Where Project Management Meets Martinis

When the world went into lockdown due to the 2020 pandemic, humanity split into two camps: those who baked sourdough and those of us who chose a different path. If there were smell-a-rama technology on social media, it would have smelled like freshly baked sourdough bread. I stood at a crossroads. Should I join the ranks of the newly flour-dusted home bakers, watching their sourdough starter rise, or should I blaze my own trail? My own martini trail?

I must admit that I tried my hand at nurturing my sourdough starter, and being completely honest, my starter was amazingly active. My bread-making skills were a whole different and inedible story. As fate would have it, I discovered, buried in a kitchen drawer, a paperback copy of The Ultimate Little Martini Book: Over 1000 Martini Recipes. I had found my trail! Or my sourdough starter! 

Let’s do the math.

1000 martinis divided by the approximate 365 days of lockdown equals 2.74 martinis per day. That’s not just a hobby, that’s a fucking lifestyle. Some might say it’s a cry for help, but I prefer to call it “dedicated research and applied skill.” Besides, I had my husband as my trusty co-taster; what could go wrong? If COVID didn’t get us, our livers would have gone down swinging. Thankfully, neither one happened.

Looking through the first several recipes and comparing them to my current stock of liquor, I knew I had a problem. Not a drinking problem, that might have come next, but an inventory problem. I didn’t have many of the liquors, liqueurs, or mixers necessary to make many of the drinks in the book. 

What to do

I needed a plan. This is where my project management skills came into play. There are five key phases of project management: initiation, planning, execution, monitoring, and closure. I fell into it like I was born for it. I hit the ground running, or stumbling, in a hurry to get to the execution phase as soon as possible. I’m reasonably sure I half-assed the initiation and planning stages. 

Initiation:

• I defined the project: To curate the best bar I could afford, with the outcome of being able to concoct all The Ultimate Little Martini Book; Over 1000 Martini Recipes in one year, a very lofty goal. 
• The stakeholders included me, my spouse, and anyone willing to sit outside, maintaining a six-foot social distance. Believe it or not, the promise of free booze and snacks in the shade of a patio umbrella brought out the risk taker in more than one friend. 

Planning:

First, a Gantt chart was created to map out the deliverables. Nothing makes a martini taste better than excellent resource allocation! 

• Initiating:
  • Inventorying the current bar stock. It wasn’t like we were starting from scratch here. We had the basics, and by basics, I mean vodka in the freezer and a bottle of Triple Sec. Those two do not a fancy martini make.
  • Creating a list of alcohol and mixers that needed to be purchased. This task required the use of spreadsheets, comparative analysis, and product research. A decision matrix was employed, followed by a confused husband throwing his hands up and saying, ‘Whatever you decide,’ which fit perfectly with my plans.  
• Timeline:
  • The first milestone was having enough inventory to make the first 20 martinis. Why 20? Because that is the number of martinis we would need to try in a week. 
• Resources:
  • I would provide labor, as well as glasses, stir spoons, and other household items we already had on hand, and our trusty drive-up liquor store, listed at the top of my contacts list, of course. FYI, they never asked for my name. They called me the ‘weird liqueur lady.’ 
• Budget:
  • Our budget was small, but the bottle sizes we purchased were also small. Unless, of course, we bought vodka or gin. We needed plenty of those two ingredients. (Spreadsheet says $300, Liquor store says $600, Budget is adjusted) One can’t scrimp on Grand Marnier, Green Chartreuse, or St. Germain; that would be a sacrilege. 

Execution:

Here comes the fun part. The first few weeks were exhilarating. We bonded over our love of Riedel glassware and the ever-simple, but delicious Cosmopolitan. We split on the classic martini with a twist of lemon; my husband was against it, and I was all for it. I told him that he would never feel like James Bond if he couldn’t embrace a lovely dry vodka martini, shaken, not stirred. He remarked that his wearing of baggy shorts and Washington State Cougars t-shirts put him out of the James Bond persona anyway. We both agreed that our attire was not martini-fancy. 

