So I'm at the liquor store on New Year's Eve.

I want to have a couple of drinks to observe the holiday. Nothing near what I would drink on a typical evening in my early 20's mind you, just something to drink because . . .

... because why? I couldn't really answer that.

It had something to do with that being what one is SUPPOSED to do on NYE.

I hadn't had any beer at all since Thanksgiving, when Uncle Pete gave me a Miller. And before that had been sometime in early summer, I think, when I drank a six pack of Shiner over the course of a couple of weeks.

Jim Beam; that's another story. I still enjoy a good Beam & Coke (or Beam & Root Beer, mmmmmmm......) a little more often than that, but as for beer, my interest in that gets less and less the older I get.

Shiner sounded good, though. I think more because it reminds me of Houston than because of the taste.

But I didn't want to deal with bottles. I wanted something I could crush and throw in the aluminum can bag and not have to deal with the bulk and annoying clink of bottles in the trash. I wandered aimlessly around the store a couple of times before the cashier asked if she could help me.

"Do you have Shiner Bock in cans?" I asked.

"Nope, just bottles," she replied.

I didn't want bottles.

But none of the other beers in cans seemed particularly appealing at that moment.

So I picked out a couple of 16-oz. bottles of Grolsch and headed to the checkout.

"So you switched to Grolsch, huh?" the cashier asked.

"Yeah. If I have to have bottles, it may as well be pretty bottles."