Yahoo! The Mother of All Dirty Martinis: 5:00 Fridays

You have no idea how humbled I am. I got to hang in the company of some insanely talented women who rock my proverbial boat. I mean, they rock. And they rock it. Solid as a rock, baby. Rock on. Rock stars. Geesh, I am suddenly feeling a bit off my rocker. And I wish I had rock hard abs.

Where was I?

So thanks to the fine folks at Yahoo!, I got to spend a couple days in Palo Alto with some of the Yahoo! Motherboard. I chuckle at that name every time. Just cracks me up. I know it’s something more techie than mothery but I have no idea what it is. I do know that the motherboard in our old Dell laptop died two months after the warranty expired. I don’t know what a motherboard does, but Mac Daddy was pretty pissed when ours went kaput. He’s not cheap, or even all that frugal, but he hates to part with money.

Which is why he doesn’t want to move to Palo Alto now, despite my waxing about how awesome it was and how I want Bird and Deal to go to Stanford and the weather is so brisk and the views are luscious and the food is from local farms and blah blah blah. Mac Daddy squashed my plans when he saw how much a 1200 square foot house costs, and truth be told, when I realized I wouldn’t basking in the awesomeness of the Four Seasons, I kinda put a sock in it. However, I am kicking myself for not installing a giant tub and flat screen TV in the bathroom of the house we recently renovated. Soaking in a bubble bath at 11:00 PM while watching House Hunters International on HGTV was a bliss I had never even known existed. What a way to wind down after spending a couple days with fellow bloggers and Yahoo! Twitterati.

The hobnobbing! The noshing! The mojitoing! Oh, and the learning and thinking and meeting and tweaking and tweeting and lightbulb-momenting. We heard some heart wrenching tales of the importance of privacy and safety in the digital age. We saw how flickr is so darn robust and easy to use. We learned how to write better headlines for search engine optimization (my personal moan moment when I realized I’ve done everything wrong for two years now). And most of all, we all put avatar to face and forged some real friendships. Yahoo! is such a cool company, and I am proud to be counted among the many whiz writers who are the Motherboard.

Did I also mention that I met a few of my blog crushes out there? Gina! Glennia! Donna! Stacy! Vanessa! And I got to hang to hang with my pals Joanne and Jennifer. Meeting face to face instead of screen to screen is a whole lot of awesomeness. I saw more people than I can list and am still high from the experience (also from the memory of 70 degrees and a breeze lapping beneath my skirt).

And so today’s 5:00 Fridays cocktail is a cyber toast to those women who add spice to my life. To all the hawt Yahoo! Motherboard mamas out there…cheers!

Yahoo! The Mother of All Dirty Martinis

2 ounces Hot pepper vodka (I infused my own with a trio of habaneros, Thai chilis, and jalapenos from my own garden and Rain Organic Vodka)

Splash Vermouth

1 ounce Dirty Sue olive juice (OMG…far better than the brine from the store brand jar of green olives!)

2 garlic stuffed olives

Old Bay Seasoning

Lime

Fresh chili pepper for garnish

Rub a lime slice around the rim of a martini glass and dip into a small flat dish of Old Bay. Set aside. Pour vodka, vermouth, and Dirty Sue olive juice into a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake it up, baby. Pour into martini glass. Garnish with two garlic stuffed olives and a chili pepper (I prefer something red. Hot.).

And yeah, I realize Yahoo! has a corner on the purple market, so in keeping with their brand I could have created something in that color scheme. But the searing hot talent that pulses through the Motherboard deserved something especially saucy.

Sizzle. Sizzle.