My kids are highly influential and in regularly prodigious demand throughout the world.

Just last week, Evelyn was called to a special session of the United Nations to speak to the current Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. The week before that, Harrison’s skills were required for a Special Operations envoy acting somewhere in the South China Sea. He couldn’t tell me where he was going, exactly, I only knew that I needed to get him to the airport. The week before that, Madeline was giving a lecture at Princeton to a prestigious gathering of brain surgeons on the topic of viral infections leading to seizures. I hear that the paper she presented was both brilliant and well received. This past May, Josh was called up to conduct a mid-afternoon performance of Beethoven’s Symphony #9 with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. I wasn’t able to hear it, but I remember it being heralded in the media as one of the greatest performances of the work since Beethoven imagined it. Next week, Evelyn has a meeting scheduled with Apple to talk through her designs for, in their words, “a world-changing device that will change the way mankind communicates.” Only the Lord knows what brilliant gadget she’s come up with this time.

As you can see, if the kids aren’t scheduled for grand speaking engagements, then they’re meeting with world leaders, helping to coordinate relief (and sometimes military) efforts in troubled regions, or field testing new technologies they’ve designed for major electronic corporations.

At least that’s what I tell the school office when I’m signing them out for an appointment.

Yeah, you know that clipboard in the school’s front office with the “Sign In/Out” paper that no one ever reads, the one with the pen tied to it by a very long piece of fluorescent yellow yarn? Yep, that one. It has the form that asks you through stale regiment to provide your child’s name, the time he or she left, the time he or she returned, and then the reason for the absence.

Yawn.

How about this, instead? How about I do what I can in the few seconds that I have to liven up the mechanical doldrums for anyone who might glance at this snapshot of life. And so I give it a try. Orthodontist appointment? Nah. We’re on our way to Tijuana to meet with a CIA informant regarding the local cartel movements near the California border.

I think the folks at Stranahan’s are working with the same philosophy, at least the guy at the distillery who scribed the distillation date and special comments onto my bottle of Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey. Greg is his name, and his comments are brisk… and completely on the fringe of what