Normally the weekend after Thanksgiving would give shivers to me.  For ages in the retailing industry, it meant extended hours.  It also meant that I would have to find time to schlep some thirty cartons that are stacked and stored in a makeshift closet in the basement that is two bookcases wide and two bookcases deep, and for years I tried to rebox the decorations and indicate that they hadn’t been used and hopefully for my knees and back, that the number of cartons could conceivably diminish even by one carton.  The reason for the urgency, is that the first Friday in December has become the Annual Ladies’ Christmas Party, that has been staged, long before I arrived on the scene. 

This year, actually a couple of months ago, after twenty-seven years, my Bride wanted new flooring in the living room and dining room.  We had heard rumors from the neighbors that the original owners who had built the house had a small fire caused in the basement from an incinerator, when back when people could legally burn stuff, so we had refrained from a fear of the unknown.  Why a fear?  We knew from the library that we probably had beautiful natural hardwood flooring in the living room, but the dining room would have been directly over where the incinerator was.  My Bride found a wonderful bamboo flooring that she wanted, now you have heard horror stories about no merchandise, we had the flooring delivered almost immediately.  Our horror story was that due to a lack of workers, even in the building trades, we had to wait almost three months for the installation and it was after Thanksgiving.  I proceeded to pack everything in those two rooms, and we figured out how to move the existing furniture elsewhere in the house.  Our paint scheme was three shades of gray, two opposite ends of the spectrum of gray and what was called in the clothing industry as griege (the natural tone of wool and the stock market used to quote griege goods and they may still do); as the bamboo was a streaked multi-shade of gray and taupe. I have to admit that I can still paint, even though the ceiling in the living room seemed to get larger as the day progressed.  After all the painting we had to get the furniture back for Thanksgiving and then moved the furniture back out for the new floor installation.  We also discovered that we had the most beautiful and almost pristine natural hardwood flooring that we were now covering up with another hardwood flooring.  Who knew?

In case you were wondering, to celebrate the new completed flooring, we a dinner of Pork Tenderloin and a bottle of Acrobat Pinot Gris Oregon 2019.  Acrobat wines are made by King Estate Winery, and back in October 2016, there Pinot Gris was listed as one of the “Top 100 Best Buy” by Wine Enthusiast.  The winery sources fruit from all three main AVAs in Oregon; Willamette Valley, Umpqua Valley and Rogue Valley.  The wine is aged Sur Lie for four months in Stainless Steel.  The wine was a nice soft straw color and offered floral notes, and flavors of Fuji apples and pears, with balance acidity and a finish of fruit and minerality.  Just for the record Pinot Gris happens to be more famous as the Italian Pinot Grigio, and both Gris and Grigio translate in English to Gray.