Sasquatch has taken up in a new forest.  Please check for new posts at http://snarkysays.typepad.com

For the past couple of days, I have felt the beginning of an uncertain malady in my throat.  My throat is not exactly sore, per se, just consistently dry, despite its rather lugubrious production of mucous.  Beyond that, I cannot seem to get my arse out of bed in the morning for anything (or, well, certainly not for my hungry cat or all-too-easy to quiet cell phone alarm clock).  I would chalk it up to mere allergies (though I rarely have them) coupled with the fact that (1) I’m having a bad reaction to the daylight savings time switch (I’ll vote for whichever President campaigns to eliminate that woefully idiotic institution) and (2) I’m having significant difficult sleeping (I am evidently doing the four-step grief process in reverse — I already hit up “depression,” which was wonderful for getting some shut-eye; now that I’m on “anger,” not so much), except for the fact that I have been exposed to (a) pneumonia; (b) stomach flu; (c) respiratory flu; and (d) the common cold within the past week or so.  My friends are worse than zombies, who might only shuffle slowly toward me in hopes of getting some corpus callosum niblets (to which I say, if you can bit through my hard noggin’, feel free to eat my fleshly bits); my friends appear to be happy hosts to a legion of easily-transportable and fast-moving bacteria and viruses.  I officially proclaim March, “Pick Your Friends on the Basis of Their Immune Systems” Month (which is certainly no sillier than some of March’s other celebratory offerings — March is both Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month and Play the Recorder Month, and host to such celebratory days as If Pets Had Thumbs Day on March 3 and the Birthday of Girl Scouting on March 15).  Indeed, the Ides of March are on March 16, which may be when my friends’ collective maladies might run amok and assassinate me.  Hmm…I wonder when National Paranoia Month is?

In other news, India is pioneering the art of making babies for bucks (aka surrogate motherhood).  Evidently, for approximately $25,000 to $30,000, gay couples (or presumably, non-gay couples, but since this was in the New York Times, a gay couple was the main focus) can contribute a bit ‘o sperm and have one Indian woman donate an egg, while another Indian woman literally acts as a baby-making machine.  I must admit that I was a bit shocked (a) that this was completely legal and (b) that it wasn’t much more expensive than adoption these days (which I’m told can run $15,000 easily).  Of the $25,000 to $30,000, the surrogate mother makes about $7,500, which is 9 or 10 times the average YEARLY income for some women in India.  I guess I find this wrong for the same reason that I find “giving” plasma and other organs in exchange for money is wrong — there are just some things in life that should be free (ahem, such as sexual intercourse, Governor Spitzer!).  On the other hand, this would solve my dilemma — how to have children without necessarily incubating the alien myself for nine, nutrition- and body shape-sucking months nor tussling with government administrators over my right to adopt children given my “lifestyle.”  There is definitely a market for this service; the only question is whether there should be.

On a last note, I would just like to say that I am waiting for the day when at least one political wife will refuse to stand by her man when he makes public speeches regarding his adultery, whether with prostitutes (Governor Spitzer), gay men (Governor McGreevey), or presidential interns (President Clinton).  I long for the day when one of these political women will turn around and bitch-slap the jackass, or better yet, serve him with divorce papers at the press conference.  At least the process server will know where he will be.

Did you ever wake up one morning and just realize that you were bad at life?  Incomparably, immeasurably bad.  It’s funny, because when I was a kid, I always invariably won at the Game of Life — I managed, with a few rolls of the wheel ‘o life to graduate college, climb the corporate ladder, find a wife and 2.5 kids, and wind up in the mansion before any of my competitors.  Yet, in real life, I find myself amongst the minority of my friends, most of whom are married, have children, own a house, and seem to have obtained a general level of happiness, while I am a single renter who can’t get her shit together enough on most days to clean her cat’s litter box, let alone be responsible for raising a baby or maintaining a healthy relationship.  Somehow, my friends have managed to figure out something I haven’t…how to play the game of life when it doesn’t come with pre-assorted, multi-colored spaces and an instruction manual.

