I feel like I should answer the questions generated by this post wherein Miss Grace details the goings-on of our night out.
So I was getting readyish to leave my parents' house and head over to Jenny's when she sent me a text saying that if I were to stop by the store on my way and pick up something to drink, she wouldn't be upset. I opened the front door, looked out at the driving rain and realized that no I would not be stopping. So I asked my mom if I could take something from the liquor cabinet.
I found a bottle of vodka that was about 3/4 full. I held it up and asked my mom just how old it was. She tried to tell me some story about how she buys vodka in the summers because she likes to sit by the pool and drink gin and tonics. But vodka = not gin. And also, I cannot remember a time when her preferred beverage was not a glass of wine. So that makes my rough guess around 14 years because I'm 26 now and I probably started noticing what my mom drank when I was about 12 because that's when I became all bratty and irritated by everything my parents did. But that's just a guess. It could have been older, since no one in my parents' house drinks vodka on a regular basis and my mom also pulled out a bottle of Jose Cuervo that she knew for a fact was from my sister's wedding (13 years ago) and a bottle of cognac from when time began. Also, the vodka was probably not the cheapest bottle available, but it had been opened and was living in a cabinet (not the freezer) for who knows how long.
And so I presented it to Miss Grace, "I didn't want to stop at the store since the weather was so crappy, so we're just going to have to participate in a little experiment called Does Vodka Go Bad? Sound good?"
"Um??" said Jenny.
And it turns out that yes, yes it does. The vodka smelled like rubbing alcohol and then nothing. As in, it smelled potent and abrasive and then the potency and abrasiveness apparently shoots into your nostrils as you take a sniff and kills off your smelling ability so the next time you smell it, it smells like nothing. And it tasted like, well, rubbing alcohol. Or what I imagine rubbing alcohol might taste like. In a burning, been left sitting out, kind of way. So there you go. Vodka, in case you were wondering, does go bad.
