James Bond: “How about a cigarette?” Donald “Red” Grant: “Not a chance.” James Bond: “I’ll pay for it.” Donald “Red” Grant: “What with?” James Bond: “Fifty gold sovereigns.”

That little bit of dialogue always comes into my head, when I think of how the powers that be operate.  I had an uncle that served with the Merchant Marines in World War II, and when the Korean War began, he was drafted, because Merchant Marine service did not count as service to the country, it may have changed now.  So, there was my uncle going through boot camp with grunts that were probably ten years younger than himself, and even worse, he ended up at the front lines in Korea.  I remember how he used to always tell me about one part of his military experience, in that he might be on the front lines and receive his cold K-rations for weeks at a time, he always said that his cigarette rations and his beer rations were always available.  He was the first individual that I ever met that always complained that the government wanted their soldiers drunk and full of nicotine.  He said that soldiers that didn’t smoke, started smoking, because they felt that they were being cheated.  He survived the war, but he always had a disdain for the way he was treated, and he really couldn’t complain, because he was actually older than most of the command at the line.  I bring all of this up, because for some odd reason tobacco, alcohol and lottery tickets are essential, the stores may not have toilet paper or sanitizers, the state makes sure that they can still gouge the citizens for the big-ticket taxable items, because we certainly are not driving anywhere.

We are eating a lot of leftovers, but by design, which is a good thing.  We make enough food for a dinner, so that there will be enough for a second day or sometimes a third, or it may make an appearance at lunch or even breakfast.  Now it might be my imagination, but bananas seem to have the shortest life span that I have ever seen.  They must be spraying them with green dye, because it seems that the very next day, they are becoming ripe and then over ripe faster than two people can eat them.  My Bride has discovered a recipe that makes “banana pancakes” using baking soda and eggs and not flour, she said that they are very difficult at first to flip them, but once she got the hang of it, it is good, and we are not throwing away bananas every week.  Another good thing is that we are eating together a lot more, before confinement, we were both on the go, so the only time we actually ate together was at a restaurant, and hopefully everyone still remembers what restaurants are.  The only thing I know for a fact, is that the price of groceries have escalated, because I hear about it each time she returns and I hope that we are invested in grocery chains, as I did not want any investments in fast-food chains, and my broker looked at me like I was crazy, but I don’t care. 

All of this rambling is because, I had really hoped that there was no way that I wanted to contribute to high taxable items during confinement, because I figured that we have enough wine to last a long time, just like all of the food in the freezers.  And then it happened, my Bride was all excited when she called me on the way home from getting some groceries.  She told me that she had bought the wine that we had at the bar at the 1852 Grill Room in the Island House on Mackinac Island last year.  She didn’t remember the name of the wine per se, but she remembered the unique bottle that they used, and to be truthful, I was surprised that the Common Market would allow such a distinctive bottle as they are trying to homogenize the wine industry, or so it seems.  This particular winery uses a bottle that is more a cylinder, instead of the traditional wine bottle.  When we were at the bar waiting for our table, my Bride had a Negroni and I had requested a Moscato and was served a Voga Moscato IGP from the Pavia region of Italy and my Bride really liked the taste of it.  We were actually up on the island, because my Bride had a business meeting there and I tagged along.  While we were there, Ms. Yoga called the restaurant and bought us dessert, so I had a Hummer, a famed Summer Cocktail that was created in Detroit eons ago, and a fond memory of Ms. Yoga from another time.  I got to thinking about the wine some more, because she had bought four bottles of Voga Pinot Grigio Delle Venezie DOC 2019, and the funny thing is that they had this wine two years ago at an Italian restaurant, and I ended up going with a red wine that night.  This is just a very easy to drink wine that is unfussy and matured in Stainless Steel and during these days of lockdown we have availed ourselves of this wine with a myriad of different dishes and it has been good.  So even with all our wine, we still stayed current and added some money to the state coffers for a sin tax, as we used to call it.