Old Doug
Posts: 8279
Joined: 5/12/2011
From: Atlanta, Georgia, US
Status: offline
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Ahoy J2K,
I do drive a truck once in a while - a "mobile oil refinery" (or chemical processing rig) primarily dedicated to renewing the oil found in electrical transformers, and chemically destroying PCB's - polychlorinated biphenyls.... a moderately long story there. Most of the time we work on site.
I hear you about meeting up with other CellarTrackers, and I've already determined to meet Hollowine, Vine, etc. - have jobs or semi-permanent facilities to come in their necks of the woods, so to speak. And would love to attend all the offline CT gatherings - there are quite a few in the Atlanta area, with varying degrees of formality; just being there on the right date is the deal, a hard-to-achieve deal in my case.
Friday it will be near Philadelphia, the high temperature is forecast at 103 or 39 - 40 Celsius, and let me tell you - near Philly, this time of year, we are talking some humidity. After a day of that, no thoughts of "tasting wine." I might drink some - hey - might drink a whole lot of something to escape from.... existence/consciousness, but this is not truly appreciating wine. And God help you if you drink a bunch of booze then have to work outside when the next day is really hot.
Part of it is just finding the time, and part of it is picking our spots - Hollowine and some of the Texas contingent speaking of not committing to a port wine tasting/drinking until they had an off day to follow - and that is sound thinking. Many is the time I've seen some awful sorrowful faces coming in to work - the people behind them knowing that true suffering is at hand. And many is the time when I've bitterly cursed my life/miserable existence  , just because I drank a lot the night before.
As to this thread and Slaughterer's idea - I love it. I must have a need for and/or joy in confession, introspection, zany, madcap adventures, etc. I still wonder about the "necessity" of alcohol, but can't deny that it makes a hell of a difference to me. If anything, I'd say that women are more easily intimate with each other, booze or no - they tell their hearts right away, comparatively. With men, now, let's get a few drinks in them; then we'll have the real truth. Mayhap this is also a rather "anglo-saxon" thing or something like that, too.... Culture and upbringing (and a love of booze or not) also makes a heck of a difference.
Personally, there is some weird "unlocking" thing that happens. Many is the time when after 2 or 3 drinks on a plane, for example, I'm furiously scribbling notes on napkins, my fingers barely keeping up with the flood of thoughts, if at all. And in the cold and sober moments that later follow, some of them are pretty good, so I cannot discard it all as drunken fantasy.
Even aside from alcohol, I see a thread like this as a further microcosm of message boards, chatrooms, etc. Some of us are just plain made for it. In the 1990's, my mom had a computer, and kept telling me to get one; "Doug, you'll love it." August 1996 I got one; and she was right. Spent a couple months arguing my fool head off on message boards, and then one night I found my way into an internet chatroom. Well, I'll tell you what - talk about loving something. I was in southern New York State, it was the Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the US, and I had 3 days off from work. Lots of funny people in that chatroom, and I stayed there for 36 hours straight. It was such a rush! Then slept for 6 hours; got up and chatted for 17 hours more. Couldn't even stand to be away from the computer screen for long - had an enormous plastic coffee mug, must have held 2 or 3 quarts, and let's just say that "bathroom breaks" took on a different meaning.  Ah, excess, you are my middle name. Gotta get to the top of the mountain.
During those days I "met" a smart and sassy woman in that chatroom, and this woman was fast - she was always a step ahead of me with a witty (or wittier) comment or comeback. She later told me that she'd thought I was "deranged," but eventually came to like me, and before I knew it, I was going to visit her after Christmas in that same year of 1996. Prior to being online, I would have scoffed at the notion of "meeting somebody online." I was in Ohio, she in New Mexico. The visit went well, and I spent more time with her in mid-January, then she visited me in Baltimore where I was working in February.
She moved in with me April 2, 1997, and now we've been married almost 12 years. Never would have believed it.
That chatroom was a special group; have never seen the like since. Visited several of them offline, and in the end I reckon it was just some sort of synchronicity - we all were ready and we all loved it.
Edit: on the "1 bottle (of wine) consumed" deal - I did have 12 or 13 beers tonight.
< Message edited by Old Doug -- 7/20/2011 7:10:58 PM >
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RE: Postings after 1 whole bottle consumed alone - 
But no, no booze, and thus the moratoria on purchases and consumption commence, the liver to rest and recuperate. 
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