"rudolph" the red-faced trainer

I'm feeling a little bit like Rudolph at the beginning of the song.  No one likes being excluded from "reindeer games," but when you're talking about work relationships, that silent, withheld "why?" is ever-present on the mind.  It's all good - just one more kick in the behind to get me moving [again] on what feels like a continual search for a job closer to home.

But you don't want to read about my [continual] work frustrations.  You want to read about happy things, like our delicious and easy-to-make Pasta with Beans and Chard from Vegan Express.

Ain't it pretty?  It's super tasty, too, and not nearly as salty as I am right now.  Rather, it has a sweet taste from the combination of tomatoes and cranberries (which I sub for the raisins Mister hates).  It was a good dinner for slurping while sharing my tales of woe with Mister.  Now that I've given up (at least temporarily) on trying to understand the twisted minds of my colleagues and the disconnect from reality of just about everyone else on the second floor of my office building, I can focus on fun stories like this:

A few days ago, I was unloading the dishwasher (by the way, I love my dishwasher).  Even though I knew I shouldn't, even though I know wineglasses are delicate, I was tugging on one to try to dislodge it from the top rack where I had apparently placed it between the wall and a hard place.  To no one's great surprise, the wineglass finally yielded to my tugs and broke free of the rack...quite literally.

After I located the few shards of glass that fell down onto the door of the appliance, I carefully disposed of them and placed the chunk-missing wineglass upside down in the recycling bag.  I didn't really mourn the wineglass's loss, since it was one of a set of six and the other six are still dusty from the move.  That set of 6 5 is just one of several sets of wineglasses of varying heights, depths, shapes, and colors.  Nevertheless, I was touched to come home after a craptastic day at work to find that Mister had gone out today and bought me a new wineglass - the prettiest one in the store, he said.

As luck would have it, astonishingly stupid days at work normally result in an inadvertent detour through the wine store on my way home from work, so I just happened to have a bottle of Cupcake Red Velvet wine (on sale, which is important a couple of days before the paycheck and right after a person pays their rent...).  The glass is a little smaller and therefore holds a little less wine.

That's probably a good thing.  The wine itself is a blend of merlot, zinfandel, petite syrah, and cabernet, which comes off with the vaguest sparkle.  Though the wine is most definitely dark, owed primarily to the blend starting with 47% zin, it has an obvious light berry taste and kind of resembles a chianti, both in flavor and mouthfeel.  Before I take all the fun out of this wine by over-analyzing it, I would like to point out that though I think it would be awesome to be a sommelier, I really just like to rave about drinkable wines.  This is not gourmet nor impressive by any stretch of the imagination, and I would serve it more for the novelty of its name than for any desire to share an incredible vintage with treasured guests.  I have a decent stock of those wines already in my head - this one's just for fun.