Tag: alcohol

Sunday Stealing Looks Back on September

booze, cookies and hair dye

Welcome to Sunday Stealing. Here we will steal all types of questions from every corner of the blogosphere. Our promise to you is that we will work hard to find the most interesting and intelligent questions. Cheers to all of us thieves!

We’re stealing this meme about last month – it looks back on September – from Life of a Fool. This blogger maintains this meme has “been seen everywhere.” The questions only require a yes or no, but if you’d like to elaborate, we’d like to hear what you have to say. (That’s good because this would be very short otherwise.)

In the Past Month Meme

During September, did you …

1. Drink alcohol? I don’t believe so.  I had suggested to my wife that we could have a glass of wine from the bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, probably for the last few months, but it’s never gotten beyond that. It’s interesting how alcohol which was such a wonderful thing to discover in my 20s, has largely fallen by the wayside. 

2. Try a new recipe? No I don’t really look at recipes and I only make the same six items anyway.

Shop Around

3. Go shopping with friends? I avoid going shopping at all. The only thing I bought that wasn’t groceries in September was at Lodge’s, the oldest department store in Albany, and I purchased a couple of pairs of slippers to walk around in the house.

I really don’t like shopping with other people. I have stories. One time this past decade, my wife was going to buy me a winter coat for Christmas, so we went into JCPenney’s. I looked at two coats and liked the second one. I tried it on; it fit, and I said, “Okay, we’re done.” She said, “Don’t you want to look at some others?” “NO!” 

I like buying books and music because I generally know what I want.  Grocery shopping is okay. 

4. Eat an entire box of cookies by yourself? No, and don’t think I ever did. I ate a whole package of oatmeal raisin cookies in September, but there were only two cookies.

5. Dye your hair? If I’ve ever dyed my hair, I have no recollection. I might have done so for Halloween many years ago. When I was in high school stage crew, a young woman named Mary, the lead in a production, sprayed my hair blond.

Thank you for playing! Please come back next week. 

The anniversary of my first hangover

Not overcast enough

hangoverThe first hangover I ever had was on June 9, 1976, 44 years ago. Why do I remember? It must be the numerical flow: 6/9/76.

I never drank any alcohol before I was legal, which was 18. Then and now, I thought it was appropriate. Best I can remember, I had my first drink in a bar called Amps on Clinton Street in Binghamton, NY. In my recollection, my sister Leslie’s band Crystal Ship was performing. This took place a few months after my 19th birthday. It was a Tom Collins. Tasty, so I believed.

I went to college that fall, and I had the occasional drink. It was usually a simple concoction, rum and Coke, rye and ginger ale. I’d have a screwdriver, though when I started boycotting orange juice c 1977 because of Anita Byrant, I switched to a greyhound.

My choice of wine was white, or later, rose, because the tannins in red wine gave me a raging headache after one glass. I never acquired a taste for beer, which was a drag. Everyone else at the table in a bar was sharing a pitcher or two, but I’m drinking Something Else. It was also more expensive.

Mike Royko would have been proud

The Okie and I split in late 1974. Soon after I returned to college, I got involved with a student newsletter called the Wind Sun News. It was daily for a short time, then weekly, before it finally reached a thrice-weekly schedule in the spring of 1976. The newsletter came out Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning, so we worked on it the nights before. Then my friend Bernadette and I would drink every MWF night like I heard real, hard-drinking journalists operated.

Without question, she could outdrink me. One evening I had four mixed drinks – tequila sunrise or maybe daiquiri or white Russian – and she had four double shots of vermouth. I never developed a taste for vermouth or Scotch.

On June 8, we were out drinking again, and I thought I had consumed more than enough. So I switched to ginger ale or maybe 7-Up, and I’m CONVINCED that was the culprit. And the next morning… Oh. My. Goodness.

It was overcast, yet it felt as though there were two suns up at once. For some reason, I had to go to both my savings bank and the place with my checking account. They were at either end of the village, not terribly far apart on most of the time, but the Bataan death march that day.

