Rob Hope

Today’s Prompt

What is your favorite drink?

So, ordinarily I would say Diet Coke. In fact, one of my old peers used to tell me they often judged how well my day was going by how much (or how little) Diet Coke I had consumed that day.

I don’t like coffee, I don’t like tea, so my caffeine intake comes from Diet Coke. And I don’t even like the aroma of either coffee or tea. One of my early memories is getting up one night as a child, seeing a pitcher of grape Kool-Aid in the fridge, pouring a glass, taking a drink, and realizing way too late that it was actually Iced Tea. Haven’t had any since.

But I’m not sure that’s really the question here.

I’m not a big drinker, not by any stretch. I’ve got health issues that sort of encourage me (require me?) to avoid alcohol. I don’t like the taste of most alcohols, especially beer, which I find just awful. Even the non-alcoholic beers just don’t do it for me, although I did try Zima a bit here and there back in the day. And more often than not, I’m the one driving. Add it all up and I rarely if ever have a drink.

Many of my friends and colleagues are aware of this. Many more tried over the years to get me to have one here or there. But it remains rare: the last time I had one was a failed attempt in New Orleans earlier this year to order a beverage that the bartender got completely wrong, and was simply not tolerable.

That was a Fuzzy Navel.

Somehow, they left out the orange juice when they made the drink. Which is most of the goodness of the drink. I actually like the taste of a Fuzzy Navel. When I do drink, it’s for the taste more than the experience.

About 12 years ago, there was an engineering wide company meeting in Santa Barbara. My manager, who lived in Irvine, and I were good friends but rarely saw each other. After dinner, I made the mistake of letting him buy me a Fuzzy Navel…because everyone I knew there saw me with the drink, and then proceeded to repeatedly buy me ones for the remainder of the night, even occasionally upgrading to my second favorite drink, Double Kamikaze Shots. Then they followed me around the rest of the night to see what happened, including my mild-mannered QA tester who insisted they would outlast me.

Sadly for them, I don’t really get affected much by the alcohol personality-wise, I just get chill. As long as you ignore the 1am ping pong game where I told my QA tester I was going to unequivocally kick their butt.

So, yeah. Fuzzy Navels. Once about every 6-8 years.

This post is one of many in my responses to random prompts surfaced by the application that tracks my website statistics, as well as any others I encounter.