Apologies, these blogs posts have gone down the toilet this week and occur later in the day because, for some reason, we still change our goddam clocks around twice a year. I don’t know about you, but this season’s time change is murdering me. Maybe it’s the horrible weather (more complaining about that in a minute) maybe I’m too old for this shit. I’ve got the feces touch behind the bar. The farmer’s market is washed out every Wednesday. We’re all waiting on pins and needles for stone fruit. Yes, these are first world problems. It’s only an hour. An hour! But even that minuscule amount of time is monumental when each second of the day counts.

For those people living everywhere but California that think I’m a whiny, spoiled brat. Yes, that is true. But, but…At this point I’d take the damn snow over days and days of rain. At least I can mildly enjoy the outdoors when there’s snow. The constant pissing keeps everyone inside. Also, in the Northeast, you at least get people with a sense of humor and East Coast sensibilities. Here, I have to deal with idiots on a regular basis. It’s always been a trade off. If I get lots of sun and no winter, yes I’ll deal with the subhuman morons that flock to Southern California. Let’s not get into the political side of the game here. Yes, I said I wouldn’t go that route again, but I ask myself one question all the time as I drive down the street and see live action scenes from the movie Children of Men: Where does all the money go?

Back to the reason people read this blog. Booze? I’m trying to nail this strawberry cocktail for the upcoming season and it’s going south. Maybe I’m putting too much pressure on myself because last year’s drink, The Prodigal Son, was epic. It tasted like pure strawberry. A quick glimpse back into the void of instagram tells me it’s because I put tons of strawberry into each drink. Four ways. Yeah, that’ll do it. It seems like a lot of work but we’ve currently got strawberries up the yin yang.

Some dude came in last night and started telling me and Denise about the prevalence of glyphosate in nearly everything. “Saying something is organic doesn’t matter,” he said. “They kill all the weeds first with glyphosate and then they plant crops on top of it.” More great news. My favorite food item of all time, Ben and Jerry’s ice cream is full of everything bad. Well, like my regular, Jesse likes to say, “There’s always been something. Lead, asbestos, mercury, now microplastics.” Oh god. Did the cavepeople absent mindedly poison themselves with weird shit too? Were they licking the wrong rocks? No, they had bigger things to worry about like being eaten by saber toothed tigers. Yeah, I imagine life expectancy was pretty dismal back then.

When the sun is shining I tend to worry less about the toxins floating around my head, infused in my food, swimming in my body, and focus more on being in the present. Yada, yada. I’m still more amazed at how shitty a cocktail can actually taste when the ingredients don’t gel together. It’s like when you’re a kid and you take a bunch of paints, all the colors, and mix them together. The result is a large, shitty mess. Ah, but when you add all the right ones, some green, some yellow, a dab of white. Oh yeah. Have any of those famous cocktails nerds thought of that one yet for their books? I can see it now: “Creating a cocktail is like mixing paints for a great masterpiece. You start with your primary color and then add little spots of complimentary ingredients until it reaches the desired result.” Hmm. Doesn’t sound so bad.

At the end of the day, it’s just a cocktail. It goes down the hatch, you catch a buzz, relax a bit, and your body starts to break it into its respective components: Water, alcohol, carbohydrates, acids, vitamins and minerals if you’re lucky. Then it all comes out as pee pee.