Swine Flu and Derby Day

Let me tell you, right now is a awful time to have allergies. The pollen has really been building up around here and getting to me. We really need a nice rain to wash it all out of the air, and off of my car. But that’s normal, the bad part is that every time someone sneezes everyone thinks swine flu. One of my coworkers has taken to saying it instead gesundheit, thanks Erik :-P. It was doubly bad at the Kentucky Derby party I co-hosted at Mary’s place this weekend. Mary’s two cats also really get me to sneezing as well.

So right, Derby party! Mary (mostly and her roommates, some) hosted the party and I managed the wagering at my first Derby party since leaving home. We didn’t have a whole lot of people there before race time, so I had to make the executive decision to reduce the number of possible bets to something where I could reasonably cover all the bets that people didn’t want to make. This kind of sucked cause it reduced the number of winners to 3, and one of them was me, because I just bought up all the leftovers. But actually, I didn’t have to buy the winner in the parimutuel betting, someone else did that. My win was in the random pool. I raffled off the two remaining official 135 mint julep glasses to make there be two more “winners.” All in all the party was a success. Oh, the mint juleps were also a success. I couldn’t find a recipe I trusted so I went with simple syrup using equal amounts by volume, about 1 cup per glass, 2 shots of bourbon, and ice to taste.

I did have one closing thought on the swine flu. This is pure speculation, and based on the possibly sensationalistic reporting that was running around early in the news cycle. Although, it is not based on any bad news gleaned from twitter, it could well be just as bad as that. I’m curious if the difference in the mortality rate of the flu between Mexico and the US is possibly, in some part, due to a higher occurrence on unreported Aids (or other immune system deficiency disease) cases in Mexico.

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