Is there anything better than a three-day weekend, especially on the Friday afternoon before?  Well, there may be a few things, if you want to quibble, but a long weekend is hard to beat.  After our labors of last Saturday harvesting grapes and starting the primary fermentation, we followed that up this Saturday with racking the primary, which involves moving what is now wine to a carboy for the secondary fermentation.  As part of that process we bottled last year’s vintage (and sampled it).  It’s a decent wine, maybe still a little young but drinkable.  I’m satisfied.  It could have turned out much worse.  We have 24 bottles and will start consuming them even though it will probably improve with more aging.  Maybe we’ll pace ourselves and still have some a year or two from now so we’ll know whether it improved or not.

I watched a little of the Republican convention, a number of the speeches.  That’s not something I’ve done before.  I’m reminded of Samuel Johnson’s quote, though, that goes something like “knowing that one is to be hanged in the morning focuses the mind wonderfully.”  Knowing that one’s country and way of life is about to become just an interesting footnote to history has the same effect for me.  Anyway, some of them were uninspiring but some of them, Condi Rice, Susanna Martinez, Marco Rubio, Paul Ryan, Clint Eastwood and the Mittster himself, were good.  Romney seems to be a much better of a person than I knew.  Joyce loathes him so I have to tread lightly, but the things attributed to him at the convention painted a portrait of a truly remarkable person.  I have no doubt they are true because we can be sure the loyal opposition will courteously point out any irregularities.  Here’s hoping he’s successful both in getting elected and in beginning the difficult task of turning the ship of state away from the current collectivist path and toward the principles the founders enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution..