giant 47 Pound Roaster Zinfandel from Lodi and Central Coast and rather than go all out with the Williams Sonoma mulling spices I used my own combo from the pantry, heavy on the cinnamon sticks. Very, very tasty.

At the midnight countdown we toasted a NV Gloria Ferrer Sonoma Brut from Carneros brought by my brother-in-law’s friend. Highly enjoyable! This morning after starting the year in my favorite way I drank the last of the sparkly in a bellini with some homemade eggs benedict (my man can COOK! reeeaaally well too). Now we’re just having a lazy day, I’m sipping the rest of the mulled spiced wine (chilled this time) and catching up on backlogged blogging (“clogged blog”?). Also I just ordered some business cards with my CWP title on them for when I eventually go look for wine jobs.

Some things I aspire to do this year:
Priority #1, January-February: get certified in my day job so I can keep paying the bills.
- After second quarter when I find out whether I still have a day job I plan to go further down the path of this wine career pursuit, probably consulting and trying out some wine service.
- Take singing lessons.
- Take Chinese lessons so I can finally understand my in-laws.
- Go to France, specifically Paris, Burgundy, Provence and wherever else our palates take us.
- Take swing dancing lessons.
- Hit that treadmill more often (you knew that had to be in here somewhere).
- Meditate more often. Being Wiccan it’s a challenge to take time to observe my own holidays since the world doesn’t typically take a break for the non-mainstream ones but now that I’ll have my own room for worship (rather than a dirty corner of the basement) I hope to have more spiritual focus going forward.

Should be busy!