A sinkful of spirits

I can't believe the amount of alcohol I had in the back of the van last night. I know, I know. That's probably the last thing you thought I'd say. Diapers in the back of the van? That's pretty much a given. Smashed goldfish crackers? Obviously. But alcohol?!

Here's the story: Back when I was student teaching with Vicki Anderson at Bonneville High School, she gave me a bottle of the most incredible Italian dressing ever. It was Olive Garden's Italian dressing. When the dressing was gone (way too soon! I could have eaten that stuff forever), I decided to keep the bottle. It was cute; it was different.

Thus began my bottle collection.

Since then, I've added a few glass vases, a Cholula bottle, a Coca Cola bottle and a couple of sparkling cider bottles.

Up until a few months ago, my collection was sparse at best. I found a home for my bottles on top of my kitchen cabinets, but I don't even know if they counted as a "collection." More like a chance meeting of a few glass objects. But then my little brother found out about my aspirations of bottle collecting. And now I'm loaded.

See, Tyson delivers produce for work. Lettuce, tomatoes, limes, avocados ... and wine. So Tyson started scavenging for bottles from their recycling bin. When he found several bottles that were worth keeping, he'd pass them along to me. I wash the bottles out, remove the labels and add them to the collection on top of the cabinets.

For whatever reason, his work needed to get rid of a bunch of their wine. Tyson and I met at the warehouse yesterday, where several boxes of wine were laid out on the floor. I got my pick of the litter. Here's what I brought home:

I've learned that I have a problem smiling naturally for the camera with my braces. And I have a problem keeping my eyes completely open with the flash firing. So I'm not actually as demented as I look in this picture, I swear.

Any guess as to how much money all this alcohol is worth? I have absolutely no idea. Maybe that's for the better, because here's what we did with it:

There it goes, down the drain.

Just so we could see the amount of wine we were throwing away, we plugged the drain. This excludes the three bottles that had corks in it. Seeing as we don't drink the stuff, we don't own a corkscrew. We'll have to figure out a way to get those open and drained as well.

The side-by-side comparison of the empty sink versus the one full of spirits.

And then we pulled the plug.

Going.

Going.

Gone.

I must say, I'm excited to get these labels off and add my newest recruits to the collection.