Weekend was pretty good.  Spent it with my Kara, we entertained ourselves inexpensively, ate very well (perhaps too well, I need to not be poor again soon so I can afford to get back on my diet), had a lot of fun and many good snuggle times.  Weather most of the weekend was dreary.  I really kinda wanted to see about playing with/test driving some cars Saturday (though Kara really didn’t seem too keen on that idea), but the weather wasn’t cooperative for that.

Entirely too broke right now.  I had to borrow money from a friend until this upcoming payday on Friday so I could afford food to make sure I’d have something other than hamburger and ramen (not the end of the world, I’ve been worse off) and be confident of having enough gas my dad’s van I’m currently driving to be able to get to and from work this week.  Heard from Littlefield Automotive earlier, $350 to get my car from them.  Then haul it to Lubbock this Friday afternoon, and see what the Saab place there says it’ll cost to get things all fixed up.  I’m worried about what they’ll say.  I hope it’s a reasonable figure at all.  Even if I end up in (further) debt to my dad for a year or more, I’d really like my car back in proper working order.  I miss it.  I do like it.  I’d really rather not have to buy something else on the cheap right now.

Link of the Day: Students for an Orwellian Society

Spam of the Day: “Colo Cleanse Plus”

Funny of the Day: Burned by a pharaoh!

Pic of the Day: Irresistable geekette earrings

Quote of the Day: “Sometimes it’s important to work for that pot of gold. But other times it’s essential to take time off and to make sure that your most important decision in the day simply consists of choosing which color to slide down on the rainbow.” - Douglas Pagels

Air Conditioner at my apartment was messed with again (by request) Wednesday.  Whatever they did, it’s worse now.  Going to call them again, explain that I don’t consider my AC running for 4 hours solid and the temperature moving down 1 degree, or UP 2 degrees, to be acceptable.

Had lunch at the CAF yesterday with Kara, finishing off our leftovers from Carino’s.  Was yummy.  Also had a couple of Oatmeal Raisin cookies, that despite being a little hard from being a week or so old, were quite good.

After work, which I stayed a bit more than an hour late for, after killing some time at home, took Kara up on a much needed invite to go over to her and Matt’s apartment and watched the new movie version of Hairspray.  Fun movie, nice company, and working AC.

Link of the Day: Bluntcard.com

Spam of the Day: “Order the murder”

Funny of the Day: Could be worse.

Pic of the Day: Levar Burton’s license plate

Quote of the Day: ”When you get spiders on your weiner, you’re fucked.” – Name withheld by request.

“Mountain dew and everclear jello. Figure out how to make it happen.”

Easy.  I’d already read about Everclear jello shots thanks to the lovely and useful My Science Project (check out their informative and entertaining site, with multiple pages documenting their jello shot experiments) – and the Jell-O packages themselves make it clear that you can use soda instead of cold water.  After some texting and chatting, the plan evolved a bit more, to make the jello shots even more potent, not using merely Mountain Dew, but Rockstar energy drinks.  Caffeinated Jello Shots, for a party in which a bunch of geeks/gamers would be getting together on a holiday.  Yes, the potential for chaos was great indeed.  After polling the attendees of the party for ideas for a good name for these caffeinated, strong Jell-O shots, the one that stuck was: Jello Shocks.

After some more communication and plotting planning, ingredients were acquired and assembled – Kara’s cat Oscar indicated he wanted to be helpful – or at least involved.

Another shot of the assembled ingredients – slightly less blurry than the one with the cuter cat above:

If you’re wondering about the variety of ingredients there, we decided to make some jello shots that should just be rather tasty, without as much concern on alcoholic potency.  That’s where the Amaretto and Rum come in.  No Oscars were harmed in the making of these liquored-up delicacies, though many laps were furred.

So, let’s get to the making of some jello shots.  First, we nuke a cup of water for 3 minutes to get it boiling hot, and carefully and slowly stir in the sugar-free Jell-O (sugar-free used for a couple of reasons – less chance of nasty hangovery aftereffects is a nice bonus, but mostly because sugar-free Jell-O requires less water to completely dissolve, and can thus more easily hold larger amounts of alcohol gelled).

Mischief-making at the ready.  Here, I’m adding Everclear to Sugar-free Rockstar Energy Drink.

Now, Everclear is 190 proof grain alcohol – 95% pure ethanol.  We used (for most of the shocks, the peach ended up more potent) 1/2 cup of Everclear per batch, right at about 1/4 of the contents of each shock.  Some quick and dirty rough math makes each Everclear shot 47.5 proof.  The plastic cups we used for the shots are 2 oz cups, and most of the shots were about 1.5 to 1.75 ounces, giving each one roughly the potency of a 1 oz shot of vodka.  The Peach shocks had less water, less Rockstar, and more Everclear, and were, at a guess, around 60 proof each.

Many of those 2 oz plastic cups arranged and ready:

While several of these pics are out of actual chronological order, they’re more or less accurate to show the steps (with some gaps – we got caught up in the fun of making the things, and forgot to take as many pics as I’d intended) involved in the event.  However, I did catch the very first pour of the first shock (strawberry jello, rockstar, and everclear):

Kara putting lids on the second batch (lime jello, rockstar, and everclear) while I prep the next couple of batches:

After the third batch of Everclear shocks (peach jello, rockstar, and everclear – the highest alcohol content of any of the shocks, but interestingly the most pleasant tasting of the three everclear varieties), we began working on our two “let’s make some that just taste good” batches.  The first of which, we dubbed the “Pirate Shocks” – Orange Jell-O, Captain Morgan’s Rum, and Mountain Dew.

