Headed for ruin and damnation

Until recently I could honestly say that I disliked drinking virtually all alcohol save for wine and an occasional beer. Oh sure, there’d been a gin and tonic era in my past (they were so fashionable once, especially in the summer), and a bloody mary moment (so “brunch from the seventies”), and I pumped all sorts of cognacs and liqueurs into sauces and baked goods, but all those oddly shaped bottles basically collect dust in my cabinet.

So what happened? Recently I decided that nothing tastes better than a martini after a day of not-getting-enough-work-done. There are a number of martini models and martini-look-alikes that suit me just fine (and that number is growing). I like the entire experience, the glass shape, the fact that you almost never drink martinis alone (it hasn’t come to that), the jolt of cold, all of it.

My reader from Boston writes this morning:

Another nice thing about martinis: one can talk for hours about them. …[A]t one point in Harvard History Department circles, the Bernard DeVoto formula was favored (2.6 [gin] to 1 [vermouth]— but the ice factor is VERY important; you must experiment. Then it's perfect).

I’ll add this: you can read people’s martini stories for hours as well. There is something about the drink that spells adulthood, irreverence, precision. It is a brainy piece of art, a drink for the strong-headed. A classic.

P.S. Oh why don’t I just blurt it out: ever since cooking late at night at L’Etoile and hanging out with the chefs and waiters afterwards at the bar, I have also grown fond of Cosmos. But these have to be even more perfectly prepared than Martinis: Triple Sec, not Cointreau! And if you overdo the cranberry, you may as well pour it down the back of your enemy.

Like I said in the title, I am steps away from a complete spiral toward hell and damnation.

Looking for something else and finding yourself

It turns out that for some unbeknownst to me reason, my photos come up on a Google image search pretty quickly. I was searching yesterday afternoon, for reasons that are irrelevant (as is most of my searching, I admit), for an image of Umbria (really, it doesn’t matter why, in the middle of writing my lecture I was looking up Umbria) and the first page, indeed the first photo that came up on Google was one from an Ocean post.

Now, I suppose that would be considered a good thing if you took it upon yourself to keep one of those photo blogs where people could come and admire (or so you hope in your delusional state of exalted pride) your photos. But Ocean is primarily a text blog and what also comes up is lots of text (always the last entry of the month where the photo is hidden). That is sort of funny. Or pathetic. Because I am sure that people looking for photos of Umbria are not a little surprised at where they are taken – to some lame blog of a Polish-born law prof in Wisconsin.

Welcome anyway. At least that first photo of Umbria is a decent-ish one. It would be terrible if the one that came up immediately was the one of me eating an ice cream dessert. Thankfully you don’t get to that one until much later in the search.