Party!!!

Last night was my first social engagement since moving here. I attended a "Wine & Win" party which was a ton of fun. I would love to host one of these some day so I better write this all down. They had everyone bring a bottle of wine, and $5 to enter. The hosts took the wine, put it in a bag so the bottle was fully covered and put a number on the neck of the bottle. Everyone then had a little score card with numbers corresponding to the number of bottles of wine. The wine was set up at different tables around the room so it encouraged mingling and talking which was great to get to know a ton of people from around here. They also had some FABULOUS cheeses set up and some sushi. I had to know where they got the cheeses from, and the answer, Sam's. Guess I'll be headed there for my cheese shopping from now on! After 2 hours everyone voted on their favorite wine and turned in the number to preferred bottle. They tallied up the scores and the winning bottle had 6 votes (mine got 2 which put it in 5th place). The winner, which turned out to be a Menage a Trios, got all the money from the pot. Last night it turned out to be $115, so not a bad little purse.

What I learned from "Wine & Win": I do like red wine. I don't like Syrah. The cheap wines are just as good as the expensive ones (2nd place was Charles Shaw, otherwise known as 2 Buck Chuck). I like Malbec (Kelly and I had some in Holland I really like it, turns out, I still do). There are a lot of people who have unsophisticated palates but still enjoy drinking wine. Rating 23 wines on a scale of 1 to 10 is sort of difficult.

I attended the wine party with one of my roommates and some of his friends from Med School. So after the wine party 1/2 of us decided to go out. We took a cab to the party so we were taking a cab home. It was an interesting experience taking a cab in Shreveport, but not a bad one. We ended up at The Phoenix Underground which is a pretty cool little bar/club. It is an after hours place so it was really starting to get hoppin' about the time we were leaving (at 2:30am). They played some great music though and there were lots of people, which is generally a good combination. I do miss having girl friends though to go out dancing with. I will hopefully make some in my time here so that I can truly enjoy all the things Shreveport has to offer.