Granted, I’m not exactly at the beginning of the board — I got the college degree and then some, and I’ve climbed the corporate ladder high enough that I don’t save up for months to afford Brooks Brothers non-iron shirts (which, in all honesty, are money savers compared to dry cleaning bills), shiny black cars, and hotel rooms at the Wynn Vegas.  Yet, the Game of Life never told me exactly how not fun being successful can be.  Not having to worry constantly that I may have overdrawn my bank account (a constant game in college, when I can recall making do with peanut butter and Ramen during finals time when the financial aid started getting thin – no wonder I gained the freshman 15 and then some) is a bonus, but my essential position in life is as a small cog in a giant legal wheel, which moves forward slowly, moving money from bank account to bank account ad infinitum.  There’s nothing particular special about what I do — a hundred different lawyers could do it and many of them could probably do it better or quicker or in high heels.  Sure, a few hours of each year, I get to do something that really matters in life — a pro bono case that argues on behalf of the constitution or attempts to save a man’s life.  These are the high points, and they almost make it all worth while.  Except for the fact that every hour I spend on one of these cases is an hour I worry about not billing to a client willing to pay my employer for my work, lest I not make my billable hour requirement two years in a row.  My life has become a series of counting to eight every day…eight units of my waking life that require either (a) a singular focus, which I’ve never had (I’ve always been the kind of gal thinking 10 different things in her head at once) or (b) excellence at time management, which I also don’t have (I would pretty much make the worst personal assistant ever).  This probably explains why I’m at work on a Sunday night at 8:30pm not doing work.  The Game of Life never had a red-colored space for “Yuppie Life Crisis.”

Despite all the above, there was someone in my life, up until recently, who kind of colored all the above a wonderful shade of “content and happy,” but in the end, I’ve never really gotten the hang of getting anyone I ever dated to want to stick around very long.  Certainly not long enough to make it to the 2.5 kids and the mansion.  Maybe they’re playing on a completely different game board with a different end game, or maybe they just don’t like the idea of me hanging on too tightly when they’d like to let go.  Either way, I seem to always end up playing the same 10-15 game steps over and over again and the result never seems to differ.  Perhaps the Game of Life should have a path for “Not Marriage Material and Should Consider a Life of Polyamorous Lesbian Debauchery.”  However, not only do I think that would get Milton Bradley slapped with a lawsuit from the Christian Right, but it’s never been a particularly attractive or viable life path for me.  I’ve always been more enamored of the idea of sleeping with one person the rest of my life than someone new every year.  I guess you could say that I’m an old-fashioned romantic that way.  Too bad I wasn’t born when “Leave it To Beaver” was popular.  My romantic sensibilities are rather useless to me in the day and age of “Tila Tequila” and “The L Word.” 

In the Game of Life, you achieved happiness by being the first little widget to enter the mansion, thereby earning the right to gloat over your fellow life competitors (until they beat you at Sorry or Chutes and Ladders or Candyland or some such).  In real life, I kind of feel like the caboose that got accidentally detached from the back of a train — I don’t have the foggiest fucking clue how to achieve lasting happiness…I just keep on the track hoping that one day I’ll connect to something that sticks.

I feel that I must stand up for all that is holy and good in this world by being one of the evidently few people in this country to say how perfectly AWFUL Chef Michel Richard’s new restaurant, Central Michel Richard, is.  The food, much like the name, is perfectly unimaginative French — buttered into such a state of oblivion that all sense of flavor is lost.  I have been to Central twice.  The first time, I ordered a dish that I believed could only be a win-win proposition for me and the restaurant — they got $29 of my money for lunch and I got a lobster burger.  What could be better than a big pile ‘o lobster between some buns ? 

