Daily Report: Experimentation

Maid Debbie was here today to clean the house. I thought she was coming on Tuesday. It was embarrassing enough that I left the kitchen a mess for Debbie to clean up, but I also went to sleep last night with my bedroom door open. I'll leave it at that.

Mom and Paul left Puppy Gracie's Flat Rat toy behind. I took that to the post office and mailed it up to New York. Cost more than the toy to send it, but I know that Gracie will appreciate the effort: She loves that silly lump of cloth.

I sat down to my first day doing my virtual assistant work. Nothing too exciting or difficult, and overall an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.

I made a steak sandwich from the first of the leftovers for lunch. One food item down, close to 100 to go.

In the evening, Uncle Bob came over for cocktails.

For dinner, I got rid of some of Paul's wraps that he uses for sandwiches, some mozzarella cheese, part of a roasted chicken, and — as promised — spaghetti sauce. I think, for my first time out, I scored about a 9½ out of 10 on the Bachelorific culinary scale. Tasted great, took about 3 minutes to make (including the photo op and microwave time), and it left a nice red stain on my T-shirt. You can't ask for more from Bachelor food.

I ordered a pipette from Amazon.com for drink measurements. I've been looking up new drinks on the internet to make, but my booze rule is only 4.5 ounces (3 shots) of mixology fun per evening (cordials and liquers count as half)... then a beer before bed. (That's still more than any doctor would recommend, but...) So, if I want to enjoy more than 1 or 2 drink experiments per evening, I need to go halvesies (or more) on my measurements. Ever tried pouring teaspoons? Yeah... tedious. But that's what I did tonight anyway, and will continue to do until my 25 mL pipette arrives.

Tonight, I tried brandy drinks: Brandy Alexander, a nice winter drink; a brandy daisy, a recipe from the 1870's, which was quite complex and sippable; then a second brandy daisy, using a modern recipe, which was awful; a French connection, an IBA official cocktail, which was nice but too strong; and a Golden Cadillac, which was really good. I truly enjoy discovering those old cocktails... tasting drinks that people were sipping at bars 50 or 100 years ago. I don't mess around with the new drinks that much... at least not now. (And yes, I go out and get ALL the proper ingredients. No subbing allowed. I even got my Mai Tai's orgeat syrup shipped all the way from the original Trader Vic's in California, and I'm using the oldest Singapore Sling recipe I can find, with real Heering Cherry liquer.)

Anyway, 3:00 a.m. Time for bed.