The final batch, which was probably the most popular and all-around agreed upon as best-tasting of the shocks, was composed of Amaretto Liqueur, Sugar-free Rockstar, and Orange Jell-O.

Pouring the hot, dissolved jello/water mix into the alcohol/energy drink mixture resulted in some very cool patterns as the two liquids met each other in the pyrex cup, before they were stirred to be more uniformly mixed.  This proved the be pretty difficult to take pictures of with a point and shoot camera – the flash reflecting off the pyrex made most of the images useless, but I did get one decent one out of it:

The Amaretto/Orange and Spiced Rum/Orange shocks, by the way, smelled incredibly good.

I thought it would be amusing to give Kara’s little kitchen soldier a suitably themed hill of shocks to be shown as the king of.  Note that no alcohol had been consumed yet.

All 75 Jello Shocks, stacked up, ready to go back into the fridge for a few hours to chill and set:

Here they are in the fridge.  Aren’t these just things of beauty?

The two masterminds, showing off their creations:

So, how did they end up?

We probably didn’t mix the first two batches – the lime and strawberry – sufficiently.  Some of the shots were mildish on alcohol content, and some were considerably stronger.  We corrected that for the final 3 batches, which were all pretty uniform in strength.  The lime shocks were the least popular – perhaps due to someone saying that they tasted kind of like nyquil.  They had probably the most potent, burning everclear taste.  The strawberry shocks were also, for the most part, pretty strong tasting as well.  The peach seemed to either just mix wonderfully with the everclear, or masked the flavor better than the other two.  This is remarkable, because the peach shots were in fact the ones with the most alcohol content.

Here’s a pic of Kara’s cousin Tiff, before being consuming:

Next, Tiff as she had the honor of being our guinea pig consuming the first jello shock of the evening:

Tiff made a couple of really amazing faces of surprise and alarm, as the shock, as she termed it, burned its way down her throat.  Sadly, I didn’t manage to capture those on camera.

What I did get, however, is a bit of the aftermath . . .

My fingernails, after Kara and I had both had several jello shocks:

They’re still like that, now on Monday afternoon (though starting to wear and chip a bit).  I don’t typically keep nail polish remover handy, being a single straight guy.

The Army Shocks (Orange/Amaretto/Rockstar) were the single most popular.  They just tasted yummy.  A close second were the Pirate Shocks, and were my personal favorite.  Both versions were far easier to consume than any of the Everclear ones.  I’m of the mind that next time we create a bunch of Jello Shots, or even Jello Shocks, we’ll focus on making ones that just taste awesome, rather than trying for maximum impact on caffeine and alcohol content.

Saw The Proposal on Friday night.  It was cute, funny, pretty good.  Despite the whole “chick flick” stigma, it was a solidly enjoyable movie.  I was previously misinformed, however, as to the amount and extent of Sandra Bullock’s nudity in the film – definitely could have used more of that, IMO.  ;)

Additionally, saw The Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen yesterday afternoon on/as part of Kara’s Birthday celebration.  It was OK.  Some of the Bayhem-isms on the film annoyed me.  The spinning camera around Shia and Megan in one scene was really, really irritating.  It downright made Kara queasy.  The massive, excessive overutilization of Shakycam also bugs the crap out of me.  It’s not limited to this film, or Michael Bay, it seems to be used in practically everything now for action.  Such a horrible blight on the film industry.  That needs to either die entirely, or be relegated to very limited, “special” usage when it’ll actually accentuate a scene and give it more impact due to its rarity.

T2 is worth seeing.  Especially on a matinee if you can.  Does it have flaws, problems?  Oh hell yes.  It also has giant robots fighting, and a few very funny moments (Sam’s mom at college was great).

Link of the Day: Interesting and unusual car paint jobs

Spam of the Day: “Best oil for pork motor” – Seriously, I don’t make any of this stuff up.

Funny of the Day: I’m tempted to try this one, but I am skeptical of the results I’d get.

Pic of the Day: Too soon?

Quote of the Day: ”(972): they say celebs die in threes. leave it to billy mays to throw in one extra COMPLETELY FREE!” – Someone from TFLN.

Had a friend over last night.  Watched a couple of episodes of house.  Had some other fun.  Mixed feelings there on a few points.  Seem like the doubled dosage on the Androgel (which I got a phone call instructing me to start doing that, that my testosterone levels were still a bit low, a few days ago) might be doing some good.  One incident isn’t proof positive, but still . . . good sign.

Ended up feeling kind of worse today.  Maybe . . . exertions last night when I’m still fighting off/getting over this bug wasn’t the wisest call.

Had a very nice and good Wednesday evening.  Hanging out with a good friend, playing on furniture at Ashley, not getting my mind made up there on any option yet, being harassed by a creepy saleslady.  Thai food, yogurt, not-right tarzan smoothie thing.  Lots of talk.  It was good.  I could use more of that in my life.

Link of the Day: Modern Vampires

Spam of the Day: “Suiciders online” (Oh boy, I’m just waiting to see what AdSense makes of that)

Funny of the Day: Seems like sound logic to me.

Pic of the Day: Che Guevara’s granddaughter wearing only a Bandolier Of Carrots!

Quote of the Day: “though, “i am not a google samich” might bear repeating just because it is so random. i’m loling at it still.” – Kara