As I would shortly learn when my food arrived, there were plenty more fetching options in life (including a date with a hippie girl who hadn’t washed in two weeks).  The lobster was relatively tasteless, except for the butter than they obviously slathered the lobster, bun, and pretty much everything else on the plate with.  Chef Richard should have named the item, Butter Burger with a Side of Flavorless Lard.  I didn’t finish my burger and looked longingly at my lunch companion’s salad, which presumably, escaped death by butter.  And let’s not forget to mention the perfectly inattentive staff.  I realize the place is French, but that does not mean that I want a side of attitude and lethargy with my meal, especially a place that caters to politicos and lawyers (people who generally have time-restricted schedules) at lunch.  Evidently, a side of “hurry the fuck up” is a special, non-menu item.

Despite my first impressions of the place, I dared to visit again after reading many stellar reviews of Central, thinking that perhaps my lobster burger disaster had been a deviation, rather than the norm.  Perhaps my lobster patty had been accidentally thrown into a vat of melted butter when the sous chef tripped over Ratatouille in the kitchen, but they served it to me anyway because it was the last lobster they had and didn’t want to disappoint me?  (Obviously, I was trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.)  This time, I brought my chef-in-training friend with me for a second opinion and I ordered a plain jane burger — something that even a truck stop restaurant couldn’t fuck up.

Evidently, I should have found a truck stop.  Central’s burger, at a whopping $16, was thoroughly underwhelming.  The meat did not taste distinguishable from $2 buck chuck that I could have purchased in a grocery store (again, perhaps the overpowering presence of butter on the plate drowned out all the food’s natural good taste), and once again, the service was snooty and non-existent (and this time, we were one of two seated tables, so it’s not like the server was busy; rather, the server, much like my food, simply sucked).  I will say that my friend’s Fish and Chips were pretty darn good.  The breading on the fish was light and airy, with a nice, delicate crunch.  (So, if you MUST go to Central to see and be seen, I recommend the Fish and Chips.)

Despite the tastiness of her own mean, my friend’s opinion was pretty much the same as mine — if you can’t cook a burger, then you pretty much suck, Central Michel Richard. 

So, if you enjoy the idea of tasting two sticks of butter with your meal and having service that seems to be moving at the pace of a dead minnow underwater, I recommend Central Michel Richard.

I’m a bit bitter this Valentine’s Day, but for all of you lovebirds who still believe in love and all that jazz, I highly recommend Argyle Winery’s 2005 Brut Rose to celebrate the day.  A pleasingly pink-hued concoction, this sparkling wine is clean, crisp, and has an undercurrent of both straberry and vanilla.  Impress your sweetie by offering the champagne as an apertif with sliced strawberries around the rim, or make it your dessert wine and pair it with a strawberry shortcake, vanilla and caramel-based ice cream, or a light chocolate-strawberry concoction. 

Tasting Note:  As the sparkling wine is pink and bubbly, this Valentine’s Day ruse is likely to only loosen the zippers of the female sex.  As delectable as this champagne is, it’s hard to get guys to admit that they dig pink bubbles, even if you catch them in the middle of lathering themselves up with a pink washcloth in the middle of a Sesame Street bubble bath.  If you’re looking to appeal to the more masculine side of life this V-Day, I’d recommend pairing a glass of Glen Garioche 15-year single malt scotch with a chocolate-caramel dessert.  Yum yum.

So, those who know me understand that I am not the world’s most tidy person.  My parents often referred to my room as a “dungeon with hidden trap doors underneath all the clothes” until I reached the age of 12, at which point, they realized that no amount of verbal cajoling and  weekly stipend could motivate me to actually clean my room.  Not much has changed in the 18 years since, other than I now pay a pretty penny for the floor upon which my clothes and shoes rest.

