Ever Shambling Onwards...

So... my headache yesterday did mostly clear up, thanks to ibuprofen and a lot of water. This meant that I was able to be an almost functional human being at the show, which was handy. Speaking of the show, the confidence boost of the first night seems to have done a world of good, and second night was much better - a lot less bumps, and the ones that were there were covered pretty well indeed.

So naturally I flubbed a lighting cue. Only a minor one, and in a minor, non-audience-visible way... I turned something down on the master instead of the individual slider, which meant that when I turned up some working light on the stage so that the cast could find their places for the lineup... it didn't actually come on. Oops. Well, they'd spent most of the night groping each other anyway, so doing it again in the dark whilst trying to find their places wasn't really a new experience...

I have also now acquired ingredients for cocktails for the aftershow party... and in a few minutes I'll go and test out my ice-crusher, leaving myself enough time to let fly with the rolling pin if it turns out to be inadequate. I've also discovered that the small treasure-chest style box that I bought the other weekend is ideally sized for a bunch of appropriate plastic glasses, utensils and dry cocktail ingredients... which means I can turn up to the party with a cool box and a treasure chest full of cocktails!

Edit:The Ice-Crusher works... it takes about as long as the bag & blunt intrument method, but is far less messy in general. I think if I take a tupperware tub of some kind as well, ice can be crushed in batches, as one ice-crusher load probably only does about 3 drinks worth...

Take about five of six mint leaves and drop them into the bottom of a glass, along with the juice of half a lime. Then take the darkest sugar you can find, and mix it half and half with water (you might have to heat it to make it dissolve... let it cool again before using it). Add a tablespoon or two of this to the glass, along with the lime juice and mint leaves. Then mash it up somehow - you don't need to completely crush it, just squeeze the lime and break up the mint a little to let the oils out. personally, I use the end of a rolling pin in a half-pint glass.

Once you've done this, top the glass up most of the way with crushed ice. For crushing ice, I recommend the use of a relatively sturdy sandwich bag and a meat tenderizer, although a rolling pin would do.

Once the ice is in the glass, throw in a measure (or in my case, a measure and a bit) of vanilla vodka. Normal vodka's okay too, but vanilla is better. Then top the glass up with ginger ale and chuck in the husks of the half a lime you squeezed the juice out of.

Then drink.

(This does of course work with rum instead of vodka, and with soda instead of ginger ale... at which point it'd be a Mojito. I've not actually tried this, though, not being a fan of rum. I might try it one day, though.)

...which is a bit odd, really. I'm not doing a great deal right now, but I'll shortly be doing a bit of a handover to a hastily found temporary web designer. Not entirely sure how that will go, but hey...

A reminder to all and sundry - I'll be out drinking in Egham tonight as a kind of "Escape from Roehampton" thing. No real plan beyond where we're going to be, and for non-work folk to turn up a bit later than work folk, so we can have a good work-bitch first.

Dear god I am hammered.

Tonight was our team's "go out and drink until you forget your boss" night. I drank, I tried to stop drinking, but I just got more drinks bought for me. I could have been a lot worse (as anybody who;'s seen me completely ratarsed will tell you) but I was still somewhat inebriated.

Work tomorrow will be... Interesting. I have a meeting at 10, a christmas lunch ffom 12:00 until 2ish, then a meeting at 4. Which means I'll get bugger all work done, but I still need to be there. Oh well. I can prop myself up with lucozade and nurofen...