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It has been long established that the “house drink” here at the IAM Lounge is a Bombay Sapphire Gin & Tonic with lime. There is also a second house drink, that being Vanilla Vodka & Tonic with orange, Absolut has always been the Vodka of choice for that. As you can see, quality alcohol is of high importance.

While shopping for what I had dubbed our “Birthday Boozathon” I had a conversation with a man at my favorite liqour store, and let me tell you, it isn’t a state run one. He saw me carrying around the bottle of Bombay Sapphire, and coaxed me over to this other, considerably more expensive, gin known as Magellan.

It was a birthday celebration for two boys that love quality gin, thus it was not unreasonable to go highend, especially considering that is the general fare around here anyway. I purchased the Magellan, though with slight trepidation, if it happened to be awful I would be out quite a bit of cash and by the time we’d figure that out there’d be no option for getting another bottle of Sapphire. The remaining one quarter bottle of Sapphire just wouldn’t have cut it.

The end result, that new bottle of Magellan is now at one quarter, and the Bombay is only slightly less full than it was beforehand. Magellan won the gin battle, without doubt.

The interesting thing about Magellan, when compared to Sapphire, is that Magellan is actually blue. Many think that Sapphire is blue, but no, it is just a clever bottle, the gin itself is as clear as any other. Iris flowers are used as part of the flavoring process to hue this delicate shade of blue to the Magellan.

Needless to say, we have a new house gin. I have also determined that my compatibility with someone is directly related to their appreciation of quality gin.

First off, my mother laughs at me for calling it fabric detergent instead of laundry detergent, but to me it makes sense since you call its counterpart fabric softener and not laundry softener.

I’ve been using Woolite Dark for my darks, but a lot of my darks aren’t exactly the “delicates” Woolite is intended for and it really seemed a waste to be using it for that purpose, enter purchasing some Cheer Dark, and while I think the cost per usage is nearly the same, I feel better about it for some reason.

Then of course there is the ‘free & clear’ allergy reducing regular detergent, which right now I’m finishing up a bottle of ALL, and since that is nearly empty I bought a bottle of Cheer, heh. Tide is dreadfully expensive and as a nice bonus for paying so much I discovered I am also dreadfully allergic to it, hence that is totally out of the question from now on, lol. Nothing is quite so awful as contact dermatitis from your underwear’s detergent!

Now, I also have delicates that aren’t dark, so there is regular Woolite for those… I’m still not sure if it really is worth using Woolite versus regular detergent, but… I’m sure it won’t hurt either, maybe just a tiny waste of money… 4 less usages per bottle.

I’m a big fan of fabric softener, even though I know it has a tendency to ruin clothing… but that lovely and light scent of whatever is always so nice when putting on a t-shirt or whatever. I have a bottle of Snuggle because who can resist that darling teddy bear, right? The Snuggle’s scent is “cuddle up fresh” and who can resist that sort of name either? I also went total consumer when the new Downy stuff scented with Lavender and Vanilla came out. I do like the scent, but the stuff is so watery, and it doesn’t really stay in clothing at all. I don’t think I’d buy another bottle, but it has been nice using it.

Are you keeping count of how many bottles sit on the shelf above my washer thus far? It’s scary.

Of course inevitably the need for bleach arises, so there is a bottle of Clorox 2 and regular Clorox (and unfortunately the wild flower scent is sickeningly disgusting might I add, big mistake there).

I also have a can of Faultless starch, because that crisp look is always so classy, lol. That also means I actually iron my clothing, even t-shirts (yes, I know… it is sad). Having been incredibly fed up with my piece of shit iron the other night I went and bought myself a nice new Sunbeam Steam Master Iron, for which it is now known as “the manly iron” between anyone I’ve mentioned it to and myself.

So, not counting the starch, I have currently nine bottles of various laundry products… and those are just mine, that doesn’t count the super generic tripe that my family tends to use. HAH. It is so ridiculous isn’t it? Though it compares well to the entire shelf of facial care items I have, my bathroom really looks like the Fab 5 have paid me a visit.