At my office, however, I don’t generally throw clothes willy-nilly around (papers, pens, highlighted, and curse words, yes; clothes, no).  I do, however, have a pile of work shoes in the corner, wedged between the end of my desk unit and the air conditioning/heating unit.  As I walk to work, I often opt for comfort over couture, pairing my preppy barrister slacks with athletic shoes until I get to my office, whereupon I slip into a pair from my shoe pile.  The other day, I happened to look at my shoe pile and notice a shoe that I had not previously seen…a black sandal pump that looked like something that I would actually buy, but did not think that I actually had.  I look at it quizzically for a few minutes, because it kind of looked like a heel that I used to have (assuming that the sparklies on my front of old shoe had fallen off, and well, that I hadn’t thrown out those old shoes).  I then pick it up and match it against my foot and figured out that it was at least two sizes too small for my foot.  I searched in vain for the interloping shoe’s soul-mate, but alas, there was just the single, lonely shoe that had somehow wandered into my shoe pile from unknown origins.  I have only one thing to say — “What the fuck?”

Even possibly more disturbing, I explained the appearance of a random Naturalizer shoe in my shoe pile to the fashionable, blond co-worker who sits next door to me, and her response was, “Oh, could it be mine?  I have lots of shoes.”  She did not seem particularly disturbed that a SINGLE, RANDOM AS ALL FUCK shoe ended up residing in my office, only that one of her shoes had perhaps gotten waylaid.  Evidently, if you are willing to pay a few hundred dollars for a pair of shoes, they come with little shoe-residing grasshoppers who have high heel drag races in the middle of the night while you’re sleeping.  C’mon!

Why is it exactly that I have 362 messages in my Gmail Spam folder, a good third of which promise to enhance my lackluster manhood?  Are small penises really that big of an epidemic, that I need 20 e-mail messages a day reminding me to pump, shoot, massage, and orally imbibe a variety of penis-enlarging concoctions?  And how do I break it to my spam stalkers that their various snake oil creams and pills will have little effect on me, a member of the Va-J-J crowd?  I might get hair on my nipples, but that would be about it.  I have yet to see spam addressing the underserved population of those who relish female chest hair (“Amaze the Girls with Your Bountiful Chest Bush!” perhaps, or “Nipple Hair Really Does Matter!  Get Short and Curlies Everywhere Will Nipple-Gro!”). 

But I digress…the point of this post is Vegas, not my penile-enhancement-friendly spam.  You know the adage, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas…well, I think that’s bunk.  I mean, my money already stayed in Vegas, so I feel that I can share the rest of it here.  This obviously means that I stayed sober enough the entire trip to actually remember the details.  Some of you will view this as proof that I did not truly enjoy Vegas, but I beg to differ.  Although, if the alcohol could selectively erase my memories of Vegas-ostitutes (sprinkled along the strip, or found en masse in the nightclub Tao in the Venetian, a common species in Nevada noted for its lack of bra support and covering, insufficient leg cover, curious orange coloring, and odd four-inch heel shuffle), the Treasure Island Siren show (aka a bunch of lip-synching Vegas-ostitutes using their curiously orange-colored goods to engage in battle with a bunch of skeevy-looking Vegas himbos dressed in pirate drag in a spectacle that seems designed to set the women’s movement back to the days of Christopher Columbus), and the moment when I went all-in at a poker tournament at Caesar’s with a full house and LOST!  (Insert much Yosemite Sam-like cursing here), then I would say, bring on the blackberry mojitos and bloody marys!

