Week 4: Letters home

I’m winging this one; I haven’t written a single thing in my journal all week. There are two reasons for this, both are related: first, that I have been working 10-12 hour days every day this writing period, and as a result, nothing terribly interesting has happened. It seems like I am always busy, despite the fact that the grapes are only trickling in at this point. I guess I should gage “busy” by how many samples I run throughout the day, not how long I spend cleaning everything.

Earlier this week, I wrote an email to my sister in Boston. For those that don’t know, my little sister and I have always been close; contrary to the norm amongst my other friends with little siblings, we were always friends growing up, despite our differences. And I think now that we both are more mature and have our own perspectives and experiences to share, we have gotten a closer. I always look forward to hearing from her, and continue to marvel at how she manages to balance excelling at school, a social life, and a budding career as an actress. Speaking of which, she actually got to star in a very professional looking student film; in the words of the director, a "science fiction epic," which hopefully will be available online. I can't wait to see it, and I will of course post it here so you can see it as well, if it's available online.

Anyway, I re-read the email that I sent her, and I realized that it was a pretty good, albeit terse, recap of the last week. So instead of a full length blog, I decided to share the email with you.

Dear Angie,

Tonight I felt like writing you an email instead of blogging. I'm having a hard time deciding on what to write about in this one, since I haven't done anything terribly memorable, besides break some glassware and startle my boss.

Other than the glassware incident, work has been going pretty well. I wish people were more organized over here, there is no way to tell how busy we are going to be, or how many samples we are going to get on a day to day basis, though I feel it wouldn't be too hard to do, since Gallo does it quite well.

The best part of my job is working with my boss, Tina. I definitely trump her in raw chemistry knowledge, but she has been in the wine industry for 5 years and definitely knows what she is doing. She's a fun lady to work for; the last couple of days haven't been so busy, so we've just hung out a lot (she's also married, so wipe that grin off your face).

One of the other cool aspects of my job is that I see winemakers on a daily basis, something which never happened at Gallo. The winemakers were always these semi-omnipotent figures in another building that our instruments were trying to catch up to at Gallo, so It’s still a bit weird for me when they come into the lab and ask me about samples that were dropped off earlier in the day. It's nice to feel important like that; at Gallo the results of my analysis filled in one column of a very large chart, here the chart is much smaller and my results fill the entire chart (ie: I do everything). Tomorrow I am actually going to get to taste the ferments with the winemakers, which I am very much looking forward to.

Other than that, it’s not a terribly interesting job. Most of the common tests we do are now muscle memory at this point. The scienceyist parts of my day happen when I get a number that doesn't quite make sense, but sadly that usually means that I did something wrong or the tank was sampled incorrectly.

Right now it is pouring down rain. I have no idea what this is going to do to the fruit or do to my work load. At this point, the sugar levels in the grapes are high enough that if they get wet and a little bit warm they will rot on the vine, which would kill the vintage. I will find out tomorrow what will happen to us now.

Well, that’s the update from my end. Oh, and I have a birthday present for you, but I'm not sure I can get it to you in time, since the post office is closed when i get off work every day.

I greatly look forward to your return email, though i know you are a busy girl....err....lady. Talk to you soon!

Love Always,
Dan

PS: In regards to your request for me to club an Aussie male and bring him home with me for you marry, will you settle for a Spaniard with an uncanny resemblance to Hugh Jackman? He is eight years your senior, but it’s your call.