Lastnight I was parked where I shouldn’t have stayed parked, and I knew full well that I really should go out into the bitter cold and move it to a “legal” location, but sometimes the motivation just isn’t there. The general concensus was that cars are rarely ticketed for violating the street sweeping hours, and I really wasn’t all that concerned with it.

I did, of course, walk out to discover a bright red violation affixed to the windshield of my car, and basically said, well… it was worth it. Conveniently there is a notation on the ticket that explains how to pay it online, versus the whole mailing a cheque or visiting the office of the parking department. It makes sense for a city to make it easy to get their parking fees… and I’m happy to pay a parking ticket, oddly enough, lol.

So, getting that taken care of was (and still is) a high priority on my list for today, I popped over to the website using Firefox in Linux and was met with a ‘platform not supported’ message, along with a notation to use either Netscape, IE, Mozilla, or Opera. I found that a little strange, but opened up Mozilla and then found I received the same message. Hmmmm… I guess they don’t like Linux.

I find myself more interested in living life than writing about it lately. When I sit down to write I am overcome with the “where to begin?” anxiety and instead write nothing at all. I find myself, again, wondering where to begin, but for rather different reasons.

Today is my birthday, I will be twenty-six this evening. I have been moving my life forward, though I’m starting to question the pace of what I’ve been doing. I need to move faster and work harder.

I woke up yesterday morning with an uncommon level of motivation. I was outside, in the cold, gardening. I came in from that most necessary tasks of digging up my dahlia tubers to begin a comprehensive webserver software upgrade. Upon successful completion of those tasks I then set myself to a similar set of upgrades for my workstation.

I woke Friday to begin final preparations for a birthday event here at my home. Keeping in mind that I know very few people within a reasonable distance and most of those people were tied to work, the gathering was small, but I knew it would be from the very start. I was still obsessed with the success of it, and treated it as though it were crucial to impress anyone that would be there.

I did not truly know what I really wanted from that experience; all I knew was that I did not want to repeat the last birthday event… where I left the person I was with in a city several hours by car away from his home, on purpose, for reasons that I do not care to mention. That was four years ago and now I look back and see the irony.

Sometimes what we want is right there in front of us, but for whatever reason, and in my case I believe denial may play a significant role, we simply do not see it. I tend to do what I want to do, provided it would not harm anyone else, but for some aspects of my life the pressure to keep the status quo is undeniably strong. That status quo must be obtained, for the damage that could come may possibly be enough to outweigh the benefits. This is fear, only cloaked so as to not seem so obvious. I loathe having fear control my decisions. Denial is the tool by which we can avoid dealing with something that we are fearful of.

Eventually there is the moment when the denial must end, the fear must be conquered; suddenly the risk is outweighed by the benefits, action must be taken. That moment is also when one fully realizes the consequences and willingly chooses to accept responsibility for them, regardless of what may occur.

Having not known what I wanted, I somehow managed to find just that. Nothing is ever as simple as we would like it to be, but it has always been my point of view that anything worth having is also worth whatever effort may be required. This certainty of desire also brings, without question, its own set of uncertainties, tempered by the willingness to be flexible, to be compromising, to essentially do whatever may be necessary.

A couple of weeks ago, the night Seryozha came up to visit, my iPod dock went to a state of being busted. The little solder joints that hold the minijack snapped quite randomly. I popped off the cover and at least it seemed that was the case. I did attempt a gentle and undetectable solder fix, but that didn’t quite work.

I decided to just wait until I went to an Apple store and see about getting it replaced, but then I forgot it the last time I was near one… on secret agent day.

I can still listen to music and charge without the dock, but it’s more of an annoyance since the iPod itself doesn’t have a line-out function, which is better for the stereo.

I deliberately snapped the jack, breaking all but one of the solder connections; breaking so many connections wasn’t really my goal, but I wanted to at least figure out where the solder had snapped originally. So, at least it was truly broken, right? HA.

I finally decided to fix it this evening, heating up the joints and dabbing solder in just the right places… took less time to actually fix it than it did to warm up the soldering iron. It appears to be fixed perfectly now, at least it was during testing prior to putting the cap back on, so yay!