Now that we’ve addressed some of the trip’s low points, let’s get to the goods.  First, T. Rex and I stayed at the Wynn, and I have to say that it fucking rocked (indeed, our mode of transportation to the Wynn was decidedly Vegas-like — we had a rather corpulent cab driver attempt to ingratiate himself to us by offering to take us to male strip clubs for free, or even better, to drive a private male dancer named “Jordan” to our hotel room in 20 minutes or less).  Perhaps I’ve been living on the East Coast too long and have suffered the evils of New York hotel rooms (aka a full-sized bed precariously perched between two brick walls with an afterthought of a bathroom for $300+ a night), but the Wynn did not seem like a bad deal at all for the price we paid.  The room was huge, had floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the strip, and had a separate bathtub and shower, both big enough to fit me plus a sumo wrestler (alas, one of the few things I did not see in Vegas).  Better yet, the Wynn prohibited smoking and strollers in almost all areas of the hotel, which meant that my lungs and my shins were safe!  T. Rex and I hit the Wynn’s buffet on Sunday morning, and engaged in the time-honored sin of gluttony.  We paid roughly $35 a piece, but at morning’s end, she had managed to snarf down four plates of food along with constantly refilled mimosas and ice tea, and I came in second with three plates of food, ½ of a candy apple, and a fair number of mimosas, myself.  Needless to say, we spent most of the rest of Sunday laying flat on the bed in our hotel room, processing our gluttonous repast while watching football-themed movies on TNT.  (And here is one of the many moments in which I knew that I was beyond old — the scene where Ali Larter attempts to seduce James van der Beek in her whipped cream bikini came on while we were watching “Varsity Blues,” and all I could think is, “Eww…she looks so young, go put some clothes on!”  Oh, middle age, here I come!)  Alas, we never did invite “Jordan” over.  Funny that.

The best food we tried in Vegas was “Alex,”an elegant restaurant in the Wynn that had a delightful, well-traveled sommelier, and scrumptious food.  T. Rex and I parted ways from the birthday girl (my home slice, DC) and her girl gang for the night (alas, they headed out to Toby Keith’s restaurant in Harrah’s…yeah, not so unhappy that I missed that excursion).  Décor-wise, Alex was probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve been to (yes, it’s even more fancily-decorated than “French Laundry;” after all, there were freakin’ silk roses sewn onto the drapes).  The wine list was, however, eminently accessible, with bottles from pretty much everywhere in the world and reasonably-priced ones to boot.  And the food?  Well, it was spot-on.  Not as good as French Laundry, but on par with Le Bernardin in New York (though I prefer Alex’s wine list).  You could choose between a 3-course tasting menu and a 7-course tasting menu; given our buffet gluttony earlier in the day, we opted for the 3-course tasting menu, which was quite divine.  I chose a butternut squash risotto, roasted wild turbot (which is evidently pronounced turb-o, not turb-ot, silly me), and a selection of cheeses, all of which was paired with a delightful syrah from Santa Barbara, California.  T. Rex went with a butter-poached lobster (served with actual black truffles, which p.s. by the way, taste kind of like earthy rubber), venison chop with a pomegranate sauce (if Bambi’s mom tasted this good, I can’t really blame the hunter), and the cheeses as well.  Only possible complaint?  The wait staff kind of looked like they had brooms implanted up their arse on their first day of work.  Lighten up…good food doesn’t have to be so damn serious!

Still, the wait staff at Alex was a dream compared to the waiter at Bouchon, where the whole gang dined on Saturday night.  Being an ardent fan of French Laundry, I convinced the birthday girl to give Thomas Keller’s lower-priced fare a try.  It was, well, disappointing.  Don’t get me wrong…the food is good, it’s just that it’s horribly French, and by “horribly French,” I mean that it’s thoroughly unimaginative and heavily saturated in both butter and cream.  Whereas French Laundry was a delight of the senses, where I could taste every fresh ingredient used in the dishes, Bouchon’s ingredients had drowned in so much butter and cream that the it was hard to taste the ingredients for what they were.  My day boat scallops (a whopping $48) were cooked well, but their taste was blunted by the sauce (even though I opted for what I thought would be a lighter olive oil sauce, the taste was still all sauce and no scallop).  Alas, the oysters we ordered as appetizers did not have any cream, but they were thoroughly uninteresting.  And the waiter…oh my god.  First, he took a good 15-20 minutes to even come to our table.  If I’m paying $48 for scallops, your ass should be at my table to tell me either (a) that you’re super busy and will have to come back or (b) take my drink order within the first 10 minutes.  Second, if we ate everything on our plates, he kept saying, “Oh, I take it you didn’t like it very much?”  He did this five separate times to us throughout the course of the meal.  I desperately wanted to inform him, “Well, to tell you the truth, the food is perfectly average, but I ate light all day to prepare myself for something really good, so I’m damn hungry and this is what’s in front of me, so I ate it,” but he never actually stayed long enough at the table for me to get that whole sentence out.  The wine list was decent, however, and T. Rex and I split a delightful selection of ports for dessert.  All’s well that ends well, but the honest truth about Bouchon (in Vegas, anyway) is that plenty of cheaper restaurants are better.

