Sangria, check

After the hiking adventure my friend Andy came over to participate in an experiment. I had just seen him and a crew of folks the night before as we got together at Ruben James and then at Akes Place to celebrate his birthday early (which made rallying for an early start on the hike a bit of a challenge this morning). Tonight, Andy, being a good soul, volunteered to taste my first ever batch of sangria. I've been talking about trying to make it for the last year after falling in love with it last summer in Barcelona. So, like any self-respecting academic, I ran off several different versions of sangria recipes off the internet and decided which one looked like the best option - and this included sitting down at Uncommon Ground with my friend Cinse and creating a compromise/experimental version of one of the recipes (which I then adapted even further). Andy brought over a pizza, we put the final touches on the sangria preparation, and watched a series of Aqua Teen Hunger Force episodes while we discussed the pros and cons of this experiment. Andy's conclusion - this was a tremendous success, although maybe a little more citrus and a little less sugar, and I need to initially run the fruit juice through a sieve to reduce the pulp (which Cinse had warned me about, but I had forgotten). Since there are few layers of competence that I can't easily crawl beneath I considered this an overwhelming success.