reload . . .

the fire is going again.  they delivered a truck load yesterday.  oak and a few pine logs for fat wood.  that was so sweet of him.  he had no way of knowing that living in florida, i import my fat wood from l l bean.  yup, i have yuppie fat wood.  there's a little alligator on each piece.

and i switched up the wine for a rum and coke.  sometimes you just have to go with the flow.  my other favorite is scotch on the rocks.  did i ever tell you about my forty year plus abstention from scotch?  it was the thing that filled the flasks that fit in the back pocket of high school boys and college men.  serendipitously sipped in the movies or openly glugged at house parties . . .   we wrote odes to cutty sark and black and white.  modified guzzlers were we.  in my junior year, i was headed to a weekend ski party in the catskills and my forever 50's loving father supplied me with a bottle of scotch for the duration.  i know, i know, what was he thinking but then again, it was 1969, i think  he thought giving his daughter a bottle was the lesser of two evils.

we arrived at my date's friend's 'cabin' in the woods.  twenty bed rooms, we counted.  a fireplace big enough to walk into.  hand laid parquet floors, maids quarters, butler's pantries, dumb waiters.  who'd a thunk the unassuming owners son was a swell.

out popped the scotch and a liquor store other bottles, and sometime after numerous runs down the private toboggan run, we sat in front of the fire happily imbibing and imbibing and imbibing.  nowadays, i think it's called alcohol poisoning, to us it was a next morning death wish.  forty hung over college idiots worshipping the porcelain goddess and laying on cold tile floors.  the dead men were tossed in trash bags and hauled off property in lieu of his parents impending arrival that monday.

it was so bad, just a whiff of scotch and my stomach would clench.  i avoided it like the plague.  then suddenly, after the passing of my father, i found myself bequeathed with a bottle of chivas regal.  i let it be and the dust collected.  one dark and stormy night, it was all that was left in my meager cabinet.          oh the glory of scotch over ever so slightly melted rocks.  heaven on earth. the game was on.

of course then there are bloody mary's and miller lite but that is the extent of my usual consumption.  we won't talk about amounts.

wishing you all a warm and toasty eve.