Long day, long drinks

[muckefuck]

Yesterday traced an impressive arc from unexpected awfulness to heartwarming success. I woke up at 3 a.m. with terrible abdominal cramps and spent the next half hour on the pot praying for them to end. They eventually relented, but were back again three hours later. I ended up so sore that I was slathering my poor ass with lotion. I spent most of the day dragging around the house, feeling sorry for myself, and wondering if I should cancel cocktails that evening. I urged Nuphy to take advantage of the perfect weather and get himself to Von Steuben Day without me, but he declined.

Since the toast I had at lunch stayed down, and nothing more came out after that, I decided I could make it through a couple hours of hosting, especially if I had Graysong on hand to take the shaker from me if need be. Then I got another curve ball: Beardowski decided to call in a favour I'd offered months back and crash chez nous so he didn't have to drive back to Joliet. As I told the Old Man, "I guess the moral is never make an offer you're not willing honour when feeling your worst." (Fortunately, it didn't come to that as his first choice worked out in the end after all.) For dinner, monshu heated up the choucroute and served it with some spätzle; I ate mainly the latter, with just a little gravy for flavour.

By seven or so, I was really warming to the gathering. I prepared to hustle everyone out onto the deck by arraying it with tea lights (inadvertently immolating a poor spider in the process). monshu had discovered a cocktail recipe using rosemary simple syrup he wanted to try, so I tracked down a couple of others and created a menu. Scruffy was the first to arrive and, as always, game to try one. In all, I made three limoni frizzanti, a rosemary Old Fashioned, and four rosemary-chocolate martinis (a brainchild of Greysong's). Since the bitters rather overpowered the rosemary in the first batch of the martinis, I souped it up by dropping a couple sprigs in the shaker. My bear friend from work made a rare appearance for which I'd prepared by acquiring some ginger root. (He complained that the ginger liqueurs weren't gingery enough.) I let him peel and grate it himself, and the juice ended up in some vodka concoction.

One of the reasons I was so anxious not to cancel is that we had several first-timers. A couple weeks back, I ran into somebody on a mutual friend's wall who I hadn't seen in 20 years and didn't realise was still in Chicago, let alone in my very same neighbourhood. He handled very well being the odd man out, though he did ask me afterwards if we could meet for coffee some time and really catch up. And remember that block party I crashed thanks to mikiedoggie two weeks ago? Well I got Graysong to bring along Big Tim and one of his posse and they were model guests, instrumental in getting the party out onto the porch and game for a quick tour before leaving. Not getting my hopes too high, but as I've repeated well past the point of banality, it would be great if I could build up associations with solid guys who live near me.

So by the time people were breaking away for SoFo and Touché, I was feeling a nearly ideal level of tired satisfaction. A bit better-rested and I might've been tempted to go along (which I'm glad I didn't, since I'd've been a wreck today). But I felt pleased enough with how things had gone that I was content to stay in and regale the GWO with the details. I could even have been in bed by midnight if I'd only had a bit more sense, but I was too busy looking up loose ends from our free-ranging conversation out on the back deck.

Comments

[mollyc-q.livejournal.com]

"(He complained that the ginger liqueurs weren't gingery enough.) I let him peel and grate it himself, and the juice ended up in some vodka concoction."

Getting a solid, gingery ginger syrup is an art form. The Patterson House's Dark and Stormy floored me. When one of the owners came by our table, I asked how long did it take for them to manage the right balance of strong and but not over extracted. He stated that in tweeking the recipe they went through a produce box of ginger and that tears were nearly involved.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't have anything like that kind of patience. I thought the ginger simple syrup we made last year was decent enough, but I didn't get around to making it again.