We found some agreement that dirty martinis are vile, with olives and onions not being the favored garnish, and wasabi did not belong in any martini. Gin and wasabi do not play well with each other. The pages of the book became stained with fruit juice, annotated with substitution suggestions, and flagged with Post-It notes (color mattered, green was ‘Let’s go for more’, red was ‘Stop! Do not drink ever again,’ and yellow was ‘Caution! Delicious and Dangerous for your liver.’

Monitoring

The booze cupboard evolved from “mildly interesting” to the more sophisticated “liquor store with a dress code.” We kept cramming in highbrow new bottles until, suddenly, Blue Curacao, Crème de Violette, and Limoncello were fighting for prime cupboard real estate, shoving aside the less favored and humbled Amaretto and completely ignoring Sambuca. A crisis was looming. Decisions had to be made. Do we expand to a second cupboard, or give up and admit the booze collection had officially become less of a hobby and more of a cry for help? 

Glorious excess

We chose the path of glorious excess and embraced our new reality by taking possession of the open shelving in the dining room. It wasn’t like we were using that lovely china, vases, and knick-knacks. After all, this was the pandemic era; guests weren’t showing up to judge us. The dogs certainly weren’t. They couldn’t have been happier that we were all in the same place at the same time. This was winning for them!

Patio parade of martinis

Sitting on the back yard patio, sipping martinis, dogs lying at our feet became the perfect ending to each day. We became something of martini connoisseurs. We debated the merits of gin versus vodka, with vodka emerging as the winner every time. Dry versus wet, dry for me. Bone dry!

At some point, the liquor store employees recognized my voice, and our Amazon subscription order became more cocktail umbrellas than disinfectant and masks. Our recycling bin overflowed with booze bottles instead of pickle jars. I feared our garbage pick-up crew was going to put their backs out lifting our recycling bins, and who knows what our neighbors thought, so sneaking our bins to the curb in the dead of night became a ‘thing.’

One day, while sitting on the back yard patio, something important occurred to us. Why were we at home when we had a perfectly good fifth-wheel trailer sitting in storage? Why couldn’t we take our lovely cocktail crafting show on the road? Let’s take “work-from-home” to “work-from-trailer.” A quick Google search revealed that camping was considered the safest way to travel, and WE WERE OFF!.

Imagine the thrill of parking the trailer in a lovely setting, mixing up a batch of cocktails, and the dogs lying at our feet. Blending adventure with indulgence, work with pleasure, and sunsets with cocktails. 

Logistics once again came into play during this stage. Space in our small trailer was limited. Stocking the trailer bar with all the essentials required ingenuity and the decluttering that only Marie Kondo could achieve. Did we really need a case of AA batteries? What about that emergency first aid kit? Everything, every booze, and every bar supply had to earn its place in our limited space. In the end, with a little bit of imagination and trailer modification (those stemware racks are fantastic space savers), we hit the road. 

Closure

As we journeyed from scenic and sometimes not-so-scenic destinations, roadside wonders to “Why the hell did we stop here?”, our trailer and trailer bar were our respite. The trailer was a rolling oasis. An escape from work, Zoom calls, and the monotony of daily life, a symbol of our commitment to savoring life’s moments. Memories and celebrations of places we visited and other campers we met at a safe social distance along the journey were interspersed with our love of a perfect cocktail. Our trailer bar was about mixing and making memories.

It has been five years since the pandemic turned us from occasional Cosmo aficionados to makeshift mixologists and adventurers on the highways, byways, and the roads less traveled. The last of the booze has been drunk, and the trailer bar holds little more than the basics and the whispering scent of citrus. I never could’ve predicted I’d be toasting these memories solo. My husband passed away this year, but the memories of shared laughter, photos, and a delicious martini will keep the journey alive.

Goodbye, My Love! I am raising my glass to toast the wild martini soaked ride we shared.