Day 150: Drink the Rainbow

Today I finished and sampled my latest infused vodka: Skittles!

This one looked disgusting while the skittles were dissolving. I mean really gross. But after much filtering, it's no longer cloudy and it tastes like liquid skittles.

Within seconds of mixing the vodka and skittles.

In mid-infuse. Yum.

Ta-da!

I can't wait to try some skittly drinks, but that will have to wait for another day.

Day 149: PB&J Minus Chewing Plus Booze

Tonight for dessert I made a shot combining my homemade peanut vodka with grape vodka.



It was amazing. The smell, first of all, was exactly like a peanut butter and jelly sammich. And the taste was just as perfect. Tiny vodka burn, but not too bad.

I will definitely be having more of these.

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Day 148: A Bottle Cap Experiment

Today I experimented with some faux dichroic glass stuff I've had forever by filling in an old bottle cap. It's not about the design, which is ugly and plain. I just wanted to test the clear resin stuff for use in future projects.








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Day 147: Flags Across America

Yes, it's another map of the United States filled in with stuff. This time I've put in each state's flag. Not much more to say, so here it is.

By the way, some states have really ugly flags. And there's a lot of blue out there.

Day 146: Nut Liquor

For a long time, I've had a dream. It's a dream of making my own infused vodka.

It all started when I decided I needed peanut butter vodka for a variety of drinky inventions I had in mind. Amaretto (almond) and Frangelico (hazelnut) just don't cut it.

I've heard a rumor that peanut vodka exists somewhere, but not in my liquor store, so I had to take matters into my own hands.

So here's what happened. On Tuesday, I started with a jug o'vodka and some unsalted peanuts.



I put them together in a plastic drinking bottle.



I let the bottle sit, shaking it up a few times each day.

Today, I decided I'd waited long enough, so I pulled out a strainer and coffee filters and started the filtering process.



It was still cloudy after the first pass, so I filtered a total of three times.







And here it is in its pretty little bottle, flanked by mom and dad.

And I dare say my peanut vodka is a success. Very peanutty. For my first drink, I mixed peanut vodka with chocolate liqueur and a bit of milk. Reese's peanut butter cup - voila!




Now I'm ready to infuse all kinds of stuff into vodka. Stay tuned for results.

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Day 146: Root Beer for Grown-Ups

Today I broke open a bottle of whipped cream vodka and mixed it with root beer. Well, not the whole bottle. Yum!




Almost like a root beer float, but without the brain freeze. Maybe some vanilla would make it perfect.

I have many more whipped cream vodka ideas, and a whole bottle to play with.

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Day 145: Horribly Unattractive Portraits

Today I used my iPhone to draw some faces that I enjoy seeing very much. Unfortunately, I can't draw, especially on this tiny screen, so they look hideous. I will leave their intended identities a mystery so I can pretend I was actually drawing some ugly people with misshapen features and bad hair.
























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Day 144: Doodle Frog

Today I doodled on a little square scrap of paper.




Then I folded it into a little jumping frog.




Then I made it jump.

I had a little video, but I don't have a YouTube account or the patience to set one up right now, so you'll just have to imagine a really exciting jumping paper frog in action. You can simulate the effect by printing out the picture of the frog and tossing it across the room.

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Day 143: Altered Cheese

Today I took what is quite possibly the cheesiest photo ever taken taken of me and applied various filters and other doodads to it until I felt it fully realized its cheesy potential.

Before:




After:




Vive le fromage!

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Day 142: Corporate America

Today I made another map of the United States, but this time I put in each state a logo for a company headquartered there. Some states had many options with interesting logos from which to choose, but others not so much. If any of these companies are not actually based in the state I've put them in, blame the internet, or blame my lack of fact-checking. (I guess that qualifies me for employment at Fox News.)

 Can you guess all the logos? I'll be really impressed if you can figure out Rhode Island.

Day 141: Sparkleberry

Today I made a drink. I'm not sure yet how I feel about it.




The Sparkleberry = vodka + Cointreau + cranberry juice + club soda + Keglevich forestberries liqueur, whatever that is.

I inherited the forestberry stuff when my mom was cleaning out her liquor cabinet. Who knows what decade it's from.





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Day 140: A Failed Attempt at Deciding My Future

I've spent several hours today going through course schedules, descriptions, and suggested career pathways to figure out what classes I should take and when. After this summer, I'll only have four more semesters to squeeze in all the stuff I still want to learn, and some classes are prerequisites for others, and some are only offered once a year, so I feel like I'm playing an enormous game of Tetris with my life right now.

