Spit bucket, please.

After over a year of informally living with my girlfriend, our golden era of co-habitation came to a grinding halt yesterday, when I returned from California and she did not. Today has been strange. I forgot to take my keys in the morning, because I had normally left them for Claire (she and I both lacked the competence or will to find a locksmith capable of making a copy). I worked through lunch, because I wasn't going to be meeting Claire. And I'm still here at work (not working, of course), because I don't really have anything better to do. While I initially found this pathetic, it became less so after I took the time to consider all of the phases of my life that were palpably crappier than the life I live now. Then I felt better.

On a lighter note, I now understand why wineries offer spit buckets as a convenience to their visitors. In Napa, flights come in six ounce denominations. This did not seem like much booze to me. But after four wineries, I was ripped. To make matters worse, Claire and I had gone on a Monday and given the lack of traffic, we had to make one-on-one small talk with the people pouring my wine. This proved difficult at Calistoga, our fourth winery of the day, where I spent most of our visit sporting my concentration grimace--furrowed brow, grinding of teeth--in an attempt to understand the conversational interplay between Claire and winery man.