Where am I? Over here!

For all two of you who might be reading this who would get that joke, good on you.

But seriously, I have no clue where my updates leave off. I mean for serious. What the hell, damn guy.

Okay, it's looking like you've seen the apple pie and Annecy, but not much since then.

Good Lord am I vaguely tired. Not like to the point of "MY EYES ARE FALLING! MY EYES ARE FALLING!" and it turns out to be the table of contents (yeah obscure American humor- such a children's book hipster this guy. Who does he think he is? King of the trees?) and certainly not to the point of "Oh, look at those lovely red worms filling up the board next to Dr. McKeever" (true story. Another true story from that class- I feel asleep in an exam review session while he was answering a question that I asked. This took place during a semester when (GOOD GOD IS BEETHOVEN'S 9TH ROCKING RIGHT NOW) I was doing about 15 med school applications and secondaries and oh by the way taking 5 classes. This resulted in a lot of all-nighters and lots of falling asleep in classes but valiantly struggling not to do so and trying to keep it discreet, but there is NO way you can do that subtly.)

(Yeah long parentheticals.)

Also there should be a period somewhere up there. Here's another for good measure.

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Now that we've got our punctuation nice and balanced and have left the grammarians thoroughly fainting in shock, let's figure out what I'ma talk about. TO THE PICASA WEBS.

Oh yeah- I have a photo thingy there (technical term, that). Here's a link: http://picasaweb.google.com/rbcameron3

But yes. Let's talk about December in Paris I guess? Pretty pictures there, and a decent start to this, as is the music, as we've now got some "Black Dog" by Zepplin. I totally just went back and added in quotation marks to appease the many English majors who read this. Didn't stop me earlier, but hey, hooray for inconsistencies.

Actually change of subject. We're not doing December yet. That can go in the next one, as there will hopefully be several, including a regalia or two this evening. I know I've got something in terms of Oh Bev, but I can't think of specific examples, which shames me deeply.

No, dear readers (oh God totally watching that tonight), we're watching (actually oh snap, I'm going to watch that between blog posts. It will totally free up my writing style, because it's not like I'm playing fast and loose with grammar rules and the things that I vaguely reference and now we're on Cocaine by Clapton, who I find sorta meh, but he's supposed to be groovy I guess?), no, not watching, rather talking about something more fun and deadly.

We're going to talk about the Wine Expo.

That's right- Wine Expo. Technically it's Le Salon des vins des Vignerons Indépendants, but we'll call it the Wine Expo.

So here's what goes on: You pay 3 Euros (if you're a student- you can usually find a deal to get a ticket for cheaper anyway). They give you a glass.

They set you loose on an unsuspecting populace of vineyards.

Really, it's for these smaller vineyards to get their product out to restaurants and collectors, but it's basically "If you like wine, come here and taste as much as you want and get a snazzy glass for a low, low price." You can of course buy bottles as well, but I was like, "Hey, this is good, but is it worth paying about 5x more than I could pay for a cheap AOC wine at LIDL? No, I need to save money rather than take advantage of this opportunity to actually get really good wine for pretty cheap."

You can't see this part of the post yet, but you'll know it when you see it.
And to that I say, See?

Anyway, I went over two days with Stephen and one of his friends who's assistanting in Corsica (as well as a bunch of others who are around because some reason, and yes, the "because some reason" was intentional because I wanted to avoid profanity on that point, but it was tempting nonetheless. The things I do for you crazy kids...). See? Here's Stephen and Corsica Johnny. Corsica Johnny... took a while to leave the first night. It was a bit frustrating for all involved, as it was cold outside, and I had a long train ride home. Oh, and music- just got through Celeste Aida being sung by some bro Jon Vickers. But yes, it was a great time- there were all sorts of wines (a sommelier friend- is Richard a sommelier yet? Help me out Fijis who read this...- was floored by the size of the (EFF Just started like 3 conversations and am getting a bit overwhelmed- also, music, went through Wake Up by Rage Against the Machine (screw quotation marks, too many people) and am now on the Money Song from Avenue Q) exposition. It was like a 63 page long pdf of the vineyards there. And lots of people.



Taking a break to nom. Stephen proves his sobriety.

 So yeah, we basically went and drank (and spat- déguster, c'est recracher after all) for most of the time. But we also brought food with us (bread, yogurt, fruit, and a Twix in my case) to nom in the interim and avoid nastiness.

Also EFF MUSIC. Um, Wolf or whatever by Metallica and now Letter Duet from Figaro by some ladies, and you can marvel on who they might be. And now I'm Not Wearing Underwear Today from Avenue Q. And now another will start, and it's Welcome to the Jungle by GnR.

As for the wine, it was really good for the most part. They kinda blend together after a while no matter how hard you try. Mainly, we'd just go to a booth and try their driest white and go down the list from there, but then you run into personal preferences, and after a few hours, your palette gets pretty screwed up. There was one great wine that I remember- Symphonie I believe was the name. It was actually a really apt name for the wine. A sweet but not cloyingly so white wine (and when I get to the parts where I actually SHOULD use parentheses, I don't. Way to go, Rob.), and I couldn't find the booth after that first day where I tried it. Ah well. And now we're on "This Is Who You Are" from Beethoven's Last Night by Trans Siberian Orchestra, accompanied by Bev and Bev Jr having the whispered arguments that you get at night when they think I might be asleep. Oh, scratch the whispering part. Le sigh.

Let's temper that story with an unrelated picture of the crowd.

But yeah, it was a good time, aside from one booth. (See? An attempt at linearity!). That one booth was one where we all kinda sidled up, and Stephen and I hung back for a second. Everyone else gets a tasting of a red. Stephen and I come up and ask for what she'd recommend. She proceeds to rant at us (us being Stephen and me) about how it's not just about tasting and how it's (OH GOD IT'S TANK BY THE SEATBELTS OM NOM NOM) about the vineyards selling their wine to people, and we shouldn't be wasting her time. This was directed uniquely at Stephen and me, and if there was at any point a chance that we would have bought wine from her, she certainly screwed it over.

But after that, there was more wine to be had, and it was groovy. Got myself a wonderful ham and cheese sammich- the food there was pricey of course, but it was really good. There were also people selling wine cellar materials and such. But you know, I honestly didn't take enough pictures of the place, and it was really basically just us going around and tasting wines for hours on end. Lots of fun, but doesn't make for riveting blogging.

So I'll leave you with a picture to give you an idea of the size of this place.

That's a view from the corner of an empty convention center warehouse. Now imagine that packed with tables of vineyards. Awesome.