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So it’s Saturday morning, 3,5 days after I set the vodka infusion and it was time for a first tasting. Filtering was tedious and I hoped coffee filters would have worked better but they didn’t. Alas, that shouldn’t stop us. Since it’s quite early I served it on the rocks and we had a taste.

Lannie ready to taste the strawberry goodness

Lannie was enthousiast! She could taste the strawberry, which means a lot actually. Since she can’t smell she depends on her taste buds and it appears not only the gorgeous strawberry scent but also the flavour is preserved.

Now the taste. First: STRAWBERRY. It’s pretty much in your face. The after taste is still a little bitter, which means it probably needs another few days to sit. Lannie also commented that it tasted better as the ice began to melt a little, which means also it needs some more dilution. Lannie also loved the colour which is pretty pink:

Pretty in pink

All in all it seems like a success. I have a small amount sitting in the fridge so I can experiment mixing it with other stuff. I’m thinking about 7-up/Sprite at the moment.

Alright, alright. I could start this off with an apology for not having blogged here in forever, but who am I fooling? Most likely nobody will read this anyway, so I’ll spare you that crap.

Now for the real reason why I post again: Strawberry/Vanilla infused Vodka. Ah see, I thought that might get your attention Anyway, in an effort to keep my easily bored mind occupied I’ve tried an experiment today: Strawberry/Vanilla infused Vodka. I was inspired by a blog I found ages ago, about two guys who try to infuse about anything they come across incl. bacon

The concept is pretty simple. You take herbs, fruits or vegetables, stick it in jar and throw some vodka over it, then you let it rest for a couple of days up to a couple of weeks in the dark. The result is not your average sweet Bacardi Breezer you get at the supermarket (unless you use Skittles), but a flavoured vodka which you then can use for mixing or pure if the taste is really good.

Anyway, I went ahead, got a 2 liter jar at the Xenos, some vodka (Wyborowa, which is said to be nice and it was on sale) and strawberries and vanilla beans. The first few reports I read let to believe not to cut strawberries, so I didn’t but later found out from various sources to slice them up. Moral of the story: use various sources I’ve used about 1,5 vanilla beans which I carved up a bit to easily give away the flavour. Now I let it rest for a couple of days and go taste it. If it’s too harsh, I’ll let it rest for a while longer, but I’m very curious!

This is the jar after about 3-4 hours:

Jar with strawberries, vanilla and vodka

As you can see, the strawberries are already loosing their colour and the vodka is already pretty red! Also my hands smell like vanilla (I probably end up smelling my fingers all night long *snif snif* mmmm.

I’ll let you know how it tastes in a couple of days

Tijs recommeded watching The Wire, so I did and while it’s all grim and shitty and not purposely funny there are some scenes which are really funny.

Just check this conversation between 2 officers while they reconstruct a murder scene:

Bunk: Fuck.
Jimmy: Motherfucker.
Bunk: Fucking fuck.
Bunk: Fuck.
Bunk: Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Bunk: What the fuck?
Bunk: Fuck.
Jimmy: Fuck.
Bunk: No. Fuck.
Jimmy: Fuck it.
Jimmy: Fuck.
Bunk: Motherfuck.
Bunk: Fuck.
Bunk: Fuckity, fuck, fuck, fuck.
Jimmy: Fucker
Jimmy: Fuck.
Jimmy & Bunk: Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Bunk: Motherfucker.
Jimmy: Fuckin’ A.
Jimmy: Fuck.
Jimmy: Check this. Motherfucker.
Bunk: Fuck me.

Gotta love HBO

Got this in my inbox this morning and had me in stitches

(Here’s the reply the teacher received the following day)

Dear Mrs. Jones,

I wish to clarify that I am not now, nor have I ever been, an exotic dancer.
I work at Home Depot and I told my daughter how hectic it was last week before the blizzard hit. I told her we sold out every single shovel we had, and then I found one more in the back room, and that several people were fighting over who would get it. Her picture doesn’t show me dancing around a pole. It’s supposed to depict me selling the last snow shovel we had at Home Depot.
From now on I will remember to check her homework more thoroughly before she turns it in.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Smith

No, I haven’t posted about this before, but yes I’m working on NaMuWriMo as well and quite successfully so far. As a challenge I’m trying to compose all on my guitar and not from my computer, this gives me the advantages that I get to pick up on my guitar skills, my knowledge of chords, etc.

Anyway, I got the basic chords down for both verse as well as chorus and even the melody is starting to come along nicely. I’m still working on the rhythm and the lyrics, but I suppose I could have that done before the end of the month.

Biggest problems so far is to write a lyrics. What the fuck do you write about anyway? Most lyrics are about love and death, agreed, but I don’t have problems with either, so I’m looking in to other things that annoy me, so far still no luck, but we’ll get there.

Another problem is that I only work on the music when I’m alone. For some reason I feel terrible insecure about it so far, so I don’t want to share too much until it at least has some shape or form and before I can actually play it. *sighs*

Oh well, I think it’s a great exercise though

Alright, like so many people I really enjoyed Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which is basically the story of drug induced road trip to Las Vegas by a fictional character called Raoul Duke.

What I didn’t know up to this point is that Raoul Duke is an alter ego of Hunter S. Thompson, an American (real life) journalist. Which also explains why I didn’t truly understood Johnny Depps effort in portraying Raoul Duke.

If you can spare the time, have a look at this documentary about Hunter S. Thompson (or if you don’t have the time quickly skip through it and watch the parts with Hunter):
http://www.guba.com/watch/2000950652

It’s uncanny how close Johnny got to the real thing whileportraying Hunter/Raoul in FLiLV! Don’t you agree?

Oh and for the fun of it, a collection of Hunter S. Thompson quotes, which are amazingly eloquent at times:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/hunter_s_thompson.html

Learned a little concentration exercise at drum lessons yesterday, which is really easy, but pretty tricky to keep doing for a while. Everyone can have a go at this, as long as you have to hands, a surface (can be a table or your legs or anything).

Tap the following with your hands:

Right, left, right, right

Then:

Left, right, left, left

And over and over again and try to increase speed. It’s called a paradiddle and you can keep saying that doing the exercise to keep on track.

If you want to make a little tougher on yourself hit the first hit a little harder so:

RIGHT, left, right right, LEFT, right, left, left

And if that bores you do a paradiddle diddle:

Right, left right, right, left, left, left, right, left, left, right, right

I can assure you, unless you’re focused you will loose track pretty quickly

So, Friday, last week, I got a mail summoning me and part of my team to our great German overlords (T-Systems) in Munich. We were all a bit skeptic and thought they were not so serious so we disregarded it. It turns out they were quite serious indeed!

Good part of the story: It’s Oktoberfest
Bad part of the story: I’ll be the only one there. My colleagues are all heading home the same day because of family or obligations or combination of both. Meh.

Oh well, I’ll be fine there, at least I made sure I have a hotel room with WiFi.

Yesterday we had our first ’song writing session’. It came down to extending the few chords we already have to something that sounds almost decent. And although we don’t have a full fledged song just quite yet, I think it was useful and incredibly fun, so we might do this more often.

And I can’t believe we actually did a SWOT analysis of the band