Donkeys For All!

My fancy friends officially consider me a drunk. Here are my birthday gifts

Picking birthday gifts for loved ones is a pain in the ass. You gift-wrap a two-sizes-too-big mini-skirt which once unwrapped and inspected is followed by a teary "Do you think I am fat?" The funky blouse's pattern/color/fabric/shape is so last season you're nonagenarian grandmother wouldn't wear it to her own wake. Maybe the thoughtfully chosen cookbook does not do justice to the Atkins diet suddenly embraced as a lifestyle. Or the set of Tahitian-inspired plastic place mats and porcelain statues of clowns suffering from gigantism scare the living crap out of the striped house cat. You can always go with gift certificates to favorite shops or wads of unmarked cash stuffed into white envelopes but this is just a poor use of one's survival skills. Truth be told, if it were up to me, I would adopt a Cypriot donkey for each one of my fancy friends and call it a year. People always love asses.

Two weeks ago, it was my birthday and so I realized that this blog has made things REAL easy for my fancy friends and family. We had a few dinner parties and all I received was wine: Chilean Pinot Noir (four bottles; only two appear in the picture above) and Carmenere, a northern Greek blend, two Sicilian reds, a Cypriot Xynisteri, a 2005 Listrac-Medoc, a 2004 Chateau Chasse-Spleen and a 2009 Chardonnay from Limoux, France. Heck, even The Wife, Ph.D., bought me a spot in a wine tasting course that will (finally) teach me how to differentiate over-oaked California Chardonnay from Argentine Malbec. I am not whining or anything, it's just that I feel bad for not challenging them and getting their creative juices flowing. In the past, I would have received books or music but I guess that phase of my life is over; my friends must think all I read now are the labels on the bottles I polish off and that the sweetest sound to my ears is that of wine glasses fleetingly kissing. Cheers to that.