Wonkybusker

Drink recipes

Recently, I've gotten into mixing cocktails for parties.  Not drinks to order, but making a signature cocktail of sorts.  I have a couple recipes that I've used recently and have worked out very well.  Nearly all have been stolen from other websites, but there are a lot of drink recipes out there and not all of them work, so it's been a process of trial and error.  In the hot summer months, a nice cocktail can be so refreshing.  So I'm going to include a few recipes here.  Maybe you'd be interested in trying a couple.

Lemonade Mojito

1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup water heated on the stove until the sugar dissolves into a simple syrup

1/4 cup fresh mint, muddled

1 1/2 cups fresh lemon juice (it sounds like a lot, but it's worth it)

2 cups vodka

2 cups club soda

1/3 cup confectioners sugar

That's it, mix this all up and you have an easy and delicious mojito variation

Cran-Apple Martini

2 cups cranberry juice

1 1/2 cups vodka

1/3 cup sour apple pucker

Mix the ingredients well and chill.  Garnish with a thin apple slice or a few frozen cranberries.  Sugar the rim if desired.

Watermelon Cocktail

Take a medium seedless watermelon, cut off the top and scoop the insides out.  Put this in a blender with some limeade, vodka, a dash of lemon juice, and a bit of crushed ice.  Then pour it back into the watermelon and decorate with a couple of lemon slices on top.  Be sure to serve with a ladle.  I only made it once and didn't measure, but it came out really well.

English Language Simplification

I need to stop getting my news from Yahoo!.  And Yahoo! needs to take that stupid exclamation point out of its name.  I tend to go there to check my mail, but I always end up scanning the headlines and occasionally get sucked in.  Today, I had my choice between finding out how a half eaten sandwich can equal a half day at work, why Bono needs my advice on how to solve world hunger, or how the English language needs a "face-lift."  Wow.  Although I didn't take the bait and click on any of these links, I did wonder about the English language face-lift.  My guess would be that it's about standardizing spelling, taking out exceptions to rules, and generally streamlining a rather haphazard writing system.  It's the same thing that the Simplified Spelling Society is after.

With English becoming the new lingua franca, there is an obvious upside to it being easier to read and quicker to understand.  And why make things difficult for ourselves with tricky rules and long-forgotten silent letters?  It makes sense.  It would be hard to implement now, but once the change was made and accepted it would be easier from here on out.  The language would become more accessible to both native and non-native speakers, or in this case writers.

While it may seem tempting to standardize English, there are definite concerns.  In Japan, they once felt it was impossible for an outsider to learn Japanese.  When they encountered traders, they would learn whatever language these newcomers spoke.  Japanese was too intricate and most important, too culturally linked.  Since then, many have learned to speak Japanese.  And lots of people learn English every day.  English has become very useful as a common-ground language.  It is the language that all the refs have to speak at the World Cup.  But in addition to being a useful means of communication, language is of great historical importance.  Old important documents would become as incomprehensible to future generations as Old or Middle English is to us, depending on how extensive the changes were.  Each spelling indicates a place the word originated or how it entered into written word.  There's a story there and a history and a tradition that is worth preserving.  Another concern is that the effort involved in figuring out exactly what the standard would be and changing everything to meet that would be great.  There is so much writing everywhere and more being written every second.  A change would lead to confusion and would be expensive. 

Although, it would be awfully nice to do away with spelling tests. 

Whining Again

If you don't want to hear my whining, please look away now.  But since I don't seem to have any great insights to offer up to the Internet, I might as well give you my thoughts of the moment.  So without further ado, I will take this time to complain about State Farm Insurance.  All was well until I recently got a bill for my car insurance for six months.  This is a large chunk of change and, well, I just don't want to pay now for six months from now and let them earn all the interest on my money that I should be getting.  It's just the principle of the matter.  So I call them and tell them this and they say that they'll look into it.  I call back when I don't hear back from them in a while and they tell me it couldn't be changed.  Then they call me back and tell me it can be changed but it would be a little complicated and there will be some sort of down payment involved, and it would be hard for them to do, etc.  So I tell them that I'll go ahead and pay for the first six months, but that we needed to fix this before the next bill.  So I mail in the check.  Next thing I hear, State Farm sends me a letter cancelling my policy.  Strange.  So I ask them what's up.  Apparently my check never showed up so they cancelled it.  So I had to then give them 2 months worth of insurance payment for them to start up a direct deposit in order for my account for my policy to be reinstated.  Meanwhile, DC will probably be sending me a $100 fine for being out of insurance...for less than a day.  Three days later, I find out that they cashed my first check for six months as well as the second check for 2 months.  Now I'm in the process of fighting with them to get some of it back because that's just not right and I certainly don't owe them all that.  Sigh.

In other news, I'm starting to plot ways to get me out of this condo.  It's a nice condo and all, but when you work here and live here, it gets a bit dull.  The hermit plan was a good try, but I may have to figure out my way around this city afterall.  More details on this to come as I figure them out myself.