INGREDIENTS

• 1 1/2 cups water
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
• 1 tablespoon cracked black peppercorns

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved.
2. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to bring mixture to a simmer; cook for 20 minutes. Remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
3. Strain the cooled syrup and refrigerate it in a container with a tight fitting lid.

Notes: You can made this syrup with the standard black peppercorns, known as Tellicherry, or you could seek out more exotic peppers. The spiciness will vary depending on how finely the peppercorns are cracked—finer will give you more heat, coarser will be more tame. This syrup will last up to 1 month when refrigerated in an airtight container.

Then you make a regular martini and add some black pepper syrup. The ratios are entirely up to you, but mine went something like this: 1 shot 12 Bridges Gin (from Portland, natch), 1 shot extra dry vermouth, ~1 teaspoon syrup. You’ll have to play around with the ratios depending on how strong you want your martini, how hot your syrup is, and how much spiciness you can tolerate. For me, the net result ended up frequently confusing my tongue. One sip would taste like there’s not enough pepper, but the next would feel like there is too much. It was an odd sensation that I look forward to repeating in the not-too-distant future.

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Election! Yeay! What more can I say that others haven’t already said much more eloquently than I could come up with. The original plan was to go to the Doug Fir to watch the election. The Mercury was there as well as Sam Adams (the mayor-elect, not the beer), but the place was too packed. The gang went a few doors down to Rontom’s. Despite the rumors of coke-dealing in the bathroom, it was a decent place that I had never been to before. The whole bar is pretty much a big open room and a projection screen was set up at one end. The second Obama was announced as victor, everyone screamed and that screaming reverberated around the room. I had to cover my ears for fear of my eardrums! I tried to take a few pictures, but didn’t want to be that-annoying-guy-with-the-flash. I cleaned them up a bit in post-production, but they’re still pretty dim. Here are two, but feel free to click through to more…

After that, the gang went to Montage / La Merde for some cajun food and half-price bottles of nice Chilean wine. When it was time to depart, Kim and I ran, ran, ran, ran, ran to catch up to the #14 bus. When it hit the Bagdad area of Hawthorne, the bus had to keep away from the curb. People were spilling off of the sidewalks, yelling and cheering and setting off fireworks. You would have thought it to be New Years! Heck, maybe even Y2K! The blue voters in Oregon barely outweigh the red voters, but we’re all here packed into PDX whereas all the red folks are riding tractors in the rural rest of the state. Yee-haw.

Pig Heart! The other night, I had a pig heart as part of dinner. (That’s a rather graphic link of a raw heart. I didn’t include the actual picture inline for the sake of the sensitive vegetarians/vegans out there.) It was marinated in red wine with garlic, various spices, and lemon, then fried up in olive oil. It tastes sort of like liver, but with a rubber consistency reminiscent of octopus. You might like it if you like liver. You probably won’t otherwise. Kim had a little centimeter-sized cube and needed no more.

Telephone? I know that in this cellphone-carrying world that payphones are becoming obsolete, but I kind of thought that phonebooks at payphones have long since been extinct. I guess I was wrong.

The heating element on the old grind-n-brew coffee maker finally got to be erratic enough that it was time to get a new one. When dealing with a piece of equipment that can potentially burn down the house, “erratic” is not exactly the best adjective in the world. After hearing some suggestions in response to my post a few weeks ago and doing a little research, I settled on another grind-n-brew, but made by Capresso and has a burr grinder instead of a bladed one. It arrived today and I have made a couple of test batches. Good stuff.

There was something more I was going to say about computers and desktops and laptops, but it’s pretty lengthy and I’d rather just save that for another day.

Work has been… odd. Previous to a few months ago, I would be dealing directly with the president of the company frequently–maybe not daily, but at least a couple of times a week. As the company grew, a manager got inserted in the chain. He’s a great guy, and moreover acts as a buffer between Engineering and the president. The big boss can be a little abrasive at times, but the manager knows how to handle that well. This week, the manager has been out and I ended up having to deal directly with the boss. Has this been months ago, there wouldn’t have been a problem–but I found I was a little out of practice in my communicating-effectively-with-abrasive-boss skills. I was unprepared and it caught me off guard. Everything worked out fine, but it made me pause and be thankful to have an effective and intelligent manager.

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Well, we stopped seeing him around a month or so ago. When I thought about it, I hoped he wasn’t hurt or missing, but I didn’t think about it much. The weather was crappy for a while and our indoor/outdoor cats were inside most of the time due to kitty-colds, so I figured he was just resting and keeping warm inside.

