(no subject)

The grand irony of yesterday was that I ended up far more exhausted than the man in the hospital gown. Wednesday night I kept myself up all hours with needless worry. I woke up around four and managed only about another hour of fitful sleep before our friends came to drive us out to the suburbs and, to top it off, had nothing substantial to eat until one of them dashed over to Panera to fetch me a bacon-egg sandwich.

As a result, I dozed off on the trip back into town and had to fight to stay up long enough for my supper to pass through. (Nothing worse than killer reflux when you really need your sleep.) The result being that when I did finally lay down, I sleep for twelve hours straight. I awoke in awe of my own sloth; I didn't imagine it was physically possible for me to sleep that long without being drugged.

It was fortunate that I pushed myself to do the shopping yesterday when it was still drop-dead gorgeous out. Now that it's overcast and drippy, I don't have to leave the house unless I really want to. The steaks the Old Man was craving during his enforced fast are contentedly marinating the fridge; served with a little baby bok choy and green salad tonight, they'll be lovely. (Though now that it's turned rainy, I do regret just a bit not buying celeriac for a mash.)

If it clears up for a bit, I may yet go out and buy some plants for the garden, but I'd be just as happy to sit out on the back porch and sketch out some ideas with monshu instead. Sure Gethsemane'll be a circus zoo tomorrow, but more crowded = better cruising anyway. Maybe we'll get to watching some of those movies and shows we have stockpiled, and Bertelsmann knows we've got enough unread books in the house to keep us occupied through the end of the decade.

Jak będzie po polsku "cingu lingu"?

Those who know my drinking habits know that, in general, I'm not much for vodka. This probably has something to do with the fact that I first encountred it in college, when no one could afford really good vodka. So my mates tended to place a premium on smoothness, i.e. lack of character, and would mask the unpleasant burn of lesser distillations with strong flavours such as fruit jello or Kahlua.

So I probably never would've developed a taste for the stuff at all if Nuphy hadn't introduced me to Okhotnichya, a.k.a "hunter's vodka". This is a traditional flavoured vodka which is steeped with mountain herbs and sweetened with honey, but for all that you'd never mistake it for any monastic herbal liqueur; it still tastes very much like vodka. This was right before the market for flavoured vodka really exploded in this country, a development which paradoxically pushed Okhotnichya off the shelves to make room for concoctions with everything from vanilla to watermelon. Around this time, a Polish co-worker told me about Żubrówka, which takes its name from a Polish word for its chief aromatic, buffalo grass (Hierochloe odorata). I was intrigued, but since the FDA had banned true Żubrówka due to the presence of coumarin, I couldn't get my hands on the real stuff.

Flash forward to last Christmas, when lhn handed me a bottle of buffalo grass vodka. I didn't even realise until looking at the label to write this entry that it's not actually Polish, but a Lithuanian brand (Stumbras, from the Lithuanian name for the same plant, stumbražolė). I joyfully hoisted it home, put it in the liquor cabinet, and basically ignored it for half a year until my eyes fell on it last night and I resolved to give it a try this afternoon, when I would have plenty of time for the alcohol to work its way out before bedtime.

It has--as one might expect--a pleasant grassy scent and I initially decided to give it my usual treatment for new-fangled flavoured vodkas, i.e. tall with tonic. But the subtle taste was completely overwhelmed by quinine, so I followed this up with a shot of it room temperature and neat. Verdict: I could get used to it. It's neither as sweet nor as herbal as the Okhotnichya, but burns a little less. Certainly, it's more interesting than straight Stoli or Absolute.