A crash course in American vino

When Jus and I wander into a bottle shop, or liquor store I should say, it's not the usual smash and grab affair that it was at home when we had sampled a fair amount of the selection and recognised the regions and labels and varieties.

Here it's another story. We don't know the labels, we have only heard of the most lauded regions and they grow some varieties I've never heard of. They also seem to organise their stores in way that is hard to work out with a mishmash of foreign and local among the varieties. I need a drink just to cope with the places.

The good part is that they deliver. They will deliver one bottle of wine to your home without even asking for ID (which i don't get since at bars they ID geriatric people). We haven't used this service yet as we're trying to make ourselves expend physical energing before gorging on more unhealthy things (we had one piece of cherry pie and a slice of chocolate layer cake delivered the other night from 1.5 streets away: a new low, or high, depending on how you look at it.)

So we're going to launch ourselves into the wonderful world of US wine. Without a TV - yes, we will be sans TV in the new apartment, on purpose, its an experiment, an awful, thrilling experiment - we'll have hours and hours and hours to listen to wine podcasts or read books or tasting notes or whatever and get to know the oeni-scape. How else are we to cope without TV, I ask you? No Scrubs, no Will & Grace. Farewell my friends! I shall never forget you!

Jus and I went for a run around Central Park on Saturday. We're moving soon and I thought it would be ridiculous to have lived so close to the park and not have jogged around it at least once. Jus has been pounding the pavement up there a few times. It was great! There was a street market leading up to it so all the pedestrians had left the sidewalk free to browse the arepas, Philly cheesesteaks, I Heart New York t-shirts and fake handbags. We beelined and joined the steady throng of joggers.

There are signs telling you to run/rollerblade/cycle anti-clockwise only: I guess there's so many people that if you went any old direction there would be carnage. And unlike most cities where if you appear for your jog at 11am you're basically the last one there and all the 'serious runners' have had their shower and are airing their sneakers and on their way to brunch, in New York there are always people jogging at any time of the day or night. Lots of them, and not just the lazy-looking people. There are still dickheads with mini water bottles strapped to them, and those running without a shirt to show off their abs (think Mohawk Man at the Tan) and the ones who insist on wearing those floaty, see-my-tackle running shorts. A heavily pregnant woman ran past me and I had to sigh. Yes, it had been a long time between runs.

We ran past the carriage horses and the pedicab dudes and looped into an area of the park I hadn't really seen before. The horse poo makes you run faster, which is a handy incentive.

Half way through it began to rain, which I actually love because its fun to run in the rain with your tongue out and because I always overheat when running (which is why I could only ever contemplate the Tan in winter) and this actually makes it more bearable for me. After about 2 minutes we were both saturated.

The pedestrians in the street market had fled to the sidewalk for cover, so Jus and I had 8th Avenue, which was blocked to traffic, to ourselves. We jogged right down the middle of the road, straight towards the glimmering flashing neon of Times Square. I felt like raising my arms in the air and cheering: it was quite a Rocky moment. I would never have thought "This time next year you'll be jogging down the middle of 8th Avenue with Justin in the pouring rain."

I would have said, "What? Me jogging with Justin? I don't think so."