Blue Cheese / You Saw Me Standing Alone

My in-laws left for their Ontario home this morning, after a very fun visit. Despite many reminders to take it with him, my father-in-law left a hunk of blue cheese in my fridge.* No one in this house eats blue cheese. I am of the opinion that blue = mould, mould =rotten, and rotten = death so, as I want to stay alive to love and torture my children with unreasonable requests like “wash your hands,” I will not be eating it. Or mailing it to him, because that would be mean.

* He wouldn’t have forgotten except that they were anxious about driving to the airport during rush hour on the day after a hydro tower collapsed, making traffic a bit of a nightmare.

A number of years ago I worked for a rather wealthy software company. Nothing you’ve heard of. Unless you are one of my former co-workers who used to read this blog but probably stopped around when the “oh my babies are so great / horrible / awesome / growing up” posts started overshadowing the “life is kooky and I have time to think before I write” posts.* But it made a lot of money. The software company. Not the co-worker. As far as I know.

*I wrote this very post you’re reading, for example, while my children took turns running across the living room and saying “Mommy! Mommy!” and then running back over to the window.

One Christmas, we had our company party at the Westin Bayshore downtown. It was very fancy. The food and drinks were included. It was a safe bet to do this because 90% of the company was made up of developers and programmers who didn’t drink (or speak) very much. The 10% that was sales and administration made up for them in both the drinking and speaking departments.

Saint Aardvark, who has a special history with blue cheese (something about eating it by accident in a tube station in London and then barfing on his feet for three weeks — I don’t know, he has his own blog. Ask him) was sitting at the bar at this Christmas party, talking — probably about Linux — with my boss’s husband, who was a very nice man. The boss’s husband said, here, eat this blue cheese, and SA said, no, I will barf on you, because [this story about London and etc.] and my boss’s husband said, aha, no, see the key to enjoying blue cheese is to eat it while drinking Very Expensive Port.

SA said, where would I get some of that at this company Christmas party where beer and wine and hi-balls are included but probably not Very Expensive Port?

My boss’s husband said, I will order it for you, as soon as I check with my wife, who is your wife’s boss and also the company accountant, to make sure we’re on budget with this Christmas party.

My boss lifted her head from her folded arms and said: Go nuts. Order all the port you want. The salesmen are all drunk and the programmers have gone home to play video games.

(doesn’t that sound like a modern folk ballad waiting to happen?)

So SA drank expensive port and ate blue cheese and not only did not barf but became evangelical about blue cheese + expensive port = sweet heaven. I either need to toss the cheese or go buy some expensive port. Guess which one of those things is going to happen.

What do you think? Is blue cheese sweet heaven or certain death? And does anyone want mine or should I put it on Craigslist?