Today was a long day and powered by too little food, so it’s no surprise that I got a little hungry.

Tonight’s scrumptious meal started with day old garlic bread, followed by a main course of Rice Chex drenched in Lamers Dairy 2% milk and accompanied by a delightful glass of [ yellow tail ] Shiraz.

Do not get me wrong. I’m not a drunkard. I don’t make up reasons to justify a drink regardless of how flimsy they might be. In fact, for reasons I won’t get into at the moment I generally avoid alcohol. I have discovered – perhaps with the exception of cheap wine (ew) – that it’s nearly impossible to drink wine quickly.

What really happened was this:

I had a couple of things to show Michelle on the computer for her new business venture. Before we started I poured a couple of glasses for us to enjoy, as long as we were going to be up for a little while longer. After I got her started on the computer I went upstairs to ready myself for bed and to check my email.

I took a sip of wine. The flavor of the wine rolling around my tongue was really quite enjoyable, but suddenly something caught my eye. What’s this, I thought. One of my servers is down? A couple of taps on the keyboard confirmed it. (sigh…) Well, maybe Richard is still at work, and maybe he has access to the computer room. You see, Richard is visiting us from another office, and he came in late today, so I figured that he may still be there. I took another sip of wine.

While I was trying to decide what to do next, Richard emailed me back. He’ll try the door, he said. And a few minutes later came the negative response. I really don’t want to go in to work at 11:30 p.m., I thought. Alas, it was not to be; I noticed an error on the other server – the primary that this crashed server plays backup to – that can’t be fixed without bringing down the program that’s spewing out errors at the rate of 5-15 per second. Gah. I have to go in. Gah.

I got dressed again, kissed Michelle good night, and started collecting the necessary bits to get me to work and into the computer room. Since I was going, and since Max (our beautiful Himalayan cat) has been itching to get outside, I got his collar and harness and we set off on our grand adventure. First a trip to the gas station since I had not expected to have to take an extra trip to work, and the ol’ gas gauge was hovering dangerously low. Then, I sat for nearly 10 minutes before deciding that the sensors were completely scrooged at the traffic light near the station. What a waste of time. I backed up, turned right (thank goodness for right-on-red!), went a block in the wrong direction and turned back around. Finally, I was off to work.

It didn’t take too long once I arrived; I was only there about 30 minutes, maybe a hair longer. Of course there was no indication of what went wrong. All I can say is that this is the first time in a long time that I have seen a machine wedge so hard that absolutely nothing but the power switch or reset switch could bring it out of its reverie. I have a distinct feeling that it could be related to the fact that this is a relatively old dual-processor system with some crude multiprocessing support hardware.

But enough of the geek stuff. After all, this is not in that category. By the time we arrived home it was well past 1:30 a.m. and chef boy-ar-dee, was I ever hungry. I needed food, I needed it fast, and I needed it cold. The first thing I spotted was the aforementioned garlic bread. Mmmmm, hard garlic bread, munch munch. Scanning the pantry yielded plenty of things I ought not eat after 8 p.m., but hey, cold cereal is relatively healthy, and Rice Chex in particular isn’t loaded up with sugar, so hey, why not? And then, while I was eating, it occurred to me that I still had my glass of wine in the refrigerator. The absurdity of the thought struck me so much that I had to write it down.

And, here I sit, writing these last few words as I polish off the last of my glass of [yellow tail] Shiraz.

Let me ask you something: Do you ever feel like you’re from another planet?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

For more on wine – tasting, history, tidbits and other fun stuff – check out Tim Elliot’s Winecast, currently at 23 shows and counting. You can hear more about the type of wine I had tonight on Winecast 20 – Syrah.