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One And Only One

As you are all very much aware, the new year is upon us. That means that the new year's eve celebrations are now done (unless you're really, really going crazy this year). As it turns out, that's a good thing for us. It was somewhat more eventful than we expected.

This year, the Mild FiancĂ©e and I decided to stay in to celebrate and ring in the new year. We've been on a bit of a fish kick lately, so we decided to make our own poke bowls and get some sparkling wine. We figured it'd be fun, and we got a bottle at the local store. It wasn't super fancy or anything, but it did the trick. Just barely, as it turns out.

See, I'm getting old, so I was actually starting to feel a bit sleepy by the time midnight rolled around. I wasn't falling asleep, but I certainly didn't want to stay up to finish up a bottle. I also didn't think it'd be wise to pound half a bottle and immediately fall asleep.

So, I poured us each a glass, and then I tried to use one of our handy-dandy wine stoppers to save the rest of the bottle. I say "tried to use" because I must've done something wrong. See, we have the kind of wine stoppers where you push down on a lever to close off the suction. Well, when I pushed down on the lever, it just snapped right off. Yup, I broke the wine stopper. While it was in the bottle.

It was a good thing I'd already poured us each a glass, because the darn thing was really stuck in there. There wasn't much left of the actual neck piece, so we didn't really have much to grab on to in order to pull the thing out. And by the same token, there wasn't much to push in if we wanted to sacrifice the remains of the wine stopper and push it into the bottle. Heck, I even Google'd for ideas, but very few other people have had the same problem.

I should also note that I was specifically barred from attempting to chop off the top of the bottle with a knife or some other sharp instrument. We don't have a sword in the house, so this was deemed too dangerous. Still, the Mild Fiancée was quite amused at this turn of events, given that we had one and only glass of sparkling wine available to us.

Eventually, we gave up on trying to get to the rest of the sparkling wine, and we retired for the evening. Unfazed, I tried again around brunch time. Given a combination of chop sticks, leverage, and determination not to let a two inch piece of plastic beat me, I was able to get to the rest of the sparkling wine. You should've heard the squeal of amusement from the Mild Fiancée when I completed my task.

Oh, and we had mimosas for brunch. Good thing we saved the rest of the sparkling wine.

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