Pressure Relief

The pressure is off.  On Sunday night I was getting incredibly stressed out about a final Christmas gift that wasn't coming together as I had hoped.  Amanda tried her best, but I couldn't be persuaded that life would somehow go on.

The next day I talked with someone at work whose relative was having major troubles, and it helped me gain some perspective.

Then last night, Amanda and I managed to get things all together, and I mailed out our gifts to my family this morning.  They should arrive on Friday.

So the pressure is off.  Other than wrapping gifts for Amanda's family, we're ready for Christmas!

We celebrated by trying a bottle of wine along with supper (stuffed chicken breasts, Kraft Dinner, and broccoli).  It wasn't good.  It was a bottle of wine from the Cupcake Vineyards in California and we weren't very impressed with it.  So we toasted, tasted, and poured most of it down the drain.

...but we did it cheerfully!  We're ready for Christmas.  Bring it on!

Wedding Wine Tasting Part Two

Amanda and I continued our wine tasting tonight with Jacob's Creek, an Australian white wine.  It was good.  I'd put it close to the baby champagne we tried previously.  As a side benefit, it went really well with the nacho dip Amanda made for super tonight!

In short, it's definitely on the maybe list!

Wine Tasting Part One

Supper tonight was very uninspired, but while I was finishing it up, I decided to try one of the wines we purchased while we ate.  So I opened the bottle of baby champagne (a Canadian sparkling wine), and we each had a glass while we ate.

Years ago I bought a bottle of the same wine for my family to have with Christmas dinner.  I didn't drink at all at the time, and so I didn't try it.  My family all seemed to like it though, so I decided to put it on our list for consideration for our wedding.

We tried it, and I wrote our reactions down in *The Wedding Notebook*.

Amanda: "I like it." (enthusiastically)
Jake: "Good for wine." (I'm starting to think I'm really not much of a wine drinker)

So we've got one wine listed in *The Wedding Notebook* with our reactions.  Once we've got a few more listed, maybe we'll be able to make a decision.  ...or maybe we'll just say "Everyone drinks Canada Dry!  Wheeeeeeee!"

Wine Tasting

Amanda and I took this photo together yesterday while waiting to cross the road downtown.  A little while later, we stepped out of a store and saw a half-dozen people with cameras milling around.  I joked that they were members of the paparazzi following the famous Kissing Couple of Grande Prairie.

Today we spent some time in a liquor store.  I'm not much of a drinker, and neither is Amanda, but we're looking ahead to picking the wine for our wedding.  So we picked up two bottles that sounded interesting -- one Canadian, one American, and we'll be tasting them later on.  If we like one of them, we'll keep track and keep it in the "Maybe" list for the wedding.  If not, it'll be used as cooking wine.

The best part is that by starting now, we can spread out our tasting over quite a few months.  It'll be easier on both our bank accounts *and* our livers!