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

[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.