While I’m at the keyboard, I figured I’d take a minute to acknowledge the psychic elephant in the room. I mentioned a year ago in my first ghost story for 31 Ghosts, but October 1 is the anniversary of my dad’s death.
Twenty seven years.
This year was… complicated. I could go on at length, but I’ll spare you – I might have been too pensive in my ghost story already. Instead, I’ll explain a little about the picture.
I’ve had my head down most of the summer. My ThinkDudeThink.com postings have suffered because, well, I worked my ass off this summer. I kept my head down and pushed forward – day job and then bartending at least one day each weekend. Lately it’s been two or three days bartending in addition to my regular day job. When I’ve had a spare minute, I’ve slept, spent quality time with Fern, or busily shot people in the head – Fern would like me to clarify that I’ve been shooting people in the head in the video game Counter Strike: Global Offensive. It’s been my stress relieving vice.
But while I have managed to get some acorns stashed away for the winter, I realized a lot of things fell by the wayside including visiting with friends and family. For that, I’m sorry. As I’m always reminded on October 1, life is too goddamned short…
At top is one of two drinks I toasted my dad to. Not pictured is the 7&7 (but, you know, with Bulleit bourbon instead of Seagram’s 7). This? Black cherry margarita. No, there’s no salted rim – that’s not my style. Back in the summer dad used to make strawberry margaritas with fresh strawberries, inexpensive tequila, and syrupy margarita mix in the blender. Sorry, dad, I can’t abide that these days and strawberries are out of season. A splash of pure black cherry juice, embarrassingly nice tequila, fresh lime juice, and Cointreau – and that’s it.
Ingredients in the shaker, I gave it a hard shake and thought about those old strawberry margaritas, and summers with my dad in his Rayban Wayfarers, family trips to Tahoe and Saturdays on the beach at Santa Cruz harbor. Yeah, I shook that think harder than usual. Yeah, I cried a little as I shook. But you know what? That just made wonderful ice chips in the glass.
Here’s to you, dad! Miss you a lot!
PS. This is a selfie post, so here’s a selfie. Well, sort of – my fellow bartender snapped a rather pathetic picture of me tending bar during a brief downpour. I’ll tell you what, I do have a lot of bar stories from this summer!