So no post from me about spreading the Christmas cheer.  Instead I’ll regale you with tales of my Christmas trip.

I get to my parents place at about 7pm on the 24th after driving for
over 6 hours.  Luckily there was a good hockey game just starting
so I could settle in and watch that until lack of sleep took
over.  I settle into a comfy chair and what do I find…….the
house is like a freaking zoo!  My parents have 2 dogs (not in the
house thank god) and 3 cats.  My sister was visiting as well and
she brought her 2 dogs (god forbid they have to stay outside) and a cat.

So with all the damn animals running around, fighting over toys, with
each other and occasionally with people, my tolerance level reached
rock bottom along with my blood alcohol level.  During the next
available commercial break (have you tried leaving a hockey game this
year during the play?  Might as well guarantee that you’ll miss at
least one goal) I went over to the cupboard in search of some good
canadian rye whiskey.  Right away I found a nice, unopened, bottle
of 12yr old Gibsons and an opened bottle of Crown Royal.  While
walking away with the bottle of Gibby’s my mother scolded me for not
finishing the opened bottle (which had about 22oz left in it….hello
mom, I like a couple drinks, but that’s just a little much).  So
like the good child I never was, I switched to the Crown and took
another glance in the back of the cupboard just in case mom was going
to freak on my sober ass again.  Sure enough there were a couple
more bottle in the back of the cupboard.

Side note:  My parents will have an occaisonal drink but they certainly don’t do it regularly.

So I pull out the two newly found bottles and both happened to be
unopened.  One was another rye whiskey, Alberta Springs, and the
other was a red wine.  The first thing I noticed was that the
whiskey bottle label just looked a little weird. So I investigated it a
little bit and determined that the font and label coloring (very pale
yellow in place of the white) were making the bottle appear very
old.  Back in the day bottles were “sealed” with a piece of paper
over the cap and glued to the neck of the bottle.  This one had
the seal date on it.  1982.  Yes folks a bottle of 24yr old
aged (bottle not cask) rye whiskey.  Needless to say that was
coming home with me.  The red wine was a Cabernet Sauvignon from
Chile and marked as 1989.  Very nicely aged as well.

Not only did I get a couple of whiskey neats to offset the zoo
atmosphere, but I also got a couple of very sweet bottles of booze for
my collection.

I’m the Igloo Coder and if you know where to find the value of whiskey or wine I’m interested in hearing from you.