So this weekend manfriend took me on a romantical getaway to celebrate our 2nd anniversary of the day we officially became an item. I'm all about keeping the romance alive by prioritizing these little milestones....and he's learning to prioritze them. We went to a vineyard in Bryan, Texas to do the wine tour and tasting thing. We did a similar sort of trip last year and it occured to us that now we're sort of becoming kind of knowledgeable about wine. This is one of my favorite things to learn about. We enjoy wine together, and its one of the few things that get us both equally enthusiastic about exploring. It was a great time.

The winery is called Messina Hof and is one of the larger ones in Texas, which we learned on our trip is the 5th largest state in the U.S. for wine production. We learned all kinds of nuggets, but obviously toward the end we were getting a little to saucy for maximum information consumption. Oops. To speak to that point, our tour guide was extremely drunk. It could've been her 10th tour of the day when we arrived around 4pm. She wasn't crafting sentences quite right, she was crafting them like a drunk person. I don't blame her, I'm actually really jealous of her job. Nonetheless we learned tons.

The wines, and we sampled probably 15 of them, were all delicious, but most were a little too sweet for our taste. That's a theme that seems to be recurring with all Texas wines I sample. I'm sure its some sort of horticultural thing, maybe I'll learn that next time. Anyway, we walked out of there with a bottle for ourselves and one as a gift for Austin's parents, who graciously babysat the Prince for us. Our bottle didn't make it 24 hours. I really had planned to savor it. Oops.

This lifesize cutout is the man who founded the winery and still runs it today. There were multiple cutouts like this around the place. They would like sneak up on you...even in that suit. Apparently getting to wear the red beret is a major honor in the wine-making business and is passed down through the generations. I'll respect that, but what's the explanation for the suit?

On another note, the temperature didn't get above 40 our whole day there. I don't know why we've had the bright idea to literally go to a farm for two Januarys in a row. Oh yeah, we go for the booze. It was stinking freezing the whole time, but we didn't let our spirits get down.

All in all, it was a fabulous little getaway. Our sojourn to Aggieland, despite all of my skepticism about descending into the belly of the beast of awful Texas culture, was quite pleasant. Manfriend is a real good egg. I hope he keeps me until next year. I heart him mucho.