A year of wine... not just bubbles.

Here are a few odds and ends for the first morning of the [secular] new year:

1.  I feel like I totally caved by feeling compelled to insert the word 'secular' in brackets (above).  However, I know from experience that if I didn't do it, some zealot would bend my ear about "this isn't our new year, it is 'hukat hagoyim', yadayadayada...".  Note to zealots:  Please get over yourselves.  Unless you write '5767' on your mortgage checks you have absolutely no reason to get your panties in a twist over a total stranger (me) mentioning the start of 2007.

2.  I woke up feeling a bit nostalgic this morning... not so much for those innocent days when I had to beg my parents to let me stay up to watch the ball drop on TV and have a sip of 'Cold Duck'.  OK, maybe there was a little bit of that too... but mostly I got nostalgic for those moon-bats who created a whole cottage industries around Y2K back in 1999.  Remember them?  Not the computer geeks who actually had something constructive to do to make sure all our software kept working when the big odometer turned over... but rather the self-appointed prophets who came out of the woodwork to run $eminar$ on how to survive in the howling wilderness that would be left after civilization as we knew it came to an end.  These clowns were literally omnipresent, telling us to build shelters and stock them with food and weapons... convert our savings to precious metals... buy electrical generators and enormous fuel tanks to run them.  One pundit even predicted that in the wake of Y2K Duct Tape would become the new currency!  Where are these idiots now?  What turned out to be the next big batch of snake oil they went on to sell?

3.  Zahava and I didn't manage to stay up 'til midnight last night (old fuddy-duddies' that we are), but before I drifted off I was surfing my regular reads and noted a little tidbit on 'Book of Joe' about how to make your Champagne more bubbly.  Helloooo, is this really a problem?  Is there really a chronic lack of bubbles in the typical glass of sparkling wine?  Now don't get me wrong, I'm a HUGE Joe-head and usually can't get enough of the stuff he posts, but this one just didn't speak to me.  For those too lazy to click over, the solution is to wipe down the inside of the glass with a cloth or paper towel before pouring the Champagne.  The microscopic hollow bits of cellulose left on the glass apparently "act as 'nucleation' (bubble formation) sites".  My personal take on this is that anyone who feels the need to coax excessive bubbles from their 'bubbly' probably considers it more of a prop than a beverage.   Missing the point, people... missing the point.  [shakes head]

To everyone out there who is reading this on the groggy morning of 01/01/07, Happy [secular] New Year!  Look outside and marvel at the fact that civilizations continues to purr along quite nicely, thankyouverymuch... and if there is anything effervescent left in the fridge after last night's bacchanalia, pour yourself a bit and raise your glass to a year filled with wine... not just bubbles.