Drink the Good Wine

I made the drive from LR to Houston on Sunday night, one of the last of these drives. I'm cleaning out my office this week, saying goodbye to some folks, and sort of wrapping up my time here. It's really sad in many ways, even though I'm looking forward to the summer with the kiddos. I've been at the firm for over seven years now, long enough to go from being childless to having two kiddos in school. I sincerely loved this job, and the folks I worked with. It's hard to say goodbye, even though I know it's the right decision.

Anyway, in the frantic hour or so before I left the house Sunday afternoon, I downloaded a couple of podcasts to listen to on the trip. On of them was a short running "Intervals" podcast entitled "Drink the Good Wine." The gist of it, of course, was to encourage the listener to not wait for the fabled special occasion to open a good bottle of wine. Instead, let the good wine help make the occasion special. Live life while you can, make regular occasions special when you can. I love this idea, and it reminded me of our pizza party recently.

On Memorial Day, we had about 20 people at our house for homemade pizzas. There's a connection to wine here, I promise, just stick with me. It was a terrific day, even though I woke up at 5:30 that morning and couldn't go back to sleep for thinking about all the stuff I needed to do. We make our pizzas from scratch: dough, pizza sauce, toppings, pretty much all of it. And I thoroughly enjoy making them, even though it wears my ass out.

In all, I made 8 pizzas that Monday: A Greek pizza, a Brisket pizza (J's brainstorm), a Margarita, a tropical (pineapple, Canadian bacon, shrimp), 2 kiddo friendly pizzas, and two supreme style pizzas. We made the pizzas around lunchtime, with a cooler of beer and some wine to ease the conversation. There were family members, friends that might as well be family, friends who are still getting comfortable with our craziness, and I'm not sure how many kiddos running around our house. I think it's safe to say that it was one of our better gatherings.

When the last of the pizzas came out of the oven, I grabbed a few slices and looked around to refill my wine. Ugh. Out of white wine. Pizza party fail. Unwilling to switch to beer or red wine, I wandered back to the wine fridge to see if I'd overlooked a bottle. Nope. No regular white...but there was a good bottle of sparkling that I'd bought a while back. You know - for special occasions. 

Hmmmm...wonder if anyone else would be interested...

For some reason, it seemed like that bottle was the fitting end to a fantastic gathering. Most people took a little, even though champagne at 3pm after homemade pizza is a bit out of the ordinary. It reminded me how much I enjoy the luxury of planning these gatherings, cooking good food, and watching people enjoy themselves. It is such a wonderful expansion and enrichment to my life.

And really, how lucky am I to have such a wonderful group of people in my life? What better time to break out a good bottle of champagne? The occasion wasn't fancy for any particular reason, just good family and friends getting together. But really, what occasion is more special than that?