The service part of my new job may be on the grueling side, but the work does come with some benefits. As I had hoped, I am apparently doing some learning. To those who know me, I’m obviously a big fan of education for the sake of education. This made it easier for me to scrap over five years of graduate education, when leaving without a degree made it very unlikely that I would land in a profession related to what I had been studying. But I didn’t waste these years, I was learning.

Now my path of continuing education has taken a rather abrupt (and bourgeois) turn; rather than learning (and teaching) about why poor people stay poor in benighted parts of the world, I’ve been learning about fancy beers and wines that I, let alone the subjects of my former research, can’t afford to purchase. Not to come across as callous, but these new lessons are much more immediately satisfying.

Take today. I was lucky enough to get paid to help prepare a course on wine blending. Granted, I did have to polish a healthy number of wineglasses, as well as engage in other preparatory activities. But, just like all the paying guests, I was encouraged to use a series of four wine varietals (Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Petit Verdot) from the Newton Vineyards, to create my own blend. The object of the exercise was to challenge guests to blend a wine as balanced, and hospitable to aging, as the vineyard’s signature blend: “The Puzzle.” My original blend, with 33% merlot, 25% Cabernet Franc, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon, and 17% Petit Verdot was surprisingly good. Now, if I could only explain why that combination worked so well. I suppose that I am at the beginning of my education.