The most important thing about making a Moscow Mule is getting the cup right. It needs to be copper, which does good things with the lime juice. Don’t use a silver cup, which is used a a container for the Mint Julep. To make a Moscow Mule my way, pour ice into a copper cup. Over the ice add:
- 2 oz not too expensive vodka
- 4 oz Moscow Mule mix
- enough sparkling water to fill your copper cup to the rim
Garnish with a lime slice and mint sprig.
A few years ago I found myself with Dennis Vroegop at a LinkedIn Learning party in Redmond, Washington. It was there that we began negotiations on what eventually became our App Development for HoloLens video course. It was November 3rd, 2016 during the week of the Microsoft MVP summit and the free bar had an excellent mixologist who was able to make me a Rusty Nail as well as a Moscow Mule. I was thrilled.
As the night wore on, we went from party to party with a great sense of freedom and the feeling that we were on top of the world and that we were on the cusp of great things. Another friend, Tamas Deme, ended up at a dour affair for the local Republican Party where depressed representatives waited patiently for bad news.
But that isn’t how things turned out. As we moved from party to party, people started getting panicked phone calls from spouses at home and their faces turned from bemusement to chagrin. At one point we ran into Tim Huckaby, a legend in the Microsoft RD world, who told us Trump was winning the election. We thought he was joking.
Finally my wife called me in tears barely able to contain herself. The country had elected (another) rapist and she couldn’t understand how. I couldn’t get my head around it and ended up walking around Redmond for the next few hours.
Instead of the best year, 2016 became the start of a set of strange, difficult to understand events. Everything feels like it has slowly been dissipating ever since. Friendships have become strained. Relationships have frayed. The extended, non-nuclear family is maintained by avoiding each other. I constantly have to tell my children that this isn’t how things used to be and politicians as well as people in general traditionally are afraid of being caught in lies. But I can tell from their tone that they doubt me. After all, isn’t my generation partly responsible for what has happened?