Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 1:09PM Back in July, I started writing about wine every Wednesday. Since then, I’ve covered the basics of wine and an overview of the major wine grape varietals. The question now is: What next? Are there wine-related topics you’d like me to write about? Or should I discontinue this feature and move on?
Wednesday, July 20, 2011 at 5:28PM Several folks on Twitter asked me to start blogging about wine, so for the foreseeable Wednesday will be wine day on the blog. As with Reader Request Month, I think this will work best if you ask me questions.
So, what do you want to know about wine?
Fitness: Ran 2.25 miles + One Hundred Pushups, Week 1, Day 2 (6-8-6-6-13)
Sun, Moon, and Stars: 155 words, 402 seven-day average, 261 average, 29223 total, 777 to go for the week
reader request, site matters, wine, wine wednesdays Saturday, July 2, 2011 at 5:18PM During Reader Request Month, Christina sent me this:
This is a question inspired by a wedding we were at last weekend: You and Gwen have been married almost 11 years now, and you’ve performed enough weddings that I suspect you’ve thought occasionally about how to articulate your views on love. How has your philosophy of marriage and / or your relationship developed in the time since you got married? Bonus points if it’s romantic.
Today seems like a good day to answer it. I suspect I won’t qualify for those bonus points, but here it goes.
Every relationship — romantic or otherwise — is a living, breathing, evolving thing. It’s a third entity, separate from but intertwined with the two people that make it up. A relationship isn’t just the two of you together. It’s the way you interact with each other the way the two of you interact with the world. To use a philosophy-geek term, the relationship supervenes on the two of you.
Caring for that co-created entity forces you to learn about how you and your partner are different. The behaviors you have in common you rarely talk about about, because you both just do them without thinking and without causing any friction. It’s the things that you do without thinking that do cause friction that you have to pay attention to. Gwen and I struggle with being an introvert-extrovert couple, for example. Our default behaviors, when it comes to interacting with other people, are often at cross-purposes with each other. When we got married eleven years ago, I didn’t understand what being a introvert meant. Of course, I didn’t understand what being extravert meant either; I just was one. We’ve learned a lot about each other and ourselves over the years, and that learning is critical to caring for any relationship.
I used to see relationships as transactional: I get this out of it, you get that out of it, albeit over an extended period of time. I’ve come to realize, however, that the healthiest, most profound relationships are transformational. Through the process of creating that third entity and interacting with it, we become different people than were before. And by my reckoning, better people.
So thank you for the last eleven years, sweetie. I love you. Let’s make the next eleven even more wonderful.reader request, things i have learned Monday, May 30, 2011 at 9:25PM I consider Reader Request Month to have been a success. It pushed me to write about things I wouldn’t have otherwise, to dig deeper into my thinking about certain topics. It also forced me to spend more time writing posts, because I wasn’t reaching for the same low-hanging fruit that I always do. I have a backlog of questions that I didn’t answer simply because I didn’t have time to think through my answers to all of them. I intend to get to them at some point, I just haven’t yet. And of course, I’m always open to any questions you might have in the future.
What did you think?
Saturday, May 28, 2011 at 1:22PM Fred Hicks asks:
Are comic books on your radar at all? If so, which ones?
Unfortunately, no. I wasn’t into comics at all as a kid. After college, I did venture into it, but almost entirely through trades and graphic novels. I’ve got several shelves worth of collections — things like Sandman, Hellblazer, Preacher, some of the Batman runs, and Hellboy — but I’ve never really followed a title. The only thing that comes close is Hellboy and the BPRD series, which I try pick up every time a new trade paperback comes out. That said, I think those titles actually work better as short stories, along the lines of the first several Hellboy collections, rather than as a continuing series. So no, comic books aren’t really on my radar.
Which ones should be?
reader request, reading