The school doesn't require me to pick a specialization, but it has some suggested pathways with appropriate foundation courses for each. The problem is that I still don't know what I want to do. I decided to convert the text for each career pathway page into a word cloud and see if a visual representation might make it more clear.

It didn't help. But it did make the word Information start to look really weird.

Hopefully, I'll be able to narrow it down a little each semester. Or I'll just keep taking more and more classes until it's time to retire.

Day 139: In Memoriam

Today, we had a beautiful memorial service for my grandpa at the Tahoma National Cemetery. He served at Normandy in WW2. The ceremony had Army honor guard members doing the flag thing and members of the Inter-Tribal Warrior Society did the 21-gun salute.

I didn't take any pictures during the ceremony, but here are some shots before and after.































































This last picture is at Uncle Gary and Aunt Sunny's house, while I waited for them to make the delicious barbecued Korean shortribs and kimchee salad.

Thank you, Grandma Strom, for arranging the beautiful weather.

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Day 138: A Volcano Which Will Live in Infamy

Thirty-one years ago today, Mt St Helens erupted. For today's make, I channeled the spirit of Harry Truman (no, not the president - look it up), and this is what he had me draw.




Weird guy.

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Day 137: Library Crushing Device, All Fancied Up

Today I got to spend some time at work playing with the magical rolling stacks that could be used to effortless squish unsuspecting people. I didn't get to squish anybody though.

I did, however, take a picture of the stacks and then I artsified the photo. It's not much, but let's see what you're able to create when you're either constantly working or driving from 7:30am until 10pm. Ah, Wednesday.




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Day 136: Chocolatey Minty Boozy

I tried to do some new stuff in Photoshop, but various forces were conspiring against me. Instead, I invented this delicious drink, which I like to call the PMS Special, for reasons I don't need to go into.



Vodka + light creme de cocoa + green creme de menthe + milk.
Serve with Girl Scout thin mint cookies.

You could crush up the cookies and use them as a rimmer, but then you have cookie crumbles, which aren't nearly as satisfying.

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Day 135: School's OUT for summer

I submitted the last of my seemingly endless string of assignments today, so school's out! Unfortunately, my summer vacation is only about two weeks long, and I still have to work two jobs during that time, and it's raining like crazy, but it's still my summer vacation so it counts.

In honor of completing my first semester back at grad school, I have made a simple little graphic.

I kind of want to put a big red circle with a slash over it, but it's so pretty.

Now I will return to mumbling Alice Cooper lyrics to myself while watching old episodes of Desperate Housewives. Cleaning up this disaster area from the term paper wreckages can wait until tomorrow.

Day 134: Term Paper Madness Doodle

I cranked out a billion pages of research paper today, so this tiny little doodle was all my tired brain was capable of making.



It's on the back of a 3x5 index card, and I made it while watching the end of Death Race.

Who took the jam out of your donut?

See? Brain has gone kooky.

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Day 133: Fuzzy Sun Tea

This drink is a variation on my Fuzzy Sunshine, but it uses Sweet Tea Vodka instead of plain vodka. It's quite tasty.



Ingredients: Sweet tea vodka, Sunny Delight, and peach schnapps.


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Day 132: That's How I Feel

A small sketch depicting my current feelings about school.



Also, I need a haircut.

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Day 131: A Secret Spy Drink

Looks like iced tea, don't it?




That's what happens when you combine vodka (orange flavored, in this case), cranberry juice, and midori. You get a drink that tastes pretty good and looks just like innocent iced tea.

Not that I would ever try to pass off a boozy drink as iced tea. Not me.

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Day 130: Last Minute Mapigami Flower

Today, after working until 9pm, and before going to bed so I can be back at work at 8am tomorrow, I made a little origami flower.









It's comprised of six separate folded petals that lock together.

Stay tuned for more mediocre making tomorrow.

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Day 129: A Deliciously Taggy Word Cloud

Today has been a busy day, full of cleaning and school work, and term paper madness, so I cheaped out my Make and did another word cloud from Wordle. It's made using all the frequency of tags in my Delicious account.

I haven't used Delicious in months, so it doesn't include some of my more current internet surfing obsessions, but it's a fairly good snapshot of my interests anyway.

(In case you didn't know, Delicious is a social bookmarking site that lets you create and access internet bookmarks from any computer with internet access.)