Too cheap for wine

Every once in a while -- maybe once a year -- I get a hankering for red wine. Cheap red wine, just half a glass. Maybe my hankering is the result of having red wine at Communion; dunno.

One of the shops on the ground floor of the Mayfair Plaza (where we're staying) is a bottle shop; there's also three different Asian restaurants, two of which we've been alternating between for dinner. Went on down to the bottle shop, looking for a small (beer bottle-sized) bottle of fine, for maybe AU$6 (US$4.50). Unfortunately, the lady behind the counter said they didn't have any small bottles of wine. I looked around their shelves, but all the red wines were around AU$14 or up. Found their discount shelf: All were AU$10. Bah.

Since I had decided that this would be coming out of my ''spending money'', I just couldn't bring myself to spend ten bucks on a big huge bottle, of which I would only drink an eighth(?) (The Lady doesn't drink alcohol **at all**, whereas I'll have a quarter of a beer, now and again.) If it had been eight bucks, then maybe.... But ten bucks? Nah.

And I guess that's part of why I don't smoke: I'm just too darned cheap.


A note on my non-drinking of alcohol: I used to be anti-drinking; now I just figure it's not for me, but don't hold it against other people. Two reasons: (1) It's mildly bad for you; (2) I don't like the effects of alcohol. Similar to what Howard S. Becker discussed in his article ''On Becoming a Marihuana User" (for those who've had a Sociology of Deviance or Intro to Criminology class), I've just never learned to define the sensation of alcohol as pleasureable. Slight flush to the face, slight dulling of mental alertness -- those are the symptoms of a head cold, not an enjoyable state! I'd rather keep my edge, thank you. And my inhibitions are sufficiently lowered as is.

At least, that's how it works for me. YMMV.


--GG