Have you ever wondered how long you have to live?  If you did would you change anything? The Death Clock will help you with your planning.  All you need to do is plug in some important data.  The Death Clock needs your birth-date, sex, smoking status, mode (optimist or pessimist) and your body mass index.  Don’t worry if you don’t know your BMI.  The site will help you calculate it.  I plugged in all of the essential data and the Death Clock has told me I am going to die on 5/24/2058, so I have roughly another 51 years to go on this earth. 

The Skull-A-Day blog is a great site. They are posting a new skull picture every day for a year. It is even more timely now that Halloween is approaching. A few years back The Big Fez and I put these together over the course of a weekend.

The skulls were gleaming white out of the box and we aged them. Then we cut holes in the neck and mounted them on sticks. We placed raffia on the base of the skulls. I added the bottle caps in the eye sockets after a few beers. I thought it added an extra touch of class. It took a few hours but it was well worth the effort and they turned out great. They still get used every year for our annual Halloween party.

I thought Colonel Sanders was long dead and according to  Wikipedia he is dead. However, I just saw the man. I was in the Atlanta airport when my friend said look over there. Right in front of me stood Colonel Sanders. He had the white suit. The string tie. The white hair and a briefcase with a Kentucky Fried Chicken sticker on it. This was no imposter it was the Colonel. I can only come to the conclusion that the “secret recipe” is some modern day fountain of youth. Of course in this case it is not literally a fountain but 12 magic herbs and spices that will keep the Colonel alive forever.  He saw me snap the photo and as you can tell he looks kind of angry.  I thought it wise not to provoke him any further and headed toward my gate. 

This drink is great for those upcoming Halloween parties.  I also like the name.  Ecto Cooler.  That just sounds like a good Halloween drink.  If you aren’t having a Halloween party then mix a batch up and watch Ghostbusters.  I don’t think Ghostbusters has an official drink but if it did it would be the Ecto Cooler.  It is easy to make and is a lovely green color.  Here is the ingredient list:

1 package of Lemon Lime Kool-Aid.  You read it right Kool-Aid.

1 Lemon sliced

1 Lime sliced

1 cup of sugar

20 oz Vodka- I recommend the cheap stuff.  No sense mixing Gray Goose with Kool-Aid.  A bottle of Popov will do nicely.

Pour all ingredients into a half gallon container.  If you don’t have a half gallon container double the ingredients and use a gallon.  Fill the remainder of the container with water and ice.  Stir until the sugar and Kool-Aid dissolve.  Serve over ice.  This will stain clothes, carpeting and your tongue green so be careful not to spill it. 

Sam Adams makes some of my favorite beers. I am currently drinking my way through a case of Sam Adams Brewmasters Collection. That keeps me going until the Holiday packs come out which is an annual purchase for me. Last night Mrs. Mai Tai brought home a Sam Adams product I had never seen before. I had never even heard of it before. Waiting in my refrigerator was a four pack of Sam Adams Hallertau Imperial Pilsner. It doesn’t look like your usual Sam Adams beer. First the packaging. There are only four beers not six. Then the bottle itself. It is the standard brown color but the bottle does not have the usual Sam Adams label on it. I haven’t tried it yet but the box explains that it is full of hoppy goodness. So hoppy that I expect my head might leap off my neck in a big hop explosion.

October 19th, 2007 could be a milestone day for the city of Orlando. At 3:30 pm a great horde of zombies will be unleashed on the city. Those zombies are going to make their way from the Friday’s Front Row Restaurant and make their way to the Wyndham Resort. You just need to arrive and they will provide the gore. If enough zombies show up there is a good chance that the Orlando Zombie Walk could bust the world record. Currently Pittsburgh holds the zombie walk record with 894 participants. Orlando should be able to easily beat this record. It is the opening night of ScreamFest which is billing itself as the largest horror convention in Florida. That alone should be good for at least 1,000 people. If you are in town and would like to be undead for a few hours stop on by and get zombified. You could also be part of a world record and that is cool. And guys remember the ladies love world record holders. It sounds like a brain eating good time to me. Actually, I am kidding about the brain eating part. Local law enforcement frowns on zombies eating tourist brains. They probably won’t shoot you in the head but you could find yourself on the business end of a taser.

Get the full details here.

Awhile ago we took a long weekend and went to St. Augustine.  I love a good ghost story so we planned on doing a ghost tour while there.  St. Augustine is the oldest continuously occupied city in the continental United Sates. A city with that much history is bound to have its share of ghost stories. Mrs. Mai Tai looked through the available ghost tours and there are quite a few to choose from.  She chose the Haunted Pub Tour.  Awesome. You get to listen to ghost stories and you get to drink as it is essentially a pub crawl to allegedly haunted bars. We visited four different bars or it might have been three.  I don’t remember the evening got a little fuzzy.  I had my digital camera with me and the guide will tell you where to snap some pictures.  We walked past an old cemetery and the guide said take a few shots and see if any ghost orbs show up. I snapped a few and there was a white ball in the photo. It could be a ghost orb or it could be dust or particulates in the air that reflected the flash. I tell everyone it is a ghost orb, it makes for a better story. Tickets are only $16. If you are looking for a ghost tour this is a good one.

When I get home from work one of my routines is to check the answering machine to see if anyone had called.  Indeed someone had called me.  I listened to the message and it was a recording from the County Correctional Facility asking if I would accept a collect call from a prisoner.  I don’t know anyone in jail so I could not figure out who would have tried to call me.  Then I thought maybe my friend The Big Fez had been picked up by the cops and was using his one call to talk to me.  As far as I know he has never been in trouble with the law but there is always a first time for everything.  I called his house and he answered.  I told him I was checking to make sure he was not in jail.  He wasn’t.  He said sometimes people in jail will call random people to see if they will answer.  Maybe that was what happened or maybe they dialed the wrong numebr in any case to the guy in the County Correctional Facility, sorry I missed your call. 

Boo Berry is once again available at Target.  That is a clear indicator that Halloween is just around the corner.  I remember when I was a kid and you could find Boo Berry, Count Chocula and Frankenberry at any local grocery store.  It is a different story today.  Count Chocula is still available all year but Frankenberry and Boo Berry are available only in October.  I guess a strawberry monster and blueberry ghost just aren’t as popular as they used to be.  It is hard to compete with all those so called “healthy” cereals in today’s market.  Sometimes I miss those carefree days of being able to eat anything I wanted and not worry that it was going to give me diabetes or turn my colon an unnatural blue color.  I made sure I purchased a few boxes.  Count Chocula can go to hell.  I want my Boo Berry.   

I am a big fan of tropical drinks.  I like drinking them.  I like making them.  I like reading about the people who created them.  One ingredient you see in many old drink recipes is Falernum.  I have never seen Falernum sold anywhere and believe me I have looked.  If you ask the sales clerk if they carry it you usually get what I call the CBS (cold blank stare) as they clearly have no idea what you are talking about.  Now how am I supposed to make these drinks if I cannot get a key ingredient?  It would be like making a Mai Tai without the Orgeat Syrup.  The other day while doing some Falernum research on the web I stumbled across the Drinkboy website with a recipe to make your own Falernum.  There are actually two recipes one for a small batch and one that makes 30 gallons.  I don’t need 30 gallons of any beverage but the small batch looks easy enough to make.  I know what I will be cooking up this weekend.