OH GOD THESE RIBS ARE SO GOOD SKAFDIWRHKSA

I literally made that sound when eating some ribs made by the Boyfriend this weekend. It was impossible for me to eat those ribs without making little happy sounds the entire time. They were so tender you could cut them apart with a set of tongs. The dry rub was the same one he usually uses, so at first we weren't sure why these were even better than they normally are. We determined that it was because he took them out of the smoker after two and a half hours, and then put the suckers in the oven for the next three, putting a mop-sauce on them every half hour or so. This took a normally fantastic recipe into the orgasmic territory.

I love ribs.

I also love wine, as we all know, but ribs aren't really a wine food, right? WRONG! If you are making spicy, dry-rub ribs, then you want some Black Box Pinot Grigio.

That's right.

Boxed wine.

Most wine drinkers will turn up their nose at boxed wine, but I know better. Have you ever ordered beef burgundy at a restaurant? Even chances that the Burgundy used was from a box. Or perhaps you got a white-wine sauce on your pasta. Probably from a box. Boxed wine is awesome for chefs, because it fits easily on a rack and generally provides a nice, even, "winey" flavor. 

That's all well and good, Stark, but you don't drink cooking wine, do you? Well, yes I do because I don't bloody well cook with wine that I wouldn't drink, but that's beside the point. Black Box actually produces some very pleasant wine. The Pinot Grigio is light, citrusy, and just sweet enough to cool your mouth after a bite of something spicy. It is not cloyingly sweet, nor is it sour, but it also lacks complexity. It's lightly sweetened lemonade, which is exactly what I wanted after eating those utterly fantastic ribs. 

At the moment however I am not sitting in a fabulous house overlooking the Assateague bay, I'm in my house in Bolton Hill, sitting next to a plastic cauldron and arguing about sociology with DesignBroad and Mr. India. This would be less pathetic if I were not sitting across from DesignBroad right now. 

I am drinking a glass of Venta Morales Tempranillo, which is "extremely quaffable" according to DesignBroad. She's right. It's a light to medium-bodied red with a nicely peppery flavor and no aftertaste to speak of. It is not heavily tannic, which I appreciate. Again, not particularly complex, but quite pleasant.

Tomorrow I'm going to show the schizos at work The Great Pumpkin. That should be pretty cool. Until then, continue drinking!

It's a Good Day.

As I walked into work today I was greeted by Harrison, an extremely fat man of mixed heritage. Harrison's traditional greeting is "Good GOD she so beautiful! My son..." and then word salad for about two minutes. This time, at the end of his babbling, he shouted "When I was nineteen I ran the race and I told them they could KISS my TAN ASS."

...right on, Harrison. Right on.

Later, I was threatened by a pedophile, a paranoid schizophrenic helped me carry my coffee down the hall because he didn't want me to burn myself, and my coworker got propositioned by a developmentally delayed meth addict.

Working at a mental hospital is TOTALLY AWESOME.

I'm not even kidding. I love coming to work and listening to Harrison telling me about his son (to whom I am apparently engaged?) and encouraging me to win at Wimbledon next summer. Oh, forgot to mention: I'm Maria Sharapova to him, apparently. My coworker is the Queen of England. She's also an extremely dark skinned black woman. I don't know where he gets this sort of thing, but it's utterly hilarious.

Still, I have a lot of responsibility now. I have a caseload of four clients (none of whom I will discuss on this blog. "Harrison" is a composite character, and that's not the name of any client in our ward) along with twelve credits worth of classes. I recently was let go from my job at the call center, which was a sad parting. I genuinely enjoyed that job, and we parted on excellent terms. Hopefully I will work for them next summer. I'd totally post a link to them if I didn't think they wouldn't appreciate the traffic from the Drinking and Swearing Blog.

Speaking of drinking, I'm a broke-ass graduate student who just managed to get a ninety dollar speeding ticket, so I'm drinking the CK Mondavi Sauvignon Blanc that Hootie McBoob brought to my house a while back. It is... wine. White wine. When you think "dry-ish medium white" this is what it tastes like. There is no complexity, no real nose to speak of. Granted, I just destroyed my palate on some really fabulous Indian food from Kumari, so this could be the best goddamn wine ever and I wouldn't know. I doubt it. Though hey, for twelve bucks for 1.5 liters, it's pretty much the best you're gonna get. At that price, the best you can hope for is "inoffensive," and it's certainly that.

We also have a new cat. We have two now. Black Cat and White Cat. They are also known as Lady Cat and Broheim, or rarely by their proper names: Leili and Cygnus. Cygnus is currently sleeping on my lap and being generally adorable.

It's a good day.