Speaking of predictable…

I’m appropriately disgusted with how the wine tasting turned out, as I said I would be in my Friday post.

For the amount of time, money, and effort I put into the tasting, I got very little in return. No, I don’t expect heaps of praise. That’s not what I’m talking about. What I DO expect is things to go relatively close to how I planned them. And that’s just definitely not how it ended up.

I had to run to Nugget Friday afternoon to pick out an additional Cab Franc and Riesling since previous selections had fallen off the list. I had seen this Bonny Doon CF the previous weekend when I’d picked up the rest of the lot, and I’d since read some fantastic reviews on it, so I was very interested in making it my fourth CF selection. I beelined it, only to find the shelf filled with some other wine that I couldn’t have cared less about. In a panic, I grabbed the nearest stock boy, who scurried off and soon brought me the wine steward to deliver the bad news.

They were out. For the season. Mother. Fucker.

I left with another wine that I knew nothing about and had very little enthusiasm for.

I then spent half an hour on Friday night trying to upload my Publisher file to the FedEx online ordering form, only to finally give up in disgust and accept that I’d have to add “Trip to Kinko’s” to my already bulging task list for Saturday morning.

Had I been truly attentive, Friday should have been a sign of things to come. Really. Because it was pretty much a messy shit-covered slide downhill after that.

I had to run to Kinko’s yesterday morning to get my packets printed up for the tasting, where I proceeded to have the following exchanges with the incredibly batty lady who turned out to be the ONLY EMPLOYEE ON THE PREMISES.

Grumpy Manda: Hi, I needed to get some copies made. (holds up CD)
Batty Lady: *blink…blinkblink* OH. You have a file on that disc?
Grumpy Manda: (pause) Yyyyyyes?
Batty Lady: Oh! Well I can figure that out.
Grumpy Manda: ……
________

Batty Lady: It says that we don’t have one of your fonts.
Grumpy Manda: Oh crap, I forgot about that.
Batty Lady: Do you want me to hit “Substitute fonts” and we can just print that out instead?
Grumpy Manda: (thinking of the hours she spent picking out just the right fonts and aligning all the margins and pictures and page borders) Um. Do we get to choose which fonts it substitutes?
Batty Lady: Yeah, I think so.
Grumpy Manda: Oh! Oh good. Here, go ahead and select–
Batty Lady: Here, come back here and you can do it. I don’t know anything about these computers.
Grumpy Manda: ……
________

Batty Lady: (as 23 copies are finally being printed) You do know that these copies are eighty-nine cents apiece, right?
Grumpy Manda: (doing mental math…89 cents times 23 copies…oh so cheap!) Yup. It’s all good.

(a few minutes pass, copies are still coming, Batty Lady rings up the purchase on the register)

Batty Lady: Okay, that will be $163.52
Grumpy Manda: (makes a noise akin to a cat vomiting up a hairball while being fed through a wood chipper)
Batty Lady: (confused by the reaction) It’s 89 cents per page. Remember?
Grumpy Manda: (pulls paper bag out of pocket to control hyperventilation)
_________

*twenty minutes later*
Batty Lady: Huh. It’s still making copies. I’m pretty sure it’s made twenty-three copies by now. Maybe I typed 230 instead of 23?
Grumpy Manda: Um. OK?
Batty Lady: Oh well! I guess you’ll have extra copies you can hand out on the street.
Grumpy Manda: (eyeing machine) I don’t have to pay for this little error, do I?
Batty Lady: Oh…um. I don’t know…
Grumpy Manda: (pulls paper bag back out)

No, I did not end up having to pay for all those extra copies. But she DID send them home with me. What the fuck I’m supposed to do with what I now estimate to be about 100 extra copies of the tasting packet is beyond me. She was in a better position to recycle them than I am. Now I have to haul that shit to work and dump it in our shredder bins. Fan-fucking-tastic.

I think I’m done with wine tastings for a while. They’ve become less of a fun, educational event and more of a social gathering. I’m not there to get drunk and blather on about how great my life is. I’m there to taste wines and learn something and THEN have a bit of a social time. I’m just so tired of the way the other group members treat these tastings and it’s entirely clear to me now that I’m on a whole ‘nother wavelength than they are. This is their chance to get wasted, eat a lot, and talk themselves up to the rafters. Oh, and show off how much they think they know about wine. It’s one step removed from a college kegger, minus the “so what’s your major?” smalltalk.

Ever have one of those weeks where you just want to move into some remote cabin in the Canadian wilderness and forget about people for a while? Yeah. Me too.