The wine tasting on Saturday started early, and I had a mild stomach ache and head ache but those went away after we got started. I'd been tasting once with Eric and Dave in California, and that was pretty similar except this time we had a bus and everything was much more organized. People liked some wines and there were a few wines that people complained were too sweet, and one that Lem and Sarah said smelled like manure. I can taste the differences in the wines, but none of them really appeal to me and it's probably irrelevant whether one is slightly less bad tasting than another.

We went to 3 wineries, and I think Rachel's blog post describes each one better than I could. I'll just add some random things.

At the second winery Lem wanted to get the one cute worker girl to do our tasting, so while everyone else in the group was still finishing lunch he randomly was like "let's go!" because a free spot had opened in front of her. So he and I ditched the rest of the group and started our tasting early. I think I saw Julie give us a "what are you doing" look.

Lem flirted with the girl but it didn't really go anywhere. I think this was about an hour before, at the next winery, Lem was making fun of another guy named Chris for him being asexual, and Julie responded by calling Lem a "man-whore," and Lem protested that he's a changed man and his whoring days are over.

There were some heavy criticisms of our bus driver's soul patch. Our driver had both heavily styled, spikey hair and the soul patch, which is a tough combination to pull off if you're not a part of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

There was a lot of making fun of me because I don't eat fresh fruit. I don't really see the big deal, plenty of people don't eat fruit. Do they even have fruit in Africa? And that's huge continent! And I eat fruit it my strawberry icecream or milkshakes, or if it comes in my pancakes or something. I'm really very normal. I just don't pick stuff off trees or wander around in the produce section.

There was a pregnant wine taster at one of the wineries. It got some whispers from within our group, but I'm not a doctor so I have no opinion. Maybe she just wanted to hang out (like I did), maybe she was tasting and spitting, maybe she was European.

And I think I accidentally mooched sangria at the third winery without chipping in for the cost. Sorry.

After the wine tasting we went swimming at Rachel's building. Well, everyone else went swimming but I just dangled my legs in. I didn't have a swimming suit and, call me old fashioned, but I didn't want to borrow Peter's. It was still fun just dangling my legs and hanging out. Leslie had a great story about a girl fight she once saw at this same pool over the use of a pool chair (does a towel reserve a pool chair when the towel owner leaves the pool vicinity? The lifeguard had to hear both sides and issue a ruling). And Sarah talked to me while she did ballet and leg stretches in the water. Her ballet makes the memory seem kinda surreal, almost like a scene out of a movie.

(a user comment on the news article about Joe Biden saying that he wouldn't characterize the tea party as racist)
It's not a racist organization... Just 97% its members are white. They don't have any friends or partners of color. They don't socialize with people of color. They don't like seeing a black family in the white house. They think the AZ law is cool and just. They think all people of color get a free ride. They don't think the term "lynching" has any racial overtones, nor do they think the confederate flag means anything racial.