For example, Mario Batali’s new Enoteca in the Venetian was a definite high point.  A complete contrast from Bouchon, Batali’s Enoteca San Marco is a wine-centric restaurant that offers small plates (pizzas, salads, and pastas) in a delightful setting inside the Venetian that makes you feel as if you’re in a Piazza in Venice.  The wine was excellent, and if you weren’t sure what you wanted, the staff was happy to give you a pour of everything for you to try.  The food was very yummy (T. Rex had a pasta that was little more than pasta and cheese, but which was seasoned so well that it melted in my mouth in a fit of orgasmic pleasure), the service was friendly, and the price was eminently reasonable.  Definitely a must if you’re in Vegas.

One thing I will probably not do on my next trip is to scarf down another Eiffel-tower sized strawberry margarita.  DC thought it would be simply delightful to have our picture taken with each of us drinking out of an Eiffel Tower-sized drink (procured at the Paris Hotel, of course).  The drink is roughly equivalent to 5 or 6 actual drinks.  T. Rex and I decided to split our strawberry margarita, despite the rest of the crew labeling us “pussies” for our share-and-share-alike attitude.  About two hours later, however, when sugar shock had grasped those who consumed the Eiffel tower on their own, we were upgraded to “smart pussies.”  I can live with that…

And I can also die happier having seen Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” at the Mirage (my 11th Cirque show!).  Although I am not what you would call a big Beatles’ fan (indeed, I am more of the “why the hell were the Beatles exactly so important?” camp), the show was masterful.  The set design and costuming were the best I have ever seen at a Cirque show and the music was actually pretty good (though I’m convinced that many, many drugs were involved in creating that music – “I’d like to be under the sea in an octopus’ garden with you?”  C’mon!)

Speaking of lyrics that were created under the influence, we managed to create the first line of a few new songs while on our trip…

BP — “I want a pink one!”  (sure to be heard in a Victoria’s Secret near you soon)

MC — “I have a very flexible mouth, it’s one of my attributes.” (could be either Jim Carrey or Jenna Jamison’s personal anthem)

Snarky — (in reference to an ad on one of the hotels) “Diet Pepsi sponsors Toni Braxton’s twat!” (‘nuff said)

Sketchy Cab Driver — “I have the catalog to the Bunny Ranch…” (a new version of Old McDonald had a farm?)

Okay…so that wasn’t everything that happened in Vegas, but then again…some things that happen in Vegas stay there

My personal quest of passion and justice to have the national holiday of “Columbus Day” renamed to “Rape & Pillage Celebration Day” has just received further ammunition — a new genetic study indicates that Columbus was not only responsible for introducing the time-honored traditions of raping indigenous infidels and pillaging foreign land to the New World, but can also lay claim to the New World’s introduction to syphilis as well.  I hereby call on the powers-that-be to rename “Columbus Day” to “Rape, Pillage, and Spread a Venereal Disease Day” and to mark such occasion by flying an American flag at half-mast, slightly charred, and hosting a large red rash in the center.  (Of course, there is always the option of jettisoning a holiday in honor of a person whose exploits should have earned him the title of Satan’s butt monkey for all of eternity in favor of a more festive celebration of American discovery and invention.  I’m just saying.)

