Larry Correia owes me $49.99, plus shipping and handling ;)

A few months ago, I repaired to the bathtub to enjoy a lovely bubble bar from LUSH and sip a nice Rioja whilst reading Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia. [buy this book]

I was sipping from this lovely Rosenthal crystal stem, having carefully perched it at the other end of the tub so I wouldn't knock it over flipping a page or as I dove to get the cell phone. I bought this stemware several years back at a closeout store. They were a bit of a splurge, but I ended up with a couple dozen glasses, all at well under $10 a stem. They were fancy, I knew, but how fancy I had no ideer.

I was there in the tub sunk into great foamy piles of bubbles, reading. It's a rollicking good read. In fact, if a director would stick to the story, it'd make a fabulous movie. Anyhoo, imho, one of the greatest appeals of good writing is that just when you think you've deciphered where an author is going with everything, they hang a left at Albuquerque and haul off and surprise you. Mr. Correia did just that very thing, the end result of which was I laughed so hard that my foot slipped off the end of the tub, flew up and knocked the glass over, spilling its contents and breaking the stem, alas.

I shrugged to myself and thought, well, I'll just spring for a replacement stem. Whaddayaknow if the damned things aren't ghastly expensive, in fact.

Rosenthal Estelle Red Wine

Taken from another point of view, stemware comes and goes. I'm sure I'll break more of these before it's all over. Hmmm... perhaps I should be selling them on ebay about now? I more than got my money's worth with this book, counting the glass. Come to think of it, Larry and me are square.