Complex Numbers

Drinking about Thinking

Today's prompt is kinda what journaling is supposed to be all about, right?

PROMPT September 12th

Write about something you need to get off your chest. What’s pressing on your mind?

Other than the bloody obvious, stare-in-your-mask-wearing-face bullshit that's consumed us all since somewhere around the beginning of the year, I'm drawing blanks.

I guess that's a good thing. Life, for me, could be -- and inevitably, at some point, will be -- so much worse.

Don't you just love realism? Oh, sure, some may call it pessimism, but I know better.

Yes, I miss being able to travel, but I'm pretty sure that's going to happen at some point (provided, of course, the aforementioned turn for the worse delays itself for just another year or two).

What I miss even more is being able to sit at a bar.

I don't mean just being able to go to a place that sells drinks, sit at a socially-distanced table, and have a few. I've had opportunity to do that. I mean sitting on one of a row of barstools, contemplating the neat lines of fine beverages behind the bartender, and slowly consuming one of them.

Fun fact: Virginia doesn't have bars.

I mean, sure, there are places like what I've just described, but thanks to arcane Prohibition-era laws that have not changed, we have no establishments whose sole purpose is to provide a variety of adult beverages. What we have are:

Restaurants with a bar inside.
Craft breweries / cideries selling their own product exclusively.
Wineries also selling their own product.
State-run liquor stores (fermented beverages can be sold in supermarkets and convenience stores, but not distilled ones).

Of course, this doesn't stop me from going in to a restaurant and pretending it's a bar. They've got the barstools and the liquor lineup, which is more than I can say for Utah. Or... they did before the pandemic; right now, no one's letting anyone sit at a bar. They do try to push food on you, though; the law I mentioned before says something like at least half of an establishment's revenue must come from food service, or they lose their license.

Somehow, though, we get by. Things always change, and even in the past 20 years a lot of the more restrictive rules have been relaxed. Like, I can now order beer for delivery. This was mostly a pandemic-related innovation, and we'll see if it continues. I mean, one of the main purposes of liquor laws is ostensibly to discourage drunk driving, and what better way to do that than by delivering the product to one's own house?

That said, I'm not sure they really want to discourage drunk driving; it's too much of a revenue generator.

So, like I said, I get by. I'm really not looking forward to the colder weather, and not being able to sit outside to order drinks at a restaurant, but I'll muddle through somehow.

Mini-Contest Results!

Surprise! Everyone's a winner today. Because yesterday was my account anniversary, I'm handing out gifts in the form of Merit Badges to everyone who commented yesterday. I won't be making this a regular event, though; this was a special occasion. And it'll probably be at least two weeks before I do another Mini-Contest, to avoid having to deal with CR time restrictions. But I suspect I'll do another "normal" one towards the end of the month.

The following commenters will get their MBs later because I've given them one recently: ⭐Princette♥PengthuluWrites , Apondia , and WakeUpAndLive~doingNaNo'24 . Everyone else who commented yesterday will get theirs soon. Thanks for reading!