So…let’s talk about how I’m holed up inside a motel in Newark, Delaware that smells faintly of “I used to smell like cigarette smoke back in the 80s when smoking in hotel rooms was the shiznet but I have been sprayed repeatedly with an ozone-like substance in order to eradicate the film of carcinogenic smoke that has layered my walls and carpet” the day after Christmas watching “The World’s Strongest Man” on ESPN, shall we?  It all started off innocently enough — after spending a delightful pre-holiday weekend and Christmas Eve with my mom, I headed up to the all-American town of Middletown, Delaware on Christmas Day to celebrate Santa’s burgeoning stomach, rosy red cheeks, and frostbite-repelling white beard with T. Rex and her family.  Numerous portions of ham, scalloped apples, vegetables, flaky biscuits, baklava, grandma’s cookies, wine, and caramel apples later, I was fit to be Santa’s replacement.  Lacking the proper equipment to strap down my breasts, augment my chiny chin chin with some delightful white hair, or learn how to fly reindeer on short notice, T. Rex and I took our protuberant bellies to the only hotel in all of Christendom (okay, well, all of Middletown) — the Hampton Inn. 

The Hampton Inn was a perfectly delightful place to spend the night — what better way to aid the body in digestion than some free Internet access, Mountain Dew from the vending machine, and a Paranormal State marathon on A&E, which taught me that 3 a.m. is the optimal time to contact evil spirits, since it is the inverse of the time of Jesus’ death (which apparently happened at 3 p.m.).  Evidently, the man not only died from our sins, but he founded the first wireless spirit network.  Yet, despite my crash-course in paranormal communications, I found $120 to be a bit steep for a King-size bed in the middle of sleepy and sparsely populated suburbia.  Methinks that the Hampton Inn Middletown is profiting from being the only game in town as well as the fortuitous location across from the WaWa gas station , which was the only place in all of Middletown open, nay, practically spilling First State residents out of every glass door pore on its edifice, on Christmas Eve.  Seriously, I haven’t seen a place that busy since I watched live footage of a Black Friday stampede at Wal-Mart.

Yet, I must admit that the Hampton Inn is to the Bellagio as the Sleep Inn in whose ozone-scented room I am currently residing in typing this lengthy blog entry is to the El Cortez Hotel and Casino — one left turn down the road to Sketchville.  Sketchville was not my intended destination for tonight.  No, indeed, after spending a day lounging, relaxing, and doing abso-fucking-lutely nothing, me and 9 pounds of holiday ham were set to travel back down I-95 to D.C. tonight.  Yet, the second that I hit the highway, I was awash in a rainstorm and 30-mph traffic.  It seems that everyone and their brother, sister, niece, and nephew was heading back from the New York area in separate cars, descending upon the beltway in a wash of steel, headlights, and rubbernecking.  I forsaw a 2 1/2 hour drive turning into a 5 to 6 hour nightmare of road rage and high blood pressure, and turned tail back to Delaware in search of cheap lodgings.  And so here I sit in the $69 Sleep Inn.  It ain’t all bad.  The vending machine has diet Dr. Pepper, and the floor and bedspread have the good decency to have enough color and pattern that if I toss my ham and cookies when I wake up to head back to D.C. at 4 or 5 in the morning, it’ll blend in.  Still, it’s not exactly the best establishment for a romantic, post-holiday tryst.  Unless I’m picking up one of the Lube Express proprieters; in that case, it’s just right.

