Complex Numbers

It Was a Dark and Stormy Day

Yes, I'm running a little late today. Yesterday, because of *gestures vaguely at everything* I mixed spiced dark rum and ginger beer in copious quantities and drank it.

It was a Dark and Stormy day.

Consequently, I passed out completely, for several hours. I don't have a link, or a prompt. I suppose I could just wait until later, but where's the fun in that? I'm not sure if I'm hung over or still drunk. I do know that, thanks to the ginger beer I suppose, I'm feeling pretty good, all things considered.

Now, a proper Dark and Stormy also includes lime. But I didn't think ahead like that. Sometimes I'll buy limes, then not use them, and find them later, hard and shrunken, tucked way back in the fridge. Most of the time, though, I'll get it in my head to drink something that requires lime, such as a gin and tonic, and naturally, those times, there are no limes in the house.

I wish someone would invent stasis fields so that limes can keep fresh indefinitely. Forget warp drive, communicators, transporters, replicators, and world peace; the most important invention from Star Trek would be the stasis field.

Okay, it's actually from Niven, or possibly some SF writer before him, but my point remains.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yeah, Dark and Stormy.

Technically, only Gosling's Black Seal rum can be used in a Dark 'n Stormy. Fortunately, I wasn't making a Dark 'n Stormy; I was making a Dark and Stormy. The rum I used was Kraken, which helpfully has a drawing of a multi-tentacled sea monster on the label, and is apparently made in Indiana; the ginger beer was from Stolichnaya, which, no, is not Russian; it's Polish, so don't give me shit about virtue signaling.

So even those ingredients were nonstandard; a proper Dark and Stormy should be made with Caribbean rum and Caribbean ginger beer.

At this moment in history, though, I don't give a shit.

Even in the depths of a binge, though, I'm still doing science: what, I wondered, is the best ratio of rum to ginger beer? I think most recipes give a proportion of 1:3 or 2:5. I tried 1:2, 1:3, and 1:1, among other mathematically in-between attempts. Admittedly, by the time I was done, I was finding it hard to do proportions. In the end, I suppose it's a matter of taste: do you want more spiced rum, or do you want more of the spicy, tingly taste of ginger beer?

1:3 seemed to do it for me, but like I said, I was lacking the cooling, tart effects of lime in the drink.

So that was my day. Very productive. How was yours?