birfday witches

Yes, yes, it's that time again! My birthday is right around the corner. Yes, yes, I know. I'm bad at birthdays. Always have been. I get all caught up in the expectation to have the best time ever, and I go cray cray trying to control shit and then I'm inevitably let down. Last year was the crown jewel in a long line of bad, bad birthdays because I had just moved to California and did not know anyone besides my Dad and his girlfriend and my Uncle. So, I pretty much went to bed at ten o'clock on my birthday and may or may not have cried myself to sleep.
But this year will be different, I just know it! I have the most fabulous friends in the world to keep me calm and grounded and I'm gonna do my absolute best to just chill out and let it happen.
Now, I am not at all expecting presents. In fact, I could care less about them. If no one buys them, I will still be happy as long as I have a good time surrounded by people that I love.
-But.....
people have been asking me what I want, so to make it easier, and just for the sake of fantasy, here's what I'd like if you're buying.

-Tickets to Treasure Island (Saturday only! I repeat, only Saturday!)
I wanna see LCD Soundsystem! So fucking bad it hurts. Seriously though, I don't go alone, so I'm not actually asking you to buy me a ticket. I can afford my own. But, if this sounds like something you might wanna do, please buy yourself a tickets, that way we can go together and hold hands and dance in the sun!

-Moneys
I know that is a seriously weak request. Especially considering that I am not broke. I do however, have to afford a plane ticket home on Christmas Eve. In case you didn't know, flying on Christmas Eve is insanely expensive. If I had a choice, I would not do it. But my work schedule demands that I be there right up until the last second, and I cannot, absolutely cannot spend Christmas away from my family. Sooooo, any monetary gifts that I receive for my birthday this year will be funding that trip. I promise.

-A bike (pink, please!)
When I first moved here, I swore I would never ride a bike. It seemed like the trendy thing that everyone was doing, and therefore, I felt I should avoid it like the plague. But since then, I can't even tell you how many times I've wished I had a goddamn bike. Like when all my friends don't have to worry about parking/driving drunk but I do. Or the other day when my roommate and I were trying to decide whether to walk or drive to the farmer's market and the obvious solution was to just bike there, but since I don't have a fucking bike, we walked. In the rain. You should have seen my fucking hair after that.
And no, I don't actually know how to ride a bike, but many people have generously offered to spend their time teaching me, and I think it would be shame not to take advantage of their generosity.

-Bubbles
If you want me to love you forever I'll take bottles of Egly Ouriet, Pommery, Vilmart & Cie and Nicolas Feiullatte, please and thank you. Although, you could also just buy some cheap ass drugstore shit and I'd be equally pleased, as long it sparkles.

-Cupcakes
Do I really even have to explain this?

-Your beautiful faces
What I want most for my birthday is to see as many of my friends and family as possible. I understand that some of you live far and that makes it pretty much impossible, but those of you that can show up, please do. Having your friends three-thousand miles away on your birthday really puts this kind of shit into perspective. Nothing, absolutely nothing, would make me happier than to turn 26 surrounded by as many of you as possible.

Okay, now let's go celebrate!

love always

if you never read this, i still mean it

have you ever found yourself wishing you could have a do-over? a second try at something that just didn't go your way?
last week i received an e-mail saying thank you for sharing your obvious passion for wine with us, after an interview in which i was caught terribly off-guard, and i couldn't help but wonder if it was perhaps, a bit sarcastic. in that moment, i found myself, for the first time as a result of fear, confusion and doubt, unable to articulate exactly how meaningful my chosen profession is to me.
over the years i have had many a revelatory experience in this field.
like on my first day at my first real wine job when i tasted the kim crawford sauvignon blanc and someone said grapefruit and i could actually taste that.
or how i thought that napa cab was a huge, overrated joke until i tasted the rich, heady terra valentine
or this moment when i tasted the cuvee louise from pommery and started to like my job again.
or the time when a friend and i ordered an entire bottle of anselmi i capitelli by the glass because it was just that freaking good.

the truth is, i am beyond passionate about wine, as anyone who has seen me run around a tasting shrieking "ohmigod, you have to try this!!!" can attest to. i'm emotionally attached in a way that borders on un-professional. and yes, there are days when i just wanna order a diet coke, but that's because i spend a good deal of time over-consuming, over-analyzing and over-working myself for the sake of what i do for a living.
if i was unable to convey this to a few select people, i would just like to state for the record: i love my job, i know my shit and if there's one thing i'm certainly not lacking, it's passion.

love always

they're fucking with me, i just know it.

this weeks episode of abdc was such a travesty, that i'm going to have to ask you to just bear with me for a few days until i calm down and am able to write about it without BUGGING THE FUCK OUT!!!
now, if you'll excuse me for that small outburst, i'd like to say that aside from abdc, i'm really quite pleased with the way things have been working out lately. i had a lovely tasting this evening at my newest account, kaman's. i was chatty and bubbly and most importantly, i sold things, which always puts a smile on my face.
even better, i stood up to my ex-boyfriend today, which is truly a cause for celebration. normally, i'd drink champagne, but even more impressively, i've quit drinking for the week.
cheers!

love always

it's 8 o'clock on friday and i'm already hungover

sometime around one this afternoon, i came to a very important and wholly unexpected conclusion: i love my job.
about six months ago i was promoted within my company to the position of wine sales rep. i had been dreaming about having this job for a seriously long time, so naturally i was thrilled when i first found out, but to be totally honest, the past six months have been kind of the hugest letdown of my entire life. supplying shitty package stores with boxes of franzia wasn't nearly as glamorous as i had expected.
this week was the absolute pinnacle of my job's shitiness. it was so stressful that i've actually been considering a career change, but that all changed when i met matias.
matias is this semi-adorable edward norton look-alike who supplies my company with pommery champagne. supposedly, the entire rest of the world thinks of pommery the way that we, in america, think of veuve cliquot or dom perignon; as the height of luxury and the emodiment of good taste. i had never tasted pommery before, but i was immediately drawn to the packaging on their new POP label.
we started with the brut royale, then moved on the rose, the new, modern POP line, and then, the highlight of my entire wine-drinking career, the cuvee louise. i've had champagne before, and i've been slightly impressed, but from the very first sip of this stuff, i was hooked.
something in the traditional champagne bouquet always throws me off. some people describe the nose as being "yeasty", which never seemed all that appealing to me. in this line however, i found the scent to be alluring, intoxicating even. as we moved into the higher end bottlings something clicked in my brain. this wine smells like seashells, like the ocean, like everything i loved about being fifteen years old.
when we tasted the cuvee louise, i literally had tears in my eyes (i was a bit drunk by this point, mind you). i was seriously moved by how good this wine tasted. i'm talking praline, hazlenut, rose petals, and of course that briny seashell bouquet. it reminded of why i wanted to sell wine in the first place.
who else in the entire world gets to start off their weekend drinking exquisite two-hundred-dollar-a-bottle champagne and getting paid for it?
trust me, i'm done complaining.

love always