I must be getting older.
During the past week, there were at least three or four occasions where someone was clearly wrong on the internet, and I dutifully started carefully crafting that brilliant corrective response which would inevitably spiral downward into the fiery depths of idiocy.
However, each time I stopped mid-answer, long before clicking the post button or sending the email, and switched to some other more valuable and less pointless activity. It was a strange feeling, but the eerie sense of having saved a bunch of time made up for it generously.
(I have to admit that there was one occasion, call it the fifth, where I couldn’t help myself and briefly took part in a Facebook discussion around a photo of a young man with some rather extreme facial piercings. I felt that I really needed to correct the other participants: I might not have any of my own body modifications, but I feel strongly about encouraging self-expression, and I think that the variety that it brings is important. There are other things that unify us, like love, respect and intellect. Yes, I’m a Vulcan Hippie. LLAP you fools!)
On the topic of age and the inevitable mid-life crisis, it seems technology has brought us the cure. GIANT WATER-JET-POWERED HOVERBOARDS!!
After a week of not-correcting-the-internet (good), lots of Python (good) and much face-palming at the South African Reserve Bank’s archaic view on intellectual property and exchange control (hopefully much more on that later), my weekend was of the fabulous middle-of-the-Cape-winter variety.
It started with some of this on Friday:
On Saturday, a completely unplanned and somewhat impulsive turnoff from the R44 right before Stellenbosch brought us to the vineyard Dornier. Some of it looks like this:
Having arrived there, it doesn’t take much convincing to end up dining in restaurant Bodega, where the wine is very local (hey, it says Dornier on the bottles!) and is artfully paired with the delicious food. My lunch ended with these delectable cheeses, preserves and the Dornier Donatus White. I can’t remember the year, but it was a fabulous Chenin Blanc and Semillon blend which the DWR will hopefully soon be able to judge. I fortunately just managed to snap this picture in the midst of a gorgonzola-induced mini pleasure seizure:
(We spent the rest of the seemingly endless weekend scorching various types of meat, drinking craft beer and baking in the winter sun in Paarl. You can say many things about Paarl, but you can’t deny that it has a most excellent climate.)
Apparently, a few of this blog’s readers have been wondering what I really look like. (Well, actually no-one has. Ever. But they could have!) Clamour no more, small group of fictitious readers! This week, my youngest genetic offspring unit, or GOU#1 as we lovingly call her, brought me a drawing that she made. Internet, I give you me, through my daughter’s eyes:
