I'm making a note here, HUGE SUCCESS

I turned 30 yesterday, and there was a huge party, in which I fully engaged geek social fallacy #4. And it was wonderful! I think that I will declare it to be the best birthday party I have ever had! I made a cheesecake, Tracy made a lemon bundt cake, and we had lots of chips and dip and a chocolate taste-off. People played Ricochet Robots (recently reissued, now available near you! It's as good a geek game as Set!), Perudo (with my brand new Perudo dice from Erin! She individually wrapped ALL 30 DICE), and Jenga. The last cubes of ice are only now melting in the sink. We were set up to serve 4 drinks: manhattans (the them of the party was "Manhattan"), martinis, not-quite-a-sidecars, and kirs. The last two were pretty darn popular, so here is the recipe for each:

Not-quite-a-sidecar - adapted from something ouro made us
2 parts Applejack
1 part lemon juice
1 part triple sec
1 sprig rosemary

Put it all in a shaker and shake vigorously. Strain and pour and garnish one of the cups with the bruised-yet-still-vibrant sprig of rosemary.

And here is the recipe for the kir:

Kir - not quite a real kir, apparently, but everyone loved them so that's good
1.5 oz Creme de Cassis
Soda water

Put ice in a class, pour the Creme de Cassis over it, and and fill the rest of the glass with soda water. Light and refreshing!

The chocolate tasting that single-blind, but everyone wrote their favorite on a piece of paper that anyone could read. So there were confounding social factors that prevent it from being SCIENCE, and merely make it scientific-ish. I will post the results later today, because the single-blind aspect of the experiment prevents me from knowing what chocolates a, b, c, and d actually were until Tracy gets home from work with the "lab notebook".

I hope everyone had fun at the party: I know I definitely did!

Chocolate Tast-test Results

There were four chocolates in the mix - one in chip form, and three others in chopped bar form. The chocolates were A) Dagoba Eclipse (87%), B) fancy schmancy Pralus, C) Callebaut chocolate chips, and D) Endangered Species Butterflies

The votes, transcribed exactly as people wrote them, went as follows:

(A) Dagoba Eclipse - 5 votes

Kevin, Laurel, Erin, Zach, Yoko

(B) Pralus - 9 votes

Darren, Julian, Nathan, Monica, Na☆ (?), B-Dizzle (?), Mark, Kevin T, Pleir (?)

(C) Callebaut chocolate chips - 5 votes

Andy, Amy, Melinda Mary, Shelby, Seager

(D) Endangered Species Butterflies - 2 votes

Marissa, John

From this we can conclude that the expensive stuff may actually be better, but all chocolate is loved by someone. And the people who like Pralus chocolate are both numerous and have very poor handwriting. The disqualified vote was Chris who wrote that he liked the chocolate covered espresso beans best of all, despite them not being eligible in the contest, as indicated by their complete lack of a single-letter name.