Now we're cooking with wine

I've had exactly two glasses of wine since returning from South America. I had them both on the same night and I'm not sure I didn't have them largely to hide the fact the girl I shared that bottle of wine with was much too classy to be sharing a bottle of wine with me.

I never really tried wine until South America and I've been slow to embrace it since returning to the States. However, last night a friend invited me over for dinner but asked if I first wanted to go shopping. I said yes, since my car is in the shop and shopping was on my to-do list and I had been wondering how that was going to happen while I have no car.

I came across the wine section as I walked though WinCo and decided to select a bottle for dinner. I know virtually nothing about wine and picked a bottle based mostly on the label. When I tried to open the bottle later that night, I broke the Swiss Army Knife corkscrew in the cork. Attempts to open the bottle with two different size knifes and to borrow one from neighbors went unsuccessful, so I bought the bottle home with me when I left last night.

I put the bottle in my fridge and fought the urge to open it since I didn't want to open it to drink it at that point, I just wanted it open to avoid having to accept defeat at the hands of a bottle of wine.

While I was online earlier today, I saw Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland was scheduled to give the keynote address at a symposium tonight. I thought it would be cool to go and listen to the first female and youngest ever former prime minister of Norway speak on health issues. Brundtland used to be the head of the World Health Origination.

I headed home from campus with the intention of doing some homework, fix something easy for dinner and head back to the campus for the 7 p.m. event. About ten minutes into reading, I began to think about the bottle of wine in the fridge and decided I was going to open it and cook a real dinner.

I used my roommate's corkscrew and after some twisting, pulling and one really good yank, I was able to finally free the cork from the bottle. I already had chicken cooking on the stove by this time and had started to wonder what I was going to do with an entire bottle of wine by myself when I saw the bottle sitting on the counter to my left and the chicken cooking to my right and had an idea. I poured a good amount of wine into the pan and cooked the chicken submersed in wine.

I was still trying to figure out rather or not I actually liked the wine, then I realized, I was enjoying the way it was making me feel. Wine buzzes are the best. I think it's because you have to sip wine, so you get to make an extended stop in buzz land, as opposed to drinking beer or hard alcohol fast and going from sober to drunk in the amount of time it takes to get bored watching "As the World Turns." (It's a favorite of my roommate.)

I continued sipping on wine and dinner came out fantastic. I was pretty buzzed by the time I got around to eating and enjoyed the entire experiment/experience. I'm going to have to learn more about wine and how to cook with it.

I glanced down at my watch and saw it was 6:57 when I was finished eating. I thought I could still make the lecture, since I figured if the event started at 7, there would be at least 10-15 minutes of introductions before anyone says anything of any value. I knew this would be the case from watching Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts, Jr., get introduced when he spoke on campus a few weeks ago.

I'm not sure why a man with the words "Chief" and "Supreme" in his title needs a 10-15 minute introduction. If you tell people you're the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, people can pretty much gather for themselves you rock. And no one needs to know what you did before you were a Supreme Court Justice because once you're a Supreme Court Justice, nothing else you did before that or will do after (if you don't die on the bench) really matters. Unless of course, like one former Chief Justice, you happen to be the president before becoming Chief Justice. Then it's OK to tell people that. You can pretty much tell anyone you meet the rest of your life you used to be the president of the United State, if in fact you did used to be the president.

Anyways, I made my way to the school and as I walked into the room the symposium was being held, I heard Idaho's interim president say, "And it's my pleasure to introduce..." and I thought, man, I timed that just right and found a seat, where I sat for another five minutes before he actually sat down and she took her spot behind the podium.

As I sat there listening to her talk, I realized I really wasn't learning anything that new. She spoke largely on how virus and diseases affect poor and rich people alike and on how they affect poorer countries, something I already knew because I used to date a biology major that made sure I knew such things.

Still buzzed, I sent a few text messages and caught myself spacing out a few seconds at a time (but not too long, it's not very often you get to listen to a former head of state speak, though I did sit in the same spot and listend to the first female president of Ireland talk in 2007, Chief Justice Roberts lectured there three weeks ago and I saw the Bill Clinton of politics before Bill Clinton was Bill Clinton, Gary Hart talk in the same room --gotta love the University of Idaho) and realized how great it felt to be sitting in the audience as an audience member listening to a speech without worrying about getting quotes, taking notes or having to write a story afterwards.