It’s a bad day. It’s been a few bad days. I’ve been wondering over what my next blog entry will be.

When I started wondering, I began to scan the bulletin boards and other blogs for ideas. Aside from tasting notes, I couldn’t come up with a new subject from the Web sites. Is it possible that everything has been said about wine?

I suppose one of the hardest parts of a teacher’s job is to keep the information sounding fresh and interesting after having repeated it over and over for years. I know I have that problem with the wine classes I teach. To help me seem fresh, even if the lessons aren’t, I move things around, add and subtract things, while keeping the core lesson.

I appreciate the feedback comments that I have been getting, but I suppose there haven’t been enough of them to keep any one subject alive for too long. Or maybe that’s the fault of the Internet…so much stuff in cyber world that our attention span is brief.

To add to my dilemma, I’m in the middle of writing my third book and it is consuming a great deal of brainpower and time. Not that the book is a tax on my brain, just that my brain is probably tiring from its years in service—time is always in short supply!

Anyway, here I am wondering if the Internet discussion of wine has run its course. I spent over an hour today scanning wine oriented Web sites and could not find an original subject among them. Seems we keep talking about the same issues, and the same bad information keeps on circulating, as well as the same good information—the operative word is “same.”

What’s new in wine? What questions need answering?

When I started this blog over a year ago, I thought it could go on for a long time; I thought there was so much needing to be addressed. Did I address them all? I doubt it. Maybe I was wrong.

Here’s one piece of news: in the last week of February and the first week of March, I will drink no wine. The last time I went long without wine was a medical situation that kept me from the nectar for two weeks. That was twenty years ago. Since that time, I don’t think more than two days have ever gone by without at least a half bottle of wine filling my soul.

This time, my lack of wine isn’t exactly medical, but close. I want to see if I can lose a few pounds by not drinking wine.

There was a time when I could not gain weight, with a metabolism that underlined frenetic energy, my weight was almost exactly the same for a straight 20 years, but then I turned 45 and along with my perfect eyesight went my frenetic metabolism!

Not that I’m overweight by much—ten or so pounds—but I can feel that excess, and I want it gone. I’ve tried all the usual suspects: increased exercise, reduced carbohydrates, and reduced calories from food. Reducing wine is all that I have left—how sad. How really sad if it works and I lose a few pounds. What will I do after that?

I’ll certainly not give up wine, but “something’s gotta give.” Suggestions? Do I stop cooking with oil?

Sorry for the lack of content in this entry. Maybe I need suggestions there, too.

Copyright, Thomas Pellechia
February 2008. All rights reserved.