# sessapinae quick thoughts

## 2025-09-10 ~11 am | advertising on the web : advertising, languor
i hate hate hate using the web. i've been noticing it more and more because i watch A LOT of tiktok, but there is constant product placement and people are constantly shilling products. idk at once, if you need to do that to make money then fine whatevs i don't begrudge you your rent payment, but it is just so noticeable and prevalent and it just makes it feel so joyless. today i'm combatting it in apples news app, half the articles that get pushed to me feel like bare wrappers over targetted ads. so many items about diabetes and hairloss and miracle cures and products and i just do not CARE! i am trying to read the news and learn about what is happening in the world around me! i'm not here to buy things! i just feel so much more schizo than usual going crazy over this but it is really depressing me. the internet has always felt like a safe space to me, but less and less am i seeing things that inspire joy and more and more it is justconstant languor, drifting over the 2-3 bits of actually novel things i get
 to read for the day and then being slammed by a wall of already read articles and ads.

## 2025-08-28 ~4:00 pm | the joy of a day off when the weather starts to change : hike, duke forest, hurricane chantal, nature
my day off swings back around. i love thursdays, i love getting to sleep in and then roll out of bed and do what i want. the weather has been really nice recently, cooling down while still being good and sunny out so i decided to drive over to a short trail i like to walk. it's in a small section of a larger forest that is managed by a local university as a teaching facility. it's out in a rural segment of a pretty urban region (compared to where i grew up at least). i love taking a rural road where the crowns of the trees arch out over the road but their crownshyness still allows room for the sun to shine down. then when the road dips down and you start climbing back up on the other side of a little microvalley and the treetops whizz by slightly above your sightline. that's what it's all about. do you ever wish you could go back and show it to your ancestors? to say, you toiled in some corner of the world partly unconnected from all the rest of the world, but today the whole of this country, from sea to sea
 is connected by a thin ribbon of blacktop? and you can speed on along its length and you are (at least, nominally) free to go as the road wends?

anyways, i didn't get to do the segment of the trail i wanted to do, it's still blown out and there is a concrete bridge that spans the creek that it seems might have been really damaged when hurricane chantal came through and dumped a ton of water all over this segment of the state. hopefully (and by all indications) the bridge will be rebuilt soon. it would be cathartic to walk the trail again, it's been more than a year since i've had the opportunity, and it was significant to me and a friend that no longer speaks to me. i stopped hiking and seeking out trails after our friendship crumbled and he blocking me on everything (even the horoscope app we both used! if that's not the gayest thing...) because it was something we used to do together a lot, but i feel ready to hit the trails again. i love being in nature and today was no exception. because the path i wanted to walk was closed, i got to walk a different trail that i'd attempted before but felt uncomfortable on because there was a lot of leaf litter 
and the slope going down was a bit steep for not having great visibility of where i was putting my feet (lots of tree roots and rocks and the possibility of snakes underfoot psyched me out) but today it was perfect! there was very little ground cover and while it was still pretty steep it was really manageable. i got all the way down it and to the creek. i would have kept going but the path was blocked by a rock scramble and i didn't really feel in the mood for that today and i was carrying my water bottle so i was down a hand. not a good mix imo! i was glad the entire sector wasn't closed off and i got in like 2 and a half miles according to my smartphone. a success! nothing particularly interesting on the hike today, but by the time i got to the creek the sun was making a beautiful pattern as it dappled the flowing water. that's something i miss about taking these little nature jaunts. there is something new every time you go, time works its changes on everything, even the world all around us, or maybe esp
ecially the world. new plants, the hurricane carnage, the water level in the creek bed, the chittering of animals out of sight, wondering why spider webs persist in some places and not in others? the wear pattern of the path, the moistness of the soil, the emergence of mushrooms! the world is vast and strange and beautiful and it's on display no matter how close you stay to home.

then i decided to take a trip to my favorite coffeeshop. i had been going every day for a while, but the bills have really started to pile up. i need to ask for more hours at work (or just find a new job; comfort will be the death of me). so i'm cutting back to not more than two trips a week. i have all kinds of coffee gadgets at home to make coffee any way i want it. i have a bodum pour-over, a ceado hoop (think an aeropress, but even simpler :P), a french press (never gotten a good brew out of this so it lives out it's days as an aesthetic tea infuser instead), a nespresso vertuo (and an original nespresso i scalped on marketplace for $50 that i leave at work so i never have to be uncaffeinated), and yet i still make 5-7 trips to the coffeeshop a week? ;_; it would be sustainable if i made a good deal more, but i don't so i have to cut back. but i just like all of the baristas so much and having a place to stop in on my way to or from work. i stop, i have my second or third coffee of the day, i play 30-60 
minutes of pokemon on my 2ds and then i keep going, and it's really nice, especially on those frosty mornings where the air still feels sacred and the skies still dim and you can see condensation running down the insides of the plate glass windows from the difference of temperatures. but moderation is key, i suppose, AND not replacing those trips with added expenditures somewhere else lol

