April Showers

I was once caught in a snowstorm in a cabin in Maine with a tumbler and some vodka. As I recall the vodka was Smirnoff but it doesn't matter, for vodka is an odorless, tasteless liquid (hahahahah...).  I opened the window to the cabin and scooped up some snow with the tumbler and poured the vodka into it, and had a fine drink, which I'll call a vodka mist because I don't think there is a name for it, really. This wasn't my idea--I had read of it in Robert Byron's heroic picaresque The Road to Oxiana, and Byron was somewhere near the Khyber Pass when he tried this concoction.  But I was reminded of my vodka mist today at noon when I made a martini with orange and lemon and walked out onto the patio to have an L&M. The rainwater was pelting the martini and I thought, well, a cocktail glass works very well for this.  Geraniums in the background in the ivy. This is a good drink and the rainwater really makes it.  Confession: I squeeze a few drops of lemon and a few drops of orange into all martinis, and I shake the hell out of them, one shake for every year I've spent on the planet.  Because as you advance, you are entitled to a still colder drink.