I tried to write a eulogy for my mom but in the end I shotgunned a glass of white wine and winged it. I think it went well.

I made the mistake of buying a six pack of Redd's Apple Ale today, hoping it would taste like a dry cider with a little malty goodness for good measure. It's like somebody stirred fermented apple jolly ranchers into apple juice from concentrate, then carbonated it. Uggh.

Thanks for taking the hit Gris, because I'd have bought that under the same assumption.

I lift a whiskey in yr honor :(

meara, that sucks. I guess I'm glad there wasn't also drama, but still.

Managed to catch my 12:15 train in time, otherwise I would have had to wait for the 1:30 train, and I'd only just be getting home at 2:30 am! Nice walk, even though I could barely see. Had a scare not twenty feet from my driveway, where there is absolutely no shoulder when a car hurtled past with the music blasting and someone screaming out the window.

Had a cicada inside my shirt on the train, ick and shudder.

Got ganged up by the bride, groom, and their friends when I belatedly reminded them of the noise curfew. There were tears and accusations of my inhumanity on their special day. I caved, not realizing it was a city ordinance. Texted with boss lady, showed her response to the mother of the groom, who took care of it. She came back and said "They call me Mrs. B, and it's not because I'm beautiful." Go Mom Power!

Still, the music stayed on past curfew, but hopefully none of the neighbors called the police to complain, or else I'll be in deep doo doo with the ED on Monday.

Bride and groom lost their dickishness by the end of the night and apologized for freaking out and were extremely thankful for the extra time I allowed them.

Thankfully the bartender hopped to it when I said he had to stop serving alcohol (the substitute DJ had been a total dick).

My potted mint does okay but doesn't thrive out of control like all the reports I read. It's enough for my daily tea and occasional mint simple syrup infusions for julep, though, so that's fine.

This year I planted 8 basil plants. Two in pots to try to keep alive over winter and 6 in the ground that will be for pesto making for the freezer. Can't have too much pesto. It will be a wild basil forest in that bed in the next couple of weeks. Going to do my first harvest tomorrow to encourage bigger growth.

I like a nice dry cider sometimes when I'm not in the mood for beer, but was really misled by the "ale" and was hoping for something like the Abita Strawberry Lager - an obvious actual beer with a bit of refreshing complimentary fruit flavor. I'm sure there is such an apple infused beer out there, but this ain't it.

I'm sure there is such an apple infused beer out there, but this ain't it.

Shock Top makes a Honeycrisp Apple Wheat ale. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard good things about them.

Unfortunately, I quite dislike most wheat beers, and Shock Top's Belgian white (which I imagine is probably the backbone of that beer) is one of my least favorite. I know that the the hefeweizen flavor profile probably mixes best with apple, but my palate craves a lager or even APA backbone instead. I actually think a decent hops profile would mesh well with a crisp apple bite.

Maybe I'll try infusing some of my own, using SeriousEats's french press method, a decent pale ale, and some pink lady apples.

I do want to say that when Redd's is correctly compared with its real competitors - Mike's, Smirnoff Ice, etc - it's actually really good. At a college sophomore party, given a choice of Mike's, Smirnoff, Redd's, and Natty Lite, I would definitely choose the Redd's. But it's also significantly more expensive than most of those, so I'm not sure it will take off the way they hope with the true target demographic.

Ah, I hear the dulcet tones of neighbor's foster kids, the little screamers. Neighbors, in the course of informing me of our landlady's intent to sell, assured me that all information they passed to the kids was totally harmless, and that it was the kids own fault that they extrapolated what they did. Which, if I didn't despise my adult neighbors more than the wee ones, I'd believe.

I got some pineapple mint for a container a couple of weekd ago and it's already dead. I don't know if it was over watered, under watered or what.

Sometimes plants just die, whatever you do.

I have a very Darwinian approach to gardening.

That said, i I have a pot of spearmint, peppermint, and chocolate mint on the patio that got hit hard by a heat wave last summer - as did all my plants, really, but I expected the mint to be one of the ones to bounce back because, hey, it's mint. I just keep watering it in hopes that there will be more growth someday.

Eta: I've never had good luck with basil. It dies or it bolts, either way I don't enough edible leaves to make pesto.