Dear Feastlings,
Sometimes, you’ll note, I dash these off. They’re riddled with typos and non sequiturs, they prattle on and then end abruptly. Maybe I’ll relate a story about a guy yelling at me in the parking lot because we hand out masks at the door, or maybe they’ll mention a server to whom it doesn’t occur, after serving a gluten-laden meal to a guest who can’t have gluten, to offer her something else.
As often as I find myself feeling like I’m stepping over the line that separates propriety from whiny lamentation, I’m aware that there’s a line there, and that I frequently get so wrapped up in my own daily difficulties that I don’t step over that line so much as I sprint past it. So accept my apologies, please. I thought about writing this note on Thursday, the day you’ll get it, but I knew last night (tonight, actually, as I write this on Wednesday) that I’d just end up mired in wine rep appointments, and though I’d start writing before they arrived, I’d end up interrupted, first by someone asking me to look up a payroll question or an order that came in incorrectly, and then by one wine rep after another, and despite my attempts to finish up between appointments, this email would go out at 6 pm, after the staff had fielded numerous phone calls about the wine tastings, be it the Saturday tasting
or the Last Sunday tasting (sorry, it’s all-virtual again)
or the next donation run,
all items that would have been discussed and answered in this email had I only written it the night before.
Whether it’s more intelligible at the tail end of an eleven-hour day, or midway through a haze of interruptions and tasting and spitting quarts of wine is a judgement you’ll have to make for yourself- compare today’s email with the email from any given Thursday in the past three months.
The big difference, I’m noticing, is that the end of the day makes me soft-pedal the self-absorbed flaming freakout a bit more, and the midday frantic attempt to squeeze out an email between emergencies and tastes is more like pedaling faster, even on a downhill, with no brakes. We’ll see, I suppose, whether one is preferable to the other. I feel confident that more than one of you will write to tell me which is better, which is fine. I like the emails- I can read them when I have the time, reply when I have even more, and people are more honest with me when they have the comfort of anonymity, or at least the arm’s length offered by an email.
Now, to pedal myself off to slumber so I can get up, finish the tasting sheets, post the tastings and send you this mess. Goodnight.
Love,
Doug