## 2025-08-24-25 ~11:30 pm | red tail ridge perpetuelle change cuvée no. 3 : nv, solera, pinot noir, pinot blanc, riesling, chardonnay, united states, new york, finger lakes, 12 ABV
a sparkling méthode champenoise produced via solera in the finger lakes region. the single largest contributor is a 38% constituent of pinot noir, though combined with the 18% pinot blanc that puts this at majority pinot with 51% of the composition on the label. since this is a solera though, there is probably also pinot in the 30% contribution from their first cuvée of this line, since the winery also produces some (delicious) pinot noirs and this line is intended to both highlight the beauty of their yearly bounty across all grapes, and, at the same time, offer a call back to all the vintages that have come before.

so lots of pinot, which gives it a kind of fragrant herbaceous green aroma. i think the riesling, despite only being 11% of the composition is pretty prominent as well, flavor-wise, while the pinot is really dominant aromatically. finger lakes riesling is a personal favorite and it shines in this brut nature. not a yeast bomb or overly redolent of cornflakes, but also without that really fruit-forward character (that i love) of young brut blanc de blanc. this is bone dry and looooooooooong, with a lovely acidity and a slight astringency on the finish. the chardonnay offers a touch of fruitiness in the base. i've been holding onto this one for a while from the wine store, but i wish i'd had it earlier, it's so good! i get spoiled a lot there since we'll regularly pop a grand cru champagne as a staff drink, but it's lovely to get to try something different and unique. i've never had a bad bottle from red tail ridge, and the finger lakes are very underrated in american wine. really incredible bone-dry, mineral-
forward whites (especially riesling) are my jam and they abound (though now that i think about it, i should search for an FLX muscat...). imo, what they are doing at red tail is the american answer to the concept of grower champagnes (récoltant manipulant) and this bottling from them especially since it creates a living, drinkable history of the property. i didn't really drink wine before getting this job, and i still don't tbh but it's stuff like this that gets me interested. vintages come and go, marred or enhanced by local conditions (as shown by, to take one example, the frequency and geography of california wildfire), and they're different and even tasting through a vertical of vintages isn't necessarily demonstrative since there's all kinds of stuff that continues to happen post-bottling that influence the taste. but all of these luxury products that embody time, place, and process (chocolate, coffee, and wine come to mind primarily) are super interesting and i hope i can keep learning about them.

## 2025-08-21 ~1:30 am | domaine martin plan de dieu : 2022, gsm, grenache, syrah, mourvèdre, france, vallée du rhône, côtes du rhône villages, 14.5 ABV
what i brought home from work today. ruby/purple in the glass, dark fruit aroma, juicy/jammy red and black fruit on the palate and a touch of the sweetness and fruit intensity of raisin, with a round mouth feel. a little acrid on the tail end with a sort of tussin quality. a bit smoky/earthy/herbal, but still smooth. it has a nice body and structure, but i wouldn't say full-bodied. kind of similar to a california pinot noir, but more tannic. possibly chillable? i like the bit of raisin i detected. i had a bit of sauternes last week and that was a full on blast of sultanas/golden raisins and i was wondering if there were wines that embodied the dark raisin out there. this isn't to the same degree but it has that touch of dried fruit to it, though not the overwhelming sweetness.

i like this! comparable in price to a good pinot (~$20) but with a bit more roughness? than a pinot. it would be nice to sit and watch an episode of a crime drama with a glass or two of this by your side. that light silky quality of oregon pinot in this price range gives way to a thicker, rougher texture that is interesting on the palate. it gives you something to think about as you drink. also, while there is a bit of heat at the end of a sip, it doesn't drink too much like something almost 15% alcohol. i would have thought 13%, very smooth in that regard. i've been making a lot of salsiccia con rapini/cima di rapa recently and i think i'll save the rest of this bottle for tomorrow when i can make some for lunch or dinner. it'll add some pleasant acid to the interplay of the fatty, sweet sausage and the bitter greens, though it could probably go with anything. i'll also throw in a splash to deglaze my pan ;)

## 2025-08-18 ~11:30 pm | who needs enemies? : friendship, anxiety, geographic
i have a friendship that i find really difficult to maintain. (tbh i really struggle to maintain every one of my relationships... i never feel the urge to reach out to people, not even my parents, not even when it's made clear to me that they would appreciate it or explicitly desire it.) but this friendship is different, i've known her for more than a decade at this point and we've gone through a lot together, she's almost like my sister frfr. but i just find our personalities so at odds and it makes me disdainful of her :(. i don't understand why this is so hard for me. like literally if i lost this (long-distance) friendship, i'd have zero friends, but sometimes the thought of that feels so freeing. and like i love her but she's had a rough go the past few years, which isn't the problem but i get a front-row seat to the decaying of her mindstate everytime and it's made me have a deficit of empathy for her. like i know that i AM the problem, but i cannot muster up the energy towards good feelings towards he
r, and i haven't been able to for a year+ now. i don't get how someone can complain to you day in and day out for years and still expect idk... comfort. i feel like all my genuine ability to render comfort has been wrung out and i'm at a point now where even the empty platitudes have been wrenched from me. i have nothing left to offer! and she constantly says that i can lean on her too, but she's turned herself into this wretched creature of pity without enough backbone for herself, much less whatever little anxieties i can offer up. not to mention, i try! i try and i try but i cannot have a single negative emotion in her vicinity without her making it about how she has it worse. i'm just exhausted