Vices

The boys and I- we I think, the good wife was there too- had a good discussion of 'vice' the other day. In their minds, 'vice' is something really bad, and rightfully so. They know it's a pejorative term of some sort. They further extrapolated, interestingly, that a 'vice cop' is a cop who is also really bad, depraved and such. We tried to correct them on such usage, but they seemed skeptical. Furthermore, they conflated the issue bringing up 'vice-president'. We know it's a different usage, by why? English much more so than Spanish is famous for these Homonyms. Other common examples include: bank, crop, bear, peer, sink, fritter, pants, slip, slide, dry, fit, class, shine, creep, divide, page, gin, trip, keel, ship, fall, hedge, needle, scrape, riddle, throw, train, ...

My 'vice' for the morning is coffee. One jarring thing relating to my Afib was the admonition to drinking caffeine. At the time I thought "No biggie. I don't drink that much". Only later did I realize how much I drink/have drunk/drank. My usual was/has been/is a large something: coffee, Americano, Americano with extra shot, Latte with extra shot (rarely), and finally a French Press pot at home. At home I measure a quantity of water from my coffee mug- roughly 1.5 mugs. I haven't really thought of drinking too much, but now I perhaps think otherwise. This morning I ordered a medium halfreg/halfdecaf at Breadworks. It's enough to give me that coffee pickmeup, but I think a more suitable portion of a known and very popular stimulant.

Another vice worth exploring is wine. I've been a somewhat regular drinker since I was 17. When I say regular that's to say in my adulthood I might have 4-8 drinks total all week, depending on whether I buy a 6-pack or a bottle or 2. I have also gone long periods drinking very little-to-none, so I don't think "it" is an issue. After the "incident" I was told "no booze" as well. Now I have clearance, but would like to keep things well under control, just like the cafe or the bloomin'onion/nacho/cheesefry extravaganzas of can creep up on the unbeknownst. I had most of a bottle this week, 1 drink a day as they say. Last night I bought some French wine in a box- or maybe it's Californian with a Frenchie panache. It looks like a juice box or a box of Euro warm milk, the point being that I like the screw top; it makes single servings much easier than a cork. I've had the sameg discussion with both my friend J in NC, my friend M at work and with the gal at the WineRack. All of us like wine, but none of our respective others do. Henceforth all of us are forced to recork wine, which is a risky proposition, or just drink the whole damn bottle, which is usually the case. Slightly lower-quality wines with a screw top allow "recorking", so as to follow the 1-glass rule. So, we have last night's purchase of 2 bottles of inexpensive ($9.99 and $7.99) grape juice, both with screwtop or fake cork.

And the final vice, of course, is purchasing bike crap. The good wife knows more stuff was in the works, but I did go ahead and purchase the handlebars from Vik in Canada. So the LHT will go drop-barred. I'll need to rethink the stem issue, and I'll re-add the interrupter levers. From there the eventual tire change will take place, but I think the moster Serfas will do me appropriately during the winter, although I did have my first flat on an innocuous splinter or something recently (at end of first commuting week).

It's nice outside. I'm going riding.