Forget Burgundy

This might as well be me.

I may be the most financially reckless person I know. Or the most fiscally irresponsible. Regardless of how you want to say it, I am bad with money. Chalk it up to that second X gene, enabling parents, a lack of discipline, a loose character, youthful naiveté  – whatever.

I blame the economy, the recession, the City of New York and any other factor at play that abdicates me from assuming any and all responsibility for bad financial habits.

I was so thrifty last week I only spent $50 to feed myself from Sunday dinner through Friday dinner (with the exception of a quick jaunt to Momofuku Noodle on Thursday Night). That is 5 light breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 5 dinners – 15 meals on $50. That’s roughly $3.33 a meal. And yet, come Monday morning I find myself nearly destitute yet again

How is this feat possible? First off, I’d like to thank Café Gitane in the Jane Hotel for freeing me of, really, at the end of the day, a superfluous $24 that I was keeping in my bank account out of sheer curiosity– you know just to see what would happen to it if it stuck around for a while. That $24 was instead dispensed on a cocktail of iced-tea flavored water, a mound of ice, a squirt of lemon, and a splash of Jack Daniels. The extra shot they gave me to turn the whole sorry thing into some remote semblance of a cocktail cost me $10. I could have bought a pint of Jack Daniels with $10.

Next, Employees Only, you had a part to play in this whole production, too, and I’d like to see you get the recognition you deserve.  You served a beautiful Sazerac. It was gorgeous! Delicious! And $14.

Last, Cabbie that didn’t know how to get from 13^th Street and 7^th Avenue to the corner of Jane and Washington Streets (It’s straight by the way. You go straight.) –  thank you. Thank you for relieving me of the $9 that was burning a searing hole in my pocket, really, and don’t ever change.

So what does any of this have to do with wine? It doesn’t really. It’s merely a reminder to all of you that no matter how much more than you I know about wine, I’m still just an idiot sometimes. That being said, if I make sense out of wine and the strange world in which it resides, it should be cake for you. Instead of drowning my financial anxiety in a glass of wine tonight, I’ll be scrounging around my fridge for something to take the edge off the gin I’ve got stashed away in the back of my freezer. Because that’s the only alcoholic beverage in my apartment. Donations are welcome.