Two weekends ago, the neighbor who owns him, who I knew lived in the apartment complex down the way, but I didn’t know exactly where, knocked on the door. I guess he got out and crawled through “the kitty highway” (the missing slat in the fence that allows cats to move between backyard and front yard) and was hiding in our backyard. After Kim climbed through some bushes to grab him, we got to talking to the neighbor. Mister Siamese (my name for him, from before we knew his actual name) had gotten a cut and badly infected front paw, which is why he was indoors. He had a big bandage and a cone-collar. Supposedly, he had been to the vet, but was out of meds now and she didn’t have the cash to take him back. Apparently, the cat belonged to a former roommate who left it to her, but she wasn’t terribly attached to it (and was doing the bare minimum, if that, to take care of him.) She wanted to know if we wanted to adopt him and get him the medical care he needed. After days and days of discussion, we figured we couldn’t take in yet another cat, but offered to put her in touch with a friend of Kim’s who worked with a local no-kill rescue shelter.

Well, after the drop-off (this most recent weekend), certain facts unearthed. The cat hadn’t been to the vet in at least five years. I’m still not certain if it had been to the vet for the infection. She changed the bandage often, but wrapped it too tight, cutting off circulation. I guess the gauze ended up acting as a makeshift tourniquet of sorts. A lot of the flesh on that front leg was decayed and rotten under the bandaging when the shelter removed it. The cat was rushed to get some emergency operations where they had to cut away just about all of the flesh down to the bone. From what I last heard (a day or two ago), he probably won’t be a tripod cat. He should be able to keep the leg, but will likely no longer have any feeling in that appendage.

That cat’s whole situation and treatment really makes me want to turn on the waterworks if I stop to think about it too long. Fortunately, he’s in good hands now. He has always been extremely clingy and forces his way onto laps, so I have no doubt that he’ll make a great pet for someone when he finally heals enough to get adopted.

Even though he’ll be elsewhere and in a good home, I’ll still miss him.

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I have my Wonderflonium, but the iPhone is not pictured. Kim’s costume was quite elaborate for being thrown together a few hours before the party. She had netting sewn into the mask’s eyes, even. She got lots of compliments, even though it usually took a little while for people to actually recognize her. Lots of people liked my “mad scientist” and “reanimator” costume. Kim was quite surprised to hear someone in the crowd mention something about “Dr. Horrible eating an apple” during the apple-bobbing-but-on-a-string contest. Someone recognized the costume! We totally had to track them down later.

Also at the party was a Sarah Palin who was so good it was scary. There was a banana who didn’t know the “peanut butter jelly time” song. There was some kind of Marie Antoinette/Corpse Bride who would often be found standing there, staring THROUGH you. She was full of the creepy. The hippie guy never left character, and I’m still trying to figure out if he was a good actor or just baked. There were quite a few other excellent costumes, but I can’t remember them all now.

Bonus video! 3 out of 4 cats are unafraid of Dementors!

(At this point, I am probably obligated to point out that if you click through the Disco Dementor photo, you’ll find some less wacky ones in the photostream.)

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See previously: Happy Not-Daylight-Savings-Time!, The Persistence of Time, Daylight Savings Crime, The Persistence of Slime, and remember: “With the extra hours of daylight saved, most people open up a money market fund to maintain daylight liquidity and preserve daylight capital.”

Yes, I realize that I have been complaining a long time and doing nothing about it. I really should go out and buy a new alarm clock. Timex isn’t offering returns or upgrades on the clock. Their canned response for this (as well as for people in Arizona(?) who do not “celebrate” DST) is to manually reset the clock twice a year. Thanks guys. I better keep the old one around, though. The minute I buy a new one, someone else is going to sign a DST law retracting the previous one, invalidating the clock.

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I think that I am mainly interested in the laser cutter and 3D printer. I remember seeing an iPhone stand made of plexiglass on Make a while ago that was laser cut and thinking to myself that it’s not too different from a lot of the paper-folding stuff I’m into. It’s just a matter of tab A into slot B. Of course, there are places like Ponoko that you can send your files off to have cut for you, but the turnaround time on a laser-cutter a few miles away is appealing.

Do you know what else is strangely appealing? The thought of taking classes in something extremely low-tech, like blacksmithing–which they will, of course, offer.

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But, anyway, the main reason for this post is not to talk about the Nathan bottle, but about my new KOR ONE bottle. Errr, make that “Hydration Vessel.” I first heard of these bottles a few months ago on some blog like LifeHacker or TreeHugger or Gizmodo. As best as I can remember, the story went something like this. A few people really liked Nalgene bottles, but kept finding shortcomings with them. The opening is a bit too wide and dumps water on you. The lid, on its little strappy thing, more often than not ends up slapping you in the face. The bottles are often too bulky for many bags and bicycles and require too hands to open. So they decided to address the shortcomings by designing their own bottle. I pre-ordered one and it finally arrived yesterday. I have to admit that it’s a damn fine bottle. The bottle itself, the latch, and the hinge all seem quite sturdy. I worry a bit about what is going to become of the hinge over time, but it seems strong and has a metal core, so I have high hopes.

Of course, one of the main reasons I bought it was the style. It looks like the sort of bottle that should contain a dreadful green liquid. The bottle will get damaged toward the end of Act 1, releasing the nasty virus that ushers in the zombie apocalypse. With zombies still in vogue and with Halloween coming up, I am not sure if getting this bottle now is good timing or bad timing.

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