The worst part was that we had agreed to go horseback riding. There are very few things less pleasant when hung over. Anyway, I remember the only time I took horseback riding lessons, because of that painful convergence.

Autumnal start, drinking, poetry, Internety stuff

It’s usually white wine, or occasionally something with Jack Daniels, Kahuala, vodka, or rum.

Elizabeth asked, in response to Ask Roger Anything (and YOU still can):

Why do they call the Autumnal Equinox the beginning of Fall when it is already Fall? Likewise, the Winter Solstice isn’t the beginning of winter but well along into winter?

Why do “they” say anything? Why do they still use foot/pound? From Wikipedia: “Some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as mid-autumn, others with a longer lag treat it as the start of autumn. Meteorologists (and most of the temperate countries in the southern hemisphere) use a definition based on months, with autumn being September, October, and November in the northern hemisphere, and March, April, and May in the southern hemisphere.

“In North America, autumn is usually considered to start with the September equinox. In traditional East Asian solar term, autumn starts on or around 8 August and ends on about 7 November.”

The answer, therefore, is American exceptionalism. That said, I never liked the fact that holidays commemorating dead soldiers and workers essentially frame summer.

New York Erratic must actually be from New Jersey because there are a lot of questions:

When you drink, is it beer, cider, wine, or mixed drinks?

When I first started drinking, which was when I was 18 – it was legal then – I did a lot of trial and error. I started with mixed drinks, mostly the sweet ones like a Tom Collins, eventually discovering rum and Coke, and 7 (7-Up) and 7 (Seagram’s Seven). Also white wine, but red gave me raging headaches.

But I could never drink beer. I would go out with folks and they’d share a pitcher or two, while I was drinking something else, which was both isolating and more expensive.

Now, it’s usually white wine, or occasionally something with Jack Daniels, Kaluha, vodka, or rum. NOT beer, not vermouth, and not gin.

What are your favorite flavor and favorite smell?

Strawberry (my favorite ice cream, yogurt), and bread baking, respectively.

Do you remember something better when you hear it out loud or when you read it?

Definitely NOT hearing it, unless it’s learning music. Preferably both, such as hearing someone’s name while reading the nametag. People giving me instructions for a computer orally is almost useless; I may not get it visually, but at least I can read it again.

So what do you think is up with the whole “dual personality” of the Internet age? How many people do you think have alternate personas – or multiple personas – online? And what do you think that is doing for the culture?

I found out only recently that someone who has a pseudonym on the Times Union site, and comments on several blogs, is someone who apparently has known me for a long time. He’s much more a jerk than he was in real life; this COULD mean he’s turned into a jerk, OR it could mean that being behind the shield of anonymity has allowed him to become a jerk.

I essentially reposted an article about a Tulsa, OK website disallowing anonymous comments, and it generated a lot of comments, mostly negative. Fear of harassing and threatening e-mail, for instance. Conversely, one guy “decided some time ago to post comments on the TU as me. I’ll admit that it keeps any snark I might be tempted to exhibit under control. It keeps one more civil than one might be posting anonymously…a good thing IMO.”

How many people post anonymously? I have no idea. But, I’ve discovered it’s a long-standing virtue; see this article from 1995. There are about 2.7 billion people on the Internet. Some don’t care who knows what about them, and another group has concluded that the NSA already knows.

Is it why people seem ruder? Possible, but there are so many variables, it’s difficult to isolate. Maybe it’s the fault of twerking.

Is there an optimum level of technology?

No. That’s because whatever technology is created, someone can build upon it. That’s why, not incidentally, I oppose these expanded copyright laws that protect the copyright holder for life plus 75 years. The reason the Constitution says “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries. (Article 1, Section Eight) was to allow for innovation, not to reward copyright holders for long periods.

Do you ever (or have you ever) written fiction or poetry?

Never fiction, although I did have, in my mind some years ago, a roman a clef about my previous church choir experience.

My girlfriend in the late 1970s/early 1980s was a poet. She went to poetry workshops, and I went with her sometimes, so eventually, I tried writing. I never found “my voice,” or whatever; I never “got” it.

