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Joe mentioned to me that he was going to make mead and I replied with “I want that to be my first alcohol”. He said that no one has gotten first drunk on mead before, and I said not since the 12th century. I’m going to start consuming alcohol but I want some arbitrary rules to make it mine.

From SuburbanAdventureRehost

Some of the ones I’m considering:

1) only drink something where I’ve shaken the hand of its maker. If I ever become wine snob, Southern Hemisphere wines could prove tough.
2) for each actuarial exam I get to drink one more type of distilled or fermented drink until I unlock them all as an FCAS.
3) only drink things of a particular color, preferably something odd.
4) only drink things whose proof value is below my age. Right now, I can drink most strong beers but not many fortified wines.
5) only drink things whose percent alcohol is below the maximum distance in miles I can run in a single go. If I want to ever slam Everclear, I need to start prepping for some ultra marathons.

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Whenever I go to buy something at a liquor store, something I’ve done less than 5 times, I feel like a lost child.  I walk to the store attendant, tug on their pant leg and say “I need booze”.  I always know nearly exactly what I need to the point where I should just have a note pinned to my jacket that says “banana liquor and dark rum <3 Mom” maybe with a $50 bill under it just in case I forget how money works.  I got my alcohol and darted.

Next was the trial run at home of bananas foster, a dish revered by rum enthusiasts and camp commissioners that it is at the upper end of how much alcohol I’ll tolerate as even after ignition plus simmering 2/3rds of the alcohol remains.  In my test run at home, I ran into a problem; to get the alcohol to ignite I had to heat it, but the oven is immediately under my microwave so I’d ignite the alcohol, wait for condensation to form on the microwave and start to sizzle, remove the dish from the heat, wipe the microwave and repeat.  My expert assessment panel said it wasn’t sweet enough so I upped the proportion of butter, brown sugar and allspice by 50%.  Starting Recipe

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I woke up today and was fatigued, dizzy, had a headache, and a hint nausea so I called off my Sunday breakfast with the program director and called off going to camp to help with check-in.  I reported my symptoms to a medically inclined friend who stated that I had a hangover.  Good to know, as at the age of 26 I’ve still never drank alcohol except incidentally (alcohol is used as a solvent for some medicines, in cooking, and a few times I’ve been deceived as to the nature of something I was about to drink).  This is analogous to a virgin with crabs, I feel like I should get smashed just so I have balance on the experience.

I’m pretty sure it was just from overexposure to the sun combined with sleeping poorly.

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I received my degree today.   Finally.  It nicely states my name and degree and university in a lightly serifed font like an elegant combination of Copperplate Gothic and Cooper Black.  I take it out of the protective case, show my dad, he shakes my hand and I put it on the table to clear space to put it in a place of honor upon the refrigerator.

Aside:  Importance on the Robinson fridge is determined by proximity to the calendar.  You ain’t worth shit if your art/report card/degree/honorific doesn’t at least make it onto the freezer.

I decide to put it directly on top of the calendar and return to see the face of horror: My father’s over-iced screw driver in a plastic tumbler we stole from my aunt’s house slowly approaching the surface of the one indication that proves in the eyes of God and/or the world’s credit agencies that I’m better than my brother.  I see the first drips of condensation held to the plastic of the cup only by a prayer and water’s electrostatic adhesiveness thinking that only the intervention of Le Chantelier himself could change the laws of chemistry such that my symbol erudition and triumph would remain unbesmearched when I receive a deus ex machina: the soft baritone of Shelby Foote announcing factoids of the Civil War stills my father’s alcohol impeded heart enough that I can wrench the 80 lb bonded paper from the Van Der Waals force-induced grip of the table.

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One of the benefits of perpetual sobriety is having crystal clear memories of what your friends do while inebriated.

This incident is the delightful intersection of alcohol and technology. My brother has used Yahoo! Mail for years but has hit up against its storage limit and wanted to switch to something, after two 40s I convinced him and he tried registering but was stopped by the CAPTCHA which he fudged a key and had to try again.  Each got progressively harder until he had something like “o0Ol|1q9p” or another of its ilk that so frustrated me when I played Nintendo.

Good to know that Google has systems in place not only to stop spam-bots but also moderates the BAC of those using its services.

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As winter descends, the mice have returned to the house of Robinson and the cabinet containing our cookies, crackers and cereals has fallen victim to several daring midnight raids.  The mice have become smart enough to avoid the traps, maybe because they smell like dead mice, so I tried a new tactic.  I took all my brother’s excess liquor and placed rows against the cabinet.  They could probably more a single bottle, so I used 3 layers thing of bottles to stop them starting with daquiri mix and getting harder as one goes forward finally ending in a row of 141 and vodka.

I don’t think they’ll get through.  And if they do, I imagine they’ll have an Absolut blast doing it.