Successes and failures

[xiphias]

Father and I put up a tub surround for the walls around our bathtub enclosure. The tiles have been falling out of the wall for, um, YEARS now, and we finally did something about it. Seems to have worked well enough.

Then I installed a shower door, to replace our shower curtain. And it looks fine.

'Cept. . . the installation rather assumes that the tub enclosure has angles in it that are somewhat close to right angles. And this is . . . less true than it might be. If I got the doors such that they'd close completely -- that is, such that the top corner of the sliding door and the bottom corner of the sliding door could touch the wall jamb simultaneously, then the door was tilted with respect to the upper and lower sliding tracks such that it could not slide.

I've gotten it to a . . . compromise position . . . which makes it usable, but it's not right, and, I don't think it CAN be.

So, that's a partial success. Or a partial failure, depending on how you view your glasses of water.

The other thing is much more on the "success" side. I've been working on the Blue Blazer, a drink which Jerry Thomas invented in the 1850s or so. It involves setting whiskey on fire and pouring it back and forth between two silver mugs, so that the bartender throws a stream of blue fire between his hands.

I've been working on this for a while, and I think I MAY have finally figured out the trick. Here's what I just did:

1. I boiled water in the kettle, and poured boiling water into one cup. I poured the boiling water back and forth a few times to get the cups good and hot.

2. I put a tablespoon of sugar in one cup, and poured boiling water over it.

3. I poured the boiling water back and forth a couple times until the sugar dissolved, and then put all the boiling sugar-water in one cup, leaving the other one empty.

4. I put a shot of 100 proof rye whiskey in the other cup, and lit it. Because the cup was hot, the alcohol vapors were coming off and were easy to light.

5. I poured the fire into the sugar water, leaving just a little flaming liquor in the first cup, then poured the mixture back, leaving just a little flaming rye-sugar-water in the second cup, and did that a few times.

6. I extinguished the cups by placing the bottom of one cup on the other, then reversing them, so that I smothered the flame in each one.

7. I poured the Blue Blazer into an espresso cup.

It worked.

Now I just have to deal with the fact that it's actually not that interesting-tasting a drink. I'm thinking that adding bitters might help.

Comments

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

I should totally have you come sling drinks at my birthday party, but I don't know if they'd let you behind the bar. :(

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I suspect it depends who "they" were.

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

The people at the brewery where I'm having my party.

Maybe I'll have a Boston party, although I suspect that would be difficult as I no longer have a MA id.

I wonder if I can have a driver's license in one state and just have a state ID in another?

[zarhooie.livejournal.com]

http://www.mass.gov/rmv/license/13liqID.htm

Looks like I may be having a Boston party after all... It will need to be in December, though, as I probably won't have time.

[brooksmoses]

The "right" way to fix that bathtub-door problem, I suspect, would be to have someone recut (and re-frame) the sliding door so that it, itself, is not square, but instead matches the non-squareness of the wall.

Either that, or one could shim the jamb out from the wall so that it was perpendicular to the rails. Doing that in a way that didn't look shoddy would probably be a bit of a trick, though.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Which would involve cutting glass on a diagonal -- not an easy task in general, and ending up costing more than I really anticipated for this project. . .

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

Who's bitters?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

That's the question, isn't it? I've got Fee Brothers Orange, and Angostura, and I can see either of them working. Or even a mixture of the two.

And that's because I only have those two. I'm sure others would work as well, perhaps even better.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I'm partial to Peychaud's. If you remind me, I can try and bring some to Arisa.

what sort of show door?

[wolfdancer.livejournal.com]

can you post a pic? If there is any play in the door fray, you can pos shim it with siccon. (the clear sort) pending on what type of door you have .
We are about to get a Door also, and are looking at styles.
The dring sound like a hoot to make at a party at night at least.

Re: what sort of show door?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I think I did about as much shimming as I reasonably can.

It's this style:



The model is similar to the one here, although I don't remember the actual model number: after I finished installing the thing, as part of cleaning up, I threw out the installation guide.

Re: what sort of show door?

[wolfdancer.livejournal.com]

Nod. thanks for the pic. How happy are you with it over all? how easy was it to put up?

Re: what sort of show door?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

It took probably six or eight hours, but three of those hours were hacking around figuring out what I could do to level out the door some. If the opening actually had right angles, I think I could have done it in five hours, easy.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Well, Jerry Thomas did it with Scotch, not rye, which would make it better, but the problem is that the cheapest cask-strength Scotch is fifty bucks. And, even if I HAD the money, I'm NOT setting a fifty-dollar Scotch on fire and adding sugar.

The overproof rye, on the other hand, is seventeen dollars a bottle, and tastes fine, but not SO fine that I feel bad mixing it.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

The less angelic among us? Not so much with the sobbing, more with the tearing you limb from limb. And I speak as a man who was given four serious bottles of Scotch for his birthday...

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

I ASSURE you, there is no danger of that.

First, I DON'T do things like that.

Second, if I DID, my downstairs neighbor would get me first.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Even so, I hope you do find a way to make an interesting drink of it. It's always such a let-down, when theatrical production leads to meh.

[copperpoint.livejournal.com]

The world demands a video. Or at least pictures.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Of which? There's a picture of the shower door above.

Here's a picture of the Blue Blazer:

[fitfool.livejournal.com]

yes...I was hoping for a video link of your Blue Blazer too.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Every time I decorate a room in this house, I am reminded why I don't do it as often as I should. None of the corners remotely approaches a right-angle; the whole house was build on the odd acute angle where the back alley comes down onto the main road. And has suffered subsidence, so that none of the walls stands straight either...