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Archive for November, 2008

Repetitive

Okay, I know I keep saying this, but, hey, guess what? It’s still really easy! Did you know that happened? I did not.

Look, it’s either this or a lot of Tweets about being! happy! This annoys a smaller number of people.

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M ran Blotto through Genderanalyser, and apparently last night got a 64% chance that it was written by a woman. Which is, you know, not accurate. Of course, this morning I’m seeing a 51% chance it’s a man, with the caveat that it’s “quite gender neutral”.

The blinding accuracy of the initial experience, of course, meant that I had to run everyone else’s blogs through, and apparently all my friends are gender-role challenging people, because the success rate on this program is crap.

Somewhaturban: 57% chance of a man, but quite gender neutral. Wrong! Also, I talk about feelings! A lot! How much more girly can you be?

Tikimama: 60% chance of a man, but quite gender neutral. Wrong! And she talks about being pregnant! In general, this is a good clue that one is female.

Tiki Drinks and Indigo Firmaments: 66% chance of a woman. Wrong! And he is responsible for the above-mentioned pregnancy, so there is evidence and everything.

Trader Tiki: 63% chance of a woman. Wrong! Or else Sara is confused, and that woman needs some serious hormone therapy.

Lawnchair Vigilante: 61% chance of a woman. Correct. But more than 61% female.

So 5 of 6 were wrong at least once, though I suppose two attempts hedge by saying “quite gender neutral”. That’s an 83% failure rate on a question that you have a 50/50 chance of randomly guessing correctly. I hate to be rash, but I’m thinking that this program may need some additional tinkering.

However, it’s a fun timesink.

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I am busy to death with school, as expected, but clinging grimly to the fact that the quarter will be over in 4 weeks, and I will probably do just fine, since I have been convinced that I was going to flunk out every quarter so far and have not, in fact, done so. This term is a bit squirrelly, since I have major projects and not much else, so my opportunities to gauge how I’m doing are very limited. However, I’m generally pretty decent at research papers, and I think it’s not unreasonable to hope that this carries me through the term without major mishap.

The weather has turned wet and inconsistently chilly, which always depresses me a bit. Particularly since the preferred method of dealing with this (staying home and knitting) is emphatically not an option– even if I could call in sick to work, I have an eternal avalanche of reading and research to catch up on.

In more interesting news, M and I went to two lovely events at Ten-01 last week– a Glenfarclas whiskey tasting, and Ten-01′s second anniversary party.

Glenfarclas bottles

The tasting was a great deal of fun– the distillery is family-owned, so the Brand Ambassador (George Grant) is the son of the current Chairman. George was an entertaining speaker– funny and informative– and it was wonderful to get so much detail about the process and the company while sampling the beautiful whiskey. We tried the 12, 17 and 21-year whiskeys, and the cask strength. M prefered the 21-year, while I really enjoyed the cask strength. Of course, it should be noted that I sampled the cask strength after the other three tastes, so I’m not sure that cask strength would be so palatable undiluted if one wasn’t already warmed up on whiskey.

After Ten-01 M and I went on to Thatch, where Craig was tending bar and Blair was distributing mugs from this year’s run of Tiki Third Tuesdays at Teardrop.

I hadn’t been to Thatch in ages, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy it. I’ve spent less time tiki-bar-ing it lately, but tiki will always be a staple of my drinking circuit. If nothing else, I have a bunch of tiki-appropriate dresses that need to be worn! On that note, I will note that I got to wear my one and only winter-appropriate tiki dress for this event– a late 5os/early 60s wiggle-cut cocktail suit with a vaguely tapa-cloth pattern. It’s too warm for most tiki events, since it is (of course) some totally non-breathable synthetic, but it’s a great dress, and I was really pleased to have an occasion to wear it. And I got a lot of compliments, so whoo!

Ten-01′s anniversary was also fun, and Kelley’s anniversary cocktail was delicious in addition to being lovely. The special included cranberries, kaffir leaf, lemon, and lime– it’s either the same or very similar to Turn to the Prince on the current cocktail menu. At the anniversary it was available on Aquavit, Aviation gin, or vodka. M and I tried it on Aquavit and Aviation, and agreed that the Aquavit stood up better to the sweetness of the drink– the Aviation was just a little too overpowered by the other ingredients.

I pulled out a vintage cocktail dress for this event as well, a cowl-neck low-back wiggle dress from the same era– that classic 50s/60s wiggle cut is kind to my curvy figure, so when I find a vintage dress that fits me I must immediately purchase it, and then dig up reasons to wear it. The additional plus of this particular dress is that it exposes my tattoo, which I love. I had three people compliment the tattoo on Friday evening– I’ll have to pass along the praise to Dan at Atlas Tattoo.

I ought to make a point of getting photos of the vintage dresses when I wear them, so I can document the entire experience. I enjoy pulling out the cocktail dresses for these events– it’s nice to class it up occasionally, and there’s something to be said for the allure of fashions past. And I love having reasons to wear these things– it helps justify my continued purchases!

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