a, or b? b, or c?
I've learned that I'm an excellent decider, but not a very good ranker. Give me options, and I'll happily, quickly, and easily select one. There won't be any second-guessing, and minimal gnashing of teeth. However, give me a group of things and have me rank them in my order of preference? That's harder. I like something, or I don't like it; apparently fine-tuning that is not my best skill.
Examples:
Friday night I went to a wine/food thing, with six bottles of pinot noir covered with brown paper. I could identify one that wasn't nice at all (turns out I've now had a truly corked bottle of wine), but the other five were all.. good. Yummy. Drinkable. Ranking them was a near-arbitrary experience.
Saturday I went on a great hike with a friend, then we swung by the legendary Berkeley Bowl to browse & shop. We were intrigued by the massive range of apples on offer, so selected seven different varieties to take home and sample. We also got a nice manchego and some natural peanut butter, and in a burst of brilliance, opened some bottles of beer, too.
So, seven apples. Turns out you can use the same adjectives pretty consistently when describing apples: crisp, sweet, tart, and juicy are words that frequently came into play. Granted, they had ranges of these adjectives, but still.
My least-favorite were the Sonya and the Winesap. Then came Jonagold, and the final four were all lovely and hard to rank. They were: Ambrosia Clipper, Arkansas Black, Jazz, and Pacific Rose.
It was a pretty perfect afternoon.
