the deep moans round with many voices

A post apropos nothing in particular:

I don't like beer.

I never have, and I am pretty sure I never will.

When Nick and I were kids, our parents used to let us try tiny sips of whatever alcoholic beverage they were drinking with dinner -- basically, we got a clean teaspoon from the kitchen and they'd measure out a spoonful as a sample -- and while I thought red and white wines were a bit odd (and Mom's occasional Black Russian and Dad's occasional brandy or other fancy liqueur were a bit odd and also bitey), my invariable reaction to beer samples was "BLEUGH!!!" When I was older, I tried beer under what are probably the most favorable circumstances possible: a good German beer, fresh and cool, after I'd been walking for several hours on a hot summer day. At which point my reaction improved from "BLEUGH!!!" to "...mneh." I figure that there is no real point in experimenting further, though I do try a sip every few years just to confirm that yeah, still "BLEUGH!!!" (Or, on very good days, just "Bleugh!!" Which is still emphatic enough for me.)

I do like wine! But wine is often tragically expensive, as are hard liquors, and sometimes I want a drink with somewhat less alcohol by volume so I can get more liquid in with my mind-altering chemicals.

The solution? Hard cider!

Hard cider is lovely (except when people try to make it taste more like beer by adding hops to it -- and before anyone pipes up, no, hops are not the whole reason I object to beer; it's the fundamental beeriness of beer that I dislike, though the hops certainly don't help anything) and it's been experiencing a great resurgence in America over the past ten or twenty years. I first encountered hard cider as a specialty thing bought in wine-sized bottles from a cidery that was part of the Cayuga Lake Wine Trail. That was circa 2005. These days, I can buy six-packs or twelve-packs of hard cider at my local supermarket. It's WONDERFUL.

I mention this because a newish development in the hard cider world is rosé ciders. I think this started as a way to ride the coattails of the slightly less newish dry rosé wine movement (which I also like a lot, FYI; I like rosé as a flavor but traditional rosés are often undrinkably sweet) but it has turned into a Thing in its own right.

I tend to drink Angry Orchard ciders because it's always a bit of gamble trying new things and also I don't like thinking in supermarkets (my goal is to buy what I need and get out before I get distracted), but Angry Orchard Rosé is often sold out on my shopping days. So I've been experimenting a bit with some other brands.

The two I've tried so far are Crispin and Beak & Skiff 1911 Established.

Angry Orchard Rosé is 5.5% alcohol by volume, and a nice dark salmony pink. I like it because it's less sweet than a lot of hard ciders, but without that sort of... hmmm... thin, scrapey edge a lot of drier ciders get? It's still quite full-bodied, which is good. I usually buy the 12oz glass bottles.

Crispin Rosé is 5% ABV, and noticeably paler than Angry Orchard. It's also significantly drier in taste, and I find that it is best drunk with one or two ice cubes in the glass. (It comes in 12oz cans, and so is best poured into a glass. Drinking cider from a metal can leads to weird undertastes.) Crispin apparently mixes pear juice in with apple juice when fermenting ciders, and their rosé also contains rose petals and hibiscus, which seems a bit fancypants to me, but hey, the ability to get a bit fancypants is a sign of a healthy industry, so.

Beak & Skiff 1911 Established Rosé is 6.7% ABV (edging toward apple wine, tbh). As with Angry Orchard, it's a very full-bodied drink -- just enough so, I think, to counter the relative sweetness -- still less sweet than a properly sweet hard cider, but even so. It comes in 16oz cans and is consequently a bit dangerous, due to both the increased ABV and the increased portion size.

In conclusion, the Angry Orchard and Crispin rosé hard ciders are best for accompanying meals, while the 1911 Established rosé hard cider is best for drinking on a hot summer afternoon.

But they are all delicious. :)

(Also, it's annoying to have to keep copypasting an é character from a Word document, since I can't seem to type one in Chrome. BLEUGH!)

Over the past few weeks, I've been getting a handful of spam emails claiming to be from Amazon.com. The thing is, they've been coming to my fandom Hotmail account, which is not associated with my Amazon account, so obviously there's no way they could be real...

Except I just remembered today that I do, actually, have a secondary Amazon account under an alias that's associated with my fandom email. I opened it back in... I want to say 2001, and only used it for a month or two. IIRC, it was meant to let me review books that I was embarrassed to admit to having read but did want to say something about? I don't remember the details at all, but I think that was the general notion.

Anyway, today I reactivated the alias account (because obviously I still have the email! I just needed to reset the password) and then promptly told Amazon to please close it down. There is no sense in having useless digital flotsam drifting about in one's wake, after all.

Also I will now be able to automatically delete any future pseudo-Amazon spam messages without having to double-check that they're fraudulent. :)

Today's randomly chosen theme is: otters

Otters are cute and adorable!

They are also ruthless predators, and have been known to gang up and intimidate alligators. As with cats, don't mistake cute for harmless.

...


On a tangential note, is that meme about otters that look like Benedict Cumberbatch still a thing? Because that was hilarious. :D

For reasons that do not need exploring at this juncture, I need to crowdsource as many terrible and/or hilarious nicknames for "Nicholas" as possible.

I already came up with Nick-nack, Nickleback, and the potential for endless Christmas and Santa Claus jokes, but I'm tired and have temporarily run out of inspiration. (And yes, I'm aware that "Nick"-name itself is a pun.) We are not going in the "Lassie fell down the well" direction, though I'm open to stuff like Coca-Kolya.

Any thoughts?

Earlier this year I bought the comfiest sweater in the world at a local clothing store's going-out-of-business sale, and now that autumn has finally arrived for good and for keeps, I get to wear it!

It is not the world's best sweater -- for that, it would need to be three inches longer from shoulder to hem so I could have bought it one or two sizes smaller so the sleeves wouldn't be quite so wide/loose -- but it is so comfy, and it's this really nice warm and friendly geometric pattern in light sand, dark sand, salmon, blood orange, old jeans blue (both dark and light), and the faintest traces of white, and mmm, I love it!

It's just really nice to have soft, warm clothes, you know? Especially ones that are pretty without being all, "Hi these are my boobs and by the way, my name is Liz," which is what a lot of women's clothing unfortunately defaults to. (That or frills/lace. Sometimes both, gods help us all.)

...I should save up and invest in another set of LL Bean or Lands End shirts one of these days. My last set of those lasted me fifteen years as day-wear and another year or two each as pajama shirts before they completely frayed to pieces. And my goodness they were comfy...