Wine Parties: A Day in the Life Sunday

With Thanksgiving in the rear view mirror, there is one gathering I look forward to every year to get me in the holiday mood - the annual wine party. For over 25 years, friends of ours have hosted a wine party after Thanksgiving. We didn't know them when they first started but we do now and we've be partaking in tradition the last few years.

Photo credit: iStockphoto

It goes like this: the hosts purchase the wine and the guests bring the appetizers. We introduce the wines, taste the wines, eat food that pairs (mostly) with the wine, talk with each other, talk about the wine - and repeat.

It's great.

Wanting a reason to get together more often, we've expanded to include beer-tasting and a martini party. Now, we're tossing around the idea of Bloody Marys in the late winter/early spring and rum/vodka based drinks on the river in summer.

So, a finance, engineering, logistics and HR walk into a wine party. Finance calculates cost per bottle of a homemade wine, engineering assesses the wine-making equipment and overall process safety, logistics calculates supply and demand, and HR . . . .

What does HR do?

More important, what's your favorite adult-beverage themed party?

By: Lisa Rosendahl

Where My Ideas and Words Are

Where oh where are my posts you ask? Oh, I've got them, jotted down, framed up, and bound so nice and safe . . . in my Moleskine. 

See?

Let me orient you - to me.

Each folded 8 1/2 x 11 piece of paper is a gem just waiting to be freed. The pink Post It note is my immediate do-not-forgets since I am an out-of-sight-out-of-mind-kind of a girl, the lady bug is what is left of a bookmark my daughter made for me (dog was hungry) and the sticker to the right is from the MN Bloggers Conference.

I've got to get the ideas from there to here and I will - just as soon as I finish wrapping presents for the kiddo, cleaning the basement for the visiting in-laws and just plain old being busy.

No wait, I am not busy, I am done being busy.

I am developing our facility's first ever workforce succession plan, creating a technical manual for the national Business Plan for HR Staffing, employee/labor relationing, pondering words of wisdom to share with fellow Central MN SHRM colleagues about social media, Women of HR-ing, reading lost but re-found letters from my cadets to me *sigh* as I was leaving my ROTC leadership assignment, removing the spider webs from my snow shoes, and looking forward to a week leading up to a wonderful holiday weekend.

I am also wondering (but not worrying) why I am making the choices I am. I know, you've told me, I may be making choices that move me further away from the core of my profession.

Not likely, but I hear you. Now, hear me. I may be making choices that move me closer to the core of what it means to be me.

Time to grab some Baileys, pop Alice in Wonderland in and be inspired or, at the very least, be entertained. The ideas are here now and the words will come - later. Whenever I have something to say, this is where I come to say it. Promise.