Cocktails

I'm reading a book in which a PI is posing as a bartender. The author was careful to note that she had experience, which is good as the waitress-to-bartender ordering shorthand she depicts is a bit opaque, even to me, who was once fairly interested in cocktails and thought about being a bartender.

I never did it, though. I decided that customer service in general wasn't for me (I waitressed for the longest 6 weeks of my life once—never again). But I used to know what a lot of those drinks were, I'm sure of it. Not so much anymore.

See, over the years, I've pretty much... not exactly stopped drinking, but I don't really do it much at all (and these days the meds I'm on mean drinking in any quantity's a bad idea anyhow). I maybe go through couple bottles of Kahlua a year (some of which ends up being drunk by my SO), plus the occasional other drink if I'm going out, and by "occasional", I mean, really, honestly. It adds up to maybe a drink a month.

All of which means I can't really play 'stump the bartender' anymore. Chances are if I go for a drink it'll be something mundane like a margarita, or at least not entirely uncommon, like a Sloe gin fizz. I used to be able to come up with slightly more obscure drinks that I genuinely liked (I once stumped an admittedly fairly young bartender with Brandy Alexander), but the thing is, if you're going to do that, you should know what's in them, and I don't remember anymore.

I don't know if I actually care about that or not, but it does make reading a book with a bartender in it a little odd.