A show and dinner

Well, that was five hours of live theatre I won't soon forget.

I was looking forward to coming home and writing a decent review, but that was before I knew I wouldn't even sit down to dinner until after 9 p.m. Besides, what can I really say about the Neo-Futurist staging of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude except that it's brilliant? Well, quite a few things, actually. I could talk about the man who stalked out screaming at director Greg Allen that he "hates Eugene O'Neill" or the seventh-act stretch or of an entire act reduced to three lines of dialogue or the ingenious use made of a rubber ball, a red balloon, and a Cabbage Patch doll (not all in the same scene, of course).

Leave that until tomorrow. For now, I'll simply say that we left hungry for both food and for dialogue, so the three of us made a beeline for the Atwood Café. They can't make a proper Aviation there, but they make a lovely Montparnasse.

Florida's best, improved

Knowing how groggy I was from the one-two punch of my long night of theatre and DST, monshu gave me but two tasks for today: Do my taxes (we're seeing a CPA on Wednesday) and come up with a new cocktail for him. Last weekend, I bought pulp-free orange juice specifically for use in drinks and then Uncle Betty and I ended up drinking Manhattans all evening. So I went hunting through my books for a way to put it to good use today. Here's what I came up with:

• Paradise 2 parts gin, 1 part apricot brandy, 1 part orange juice, dash of lemon juice.
  
  Lovely. The lemon juice cuts the sweetness and the top-notch apricot brandy monshu bought me gives this a wonderful fruitiness.


• Damn the Weather 2 parts gin, 1 part sweet vermouth, 1 part oj, ½ part triple sec.
  
  Quite appropriate given the on-again off-again rain and generally grayness outside. Not as dry as the Paradise, but possessed of a refreshing coolness. I like the taste of these 20s cocktails, I just wish they weren't so damn strong.

There's a chicken roasting in the oven, kitty is hiding out downstairs (perhaps napping on the bed, perhaps napping under it), and the Old Man has moved on to mother's milk. In short, all is right with the world.