I’ve been told that admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery.  I’m more than happy to admit that I have a dastardly addiction problem (well, two, actually), but I have no desire to recover from either addiction.  You see, I’m a ho.  Not the kind that trades her bodily wares on the corner of 12th and M NW at Sunday morning at 4 a.m. (Though I was once mistaken for a prostitute at 5 a.m. as I sat on the stoop of the stairs outside my front door waiting for T.Rex to get off work, despite me being dressed in athletic shorts and a baggy puma t-shirt; this leads me to believe that tomboy fantasies are being underserved by the active prostitution population), but a (1) wine and (2) bath and body products ho. 

Now, the bath and body products ho-dom has been a lifestyle pattern since college.  Many a person has been forced to restrain me as I pass by lotions and potions stores in the mall, lest I buy my tenth bottle of body wash or lotion.  (Let’s see…a current review of my body washes alone reveals Oil of Olay, Korres Fig, Body Shop Olive, H2O Natural Spring Body Polish, The Thymes Ginger Milk, some Honey and Fig concoction I brought back from New Zealand, and Molton Brown’s Wild Indigo — and that’s not even counting what I might have squirreled away in shame underneath my bathroom sink.  My repository of body lotions is a subject for another day.) 

The wine ho thing is a new phenomena, however, spurned into existence by (a) a sudden doubling of my old government hack salary and (b) recent wine trips to New Zealand and Sonoma, wherein I discovered that Greeks were onto something with wine-infused Bacchanalia.  I started 2007 being a big believer in the $5-9 specials at Trader Joe’s, with the occasional splurge into $15-20 wineland, and I finish it with a wine fridge stocked with 53 bottles of wine, champagne, and port ranging in price from a mere $9.99 all the way to $100.  How in holly green hell did this happen?  What started out a novel interest in having wines shipped back to myself from New Zealand and California has turned into full-fledged maniacal passion, complete with a Wine Spectator membership, a notebook of tasting notes, and strange Saturday phone calls with the wine expert of an Oregon wine shop about the virtues of Oregon versus New Zealand pinot and California versus Washington State Cabernet. 

 So, since I have decided to jump off the bridge ‘o crazy into a flowing river of wine, I have decided that the best way to get company in Crazy Town is by sharing my love of fermented grapes and oak barrels.  (I could certainly also share my love of all things smelly and lotion-y, but something tells me that y’all would prefer to hear about food and wine over, say, the foam ratio of different body washes I’ve tried or how how soft and supple different lotions make my skin.)

So, we begin this foray with Thursday night’s dinner.  I whipped up a grilled sirloin with caramelized shallots and blue cheese, grilled asparagus, and sourdough bread topped with fig jam and more blue cheese and paired that with a 2005 Mayo Family Russian River Zinfindel($30/bottle) that T.Rex and I bought in Healdsburg, California (the Mayo Family has a delightful tasting room outpost in Healdsburg, which is about 30 minutes north of Sonoma, where they pair their wines with delightful niblets like peanut butter and jam and left-over Chinese food — a delightful sensory experience not to be missed).  The Zinfindel was good, but unremarkable on its own; paired with the blue cheese and steak, however, it was the picture perfect definition of “orgasm in my mouth.”  Just a touch of spice and blackberry jam to accentuate the boldness of the blue cheese and the texture of the steak.  Damn, if I ate like that every night, I’d be a very happy, 300-pound woman.  Yum yum.

If you’re the type who only spends $30 on a bottle of wine either (a) at a restaurant when that’s the cheapest bottle you can find or (b) when you’re trying to get into someone’s pants, then I recommend pairing your steak with a 2004 Naouoaia Red from the Naoussa region of Greece, which can be obtained for a bargain $9.99 at Whole Foods (just look for the label that’s entirely in the Greek alphabet!)  Not as fruity or jammy as a good Zinfindel, but it has hints of nuts and spice and is eminently drinkable with a a good cut of cow (I paired it with some free-range, grass-fed New York strip) or on its own.  I went back and bought two more bottles of the Naouoaia after trying it a month or so ago (one more for me and one for a Christmas gift).  53 bottles and counting…y’all need to get your arses out to DC to help me drink this damn wine!