I found the above linked article at the height of the pandemic. Well, the height of the prevaccination part of the pandemic anyhow.
The article is about wine windows in Italy. They are handy little windows whose use is to pass drinks from inside to outside with minimal contact. What a great idea!
The windows are from the time of the bubonic plague and are being put back into use now. I hope they’ve been working.
I came home from work exhausted and stressed out. I poured a glass of wine and made a cup of coffee.
I need to stay awake for a meeting, but I also want to be able to sleep tonight. Which will it be? I hope for both, but I suspect that I won’t make both.
Anyone want to take guesses?
I passed through the wine aisle on a recent shopping trip. I happened to look across the aisle from where I usually get my wine and I saw that it was $4.99 a bottle. Good deal!
I looked closer and found that if I got four or more, I would get 10% off. This brought the wine to $4.50 a bottle. Woohoo!
One of the bottles had a tag on it, telling me that if I got twelve bottles, I could get a rebate of up to $24. Even better!
I got twelve bottles, held on to the receipt and the tag and tried hard to remember to send it in before the due date.
Today, I pulled out the info to mail it in. The type was so tiny, I couldn’t read it. I tossed it on the photo copier and enlarged it. I needed it large enough to read the mailing address. Got that, so I addressed the envelope. Then I started reading the instructions. Send original receipt with purchase price circled. Check! Fill out form on back of tag. Check! Address the envelope. Check! Send original UPC from each bottle’s label. Ummm. Ok. There’s a project.
In the instructions, it says to soak each bottle to remove the UPC carefully. Each bottle must be soaked in hot tap water for 10-15 minutes, and full bottles can’t be soaked. So, am I supposed to drink 12 bottles of wine by the due date on the rebate?
When I started investigating the removal of the UPC, I found that the label comes off rather easily. I quickly managed to get 6 labels off before I became bored. I counted the rest of the bottles and found that I had 11. I know there were 12 on the receipt.
I did a search for #12 and finally located it in the kitchen. I pulled its UPC off and stuck it in the envelope. I will finish up the last five tomorrow and pop it into the mailbox.
There were a lot of hoops to jump through on this one, but I think I have done everything they’ve asked of me. If any of you get a gift of a bottle of wine from me, ignore the missing UPC on the label. It was an expensive bottle. Trust me.
bookworm at the gym 