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Wednesday, October 1, 2008

CORRECTION from yesterday's post: the Indiana Jones Lego keychain actually cost five dollars instead of the reported "one". Mrs. Ditchman purchased it as a gift for me. Rip off? No.

The corks are rolling in!


Kind thanks to the generous Weaver family for sending their used corks. Wonderful! And I was so pleased to see the corks were carefully packaged with those airbag fillers, so as to prevent damage in transport. (Of course, you could have just packed the corks in... well... more corks.) The Weavers drink good stuff, too: Windward, Justin, Monticelli, and a few I couldn't even pronounce so it must have been full-bodied, wallet-shrinking stuff. One champagne cork had a date on it: August 24, 2006, which I suspect was drank in celebration of the arrival of the Little Weaver. If you send only one cork, put a date on it. I'll glue it up prominently and then when you come over to gawk proudly, you can explain what the date is. (It doesn't have to be the date you drank the bottle, I guess. Just make it up! Who cares!)

I'm going to wait to glue these latest entries on until after everyone sends them in, that way I only have to take the thing off the wall and heft it down to the garage once. Sure, it's mostly made of cork, but it's also made of plywood and steel and granite -no, really. It's a heavy mutha.

And seriously, no screw tops. Yes, I understand that they are becoming more widely respected within the industry and that there are hundred-dollar bottles out there with screw-tops and that anywhere from 3 to 15 percent of the wine is ruined by bad corks, but hey: it's jacking up my corkboard project. If you can find a nifty craft made of screwtops that's worth hanging in my Great Hall of Wine Souvenirs, let's hear about it. I've already made a huge concession by allowing those modern, culture-less plastic corks to go up on the board, and that's where I draw the line.

I've been trying to drink more wine, and it is my preference to do so, but the best beer is still cheaper than the worst wine, so that's why this is turning out to be a ten-year event. I love beer, of course, but a wall of bottle caps just won't fly with Mrs. Ditchman. Anyway, we're considering having a Christmas party this year. You can come over and admire it then. A wall of beer bottle caps you can go and admire in any local college dorm.

Off to work. The dashboard widget claims 87 degrees today, so I just add ten and brace for the heat. I always have to add ten. I picture a Hawaiian-shirted data entry guy for the Mac thermometer widget sipping iced tea in an air conditioned office leaning over to check the gauge. Dude: you also need a new prescription on your glasses.


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