Blendy Drinks recap

Blendy drinks went well last night. I think that if you have some fruit, ice and rum, it's hard to go wrong.

Specific successes included:

• Blackberry Lemonade
  1 can frozen lemonade concentrate
  Frozen blackberries
  rum and some more rum - at least 1/2 C
  some sugar
  ice
  limes to garnish
  That will make two blenderfuls. It didn't taste of alcohol, but you could smell it. A lot of my drinks turned out like that
• The Pillowfight
  Vanilla ice cream
  Frozen strawberries
  Malibu
  Vodka
  Ice
  strawberry vodka is even better in this. This is the first of three milkshake like creations. They make Splenda icecream now!
• The Hummingbird
  Vanilla ice cream
  lots of PeachTree
  Malibu
  some amaretto
  Milk
  Ice
  This was made by some other people trying to recreate something they'd had in Jamaica at a beach shack. It would've been even more amazing with some real fruit in it.
• Mudslide without a recipe
  Vanilla ice cream
  Baileys
  Kahlua
  Milk
  Ice
  Chocolate syrup
  Amaretto
  I just looked up a recipe and apparently some vodka should've been included. Oh well. A little Kahlua goes a long way if people are sensitive to the coffee flavor.

It was a good night. Besides those, we also blended some Pina Colada from a can, and Mango Margaritas from a mix. I made iced teas as well - minty, lemony, and with some Good Earth Sweet & Spicy. My worries about running out of food or mixers means that now I have a freakish amount of juice to get through before it goes bad. and a freezer full of ice.

My new blender survived very well for a $20 investment. it made claims about having a design to assist with blendering ice, and it seemed to do quite well. We had one blender fatality, which made me feel bad. Someone volunteered their blender, and then it died :( At least they were the ones pressing the buttons when the dying happened.

Iced Tea and Blendy Drinks

I'm excited because I'm hosting an "Iced Tea and Blendy Drinks" party tomorrow night. I don't imagine it will be as memorable as the "Couchwarming and Exotic Fruit" party, but two-pronged parties are generally better than spear-like parties.

Hopefully, we will be able to recreate the strawberry milkshake-like drink that one of my coworkers wants to cristen "The Pillowfight". If we make it well and if I remember some ratios and/or ingredients, I'll try to say more about that later.

It's pretty warm here, but it makes it nice for standing out on the balcony at night.

I continue to feel like I'm waiting to go home to california crossed with feeling like I want to settle here more firmly.

Work goes well. I sometimes feel like I might be at a level above "competent" with this whole programming thing, and that's a thrill.

Zumba (pronounced "stupid")

I went to an exercise class just now that was supposed to be all cool and dancy, but I was greatly hindered by my mostly complete inability to dance, and then surprosed to learn that I have forgotten how to gallop. Why was galloping in a dancy class? Who knows. except that this style of exercising, which is called Zumba (pronounced "stupid"), features skinny Brazil-looking women on the original website, and maybe they gallop in place, or in a tiny circle, more often in South America.

I'll probably go again. Especially since exercise is good, and there was a part where we got to "jump, jump" like in that stupid song from a long time ago. and while I may continue to be no good at dancing forever, I can at least still jump up and down mostly on rhythm -- unless i get into it, and then immediately lose the beat and have to stand around confused for a while.

I made a nifty macro thing in Excel today as a helper tool for the proposal writing process that we go through quarterly. It was So Much More Fun! than the awful Excel stuff I was doing a long time ago when I was in grad school. I think it was because no one told me to do it, and then people appreciated it after it was done. Yay!

Oh! And there was a Weakerthans concert last night! That was super awesome. The had the New Amsterdams opening for them, and my new music-guy crush is on the slightly punky, yet oh so presentable, lead singer of the New Amsterdams.

Also also, Netflix apparently is having a run on "The Fox and the Hound" so instead of getting my bizzarro animal combo of "The Fox and the Hound" and "12 Monkeys", I'm getting "12 Monkeys" and "Brazil"... and disc2 of season2 of Gilmore Girls. Like, OMG! Did you know that Lorelei has like totally called off the engagement! Dude!