D is for Drinking

I never had a drink until I was of legal age.

JEOPARDY! Show #6480 – Friday, November 16, 2012
BOOZY TALK
It precedes “rummy” & comes after “cotton”
It’s a geographical area that forms a harbor; any one in a storm
It’s the title of a 1958 no. 1 hit by the Champs; it’s also the entire lyric
This royal family ruled France from 1589 to 1792
De website for dis company says “a diamond is forever”
(Answers at the end.)

When I was 18, the legal age for consuming alcohol in New York State, and much of the United States, was 18, the same age as one could vote, smoke cigarettes, drive at night without restrictions, and go to war. However, there was concern about underage drinking, which sometimes also involved driving. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 withheld “revenue from states that allow the purchase of alcohol by anyone under the age of 21.” Different states have different laws about consumption, though “15 states and the District of Columbia ban underage consumption outright.”

Unsurprisingly, the issue of underage drinking remains; it’s just been pushed to the college campuses. In fact, many college presidents want the drinking age lowered to 18, believing that the higher age leads to more binge consumption. I tend to agree.

This is actually true: I never had a drink until I was of legal age. It may have been a Tom Collins at a bar on Clinton Street in Binghamton, NY where my sister, who was NOT old enough to drink, was singing with a band.

In college, I learned what I liked – most clear liquors, whiskey, Kahlua. And what I didn’t – vermouth, Scotch, and, unfortunately, beer. Not liking beer in a college town is a real drag, because while everyone else is sharing a pitcher, I’m ordering a white wine or a mixed drink.

I also learned, the hard way, never to change drinks during the evening. The first hangover I ever had was the morning of June 9, 1976, five years after my first drink. This was memorable because I went horseback riding that day – brutal. And a Long Island iced tea is a sneakily treacherous beverage.

If you look in the top shelf of our pantry these days, you’d think we imbibe a lot. In fact, I’ll go weeks without drinking anything other than an occasional glass of wine.

JEOPARDY! answers:
Gin
Port
Tequila
Bourbon
DeBeers

One of my favorite songs about liquor is Demon Alcohol by the Kinks. I prefer the original, but all I could find is this cartoon adaptation.
***
How to make a Dark ‘N’ Stormy, which I should note, I had never heard of.

ABC Wednesday – Round 12

The June swoon

The big thing, though, was that the Daughter had not one, but two dance recitals.


This has been the busiest June I can remember. I was in charge of the Friends of the Albany Public Library annual meeting, which involved arranging for the speaker, planning a dinner for 20, and getting a plaque made, the latter two of which had more complications than I need to go into here. But it ultimately went off successfully. The best part is that I discovered an old-fashioned drink called a sidecar; I loved it!

Our church is in covenant with one of the local schools, and one Saturday, that meant putting together a playground, which entailed, among other things, clearing a field of weeds and a tremendous amount of trash. Here’s a brief news story.

I attended a comic book show. Went to at least three parties, with another two this upcoming weekend. I’m not even counting visits to the dentist and eye doctor.

The big thing, though, was that the Daughter had not one, but two dance recitals. The first was at her public school, where she was a new recruit in something called Step. A couple of weeks later, her ballet school was having its annual recital. That school’s founder is one Madeline Cantarella Culpo. One of her grandsons is Michael Culpo, a Division I basketball player, while one of her granddaughters is the new Miss USA, Olivia Culpo; she is understandably proud.
***
Why I am getting so much spam on this site, over 300 per day? The filter catches it, but it’s still tedious to remove. And most of it is of the bad spam variety, from companies selling electronic cigarettes, payday loans, or “pantyhose covered female foot fetish,” filled with suspicious links and unreadable text. Whereas GOOD spam is: “Helpful info. Lucky me I discovered your website by chance, and I am shocked why this accident didn’t happen earlier! I bookmarked it.” I know it’s a lie, but at least it’s pleasing to the eye.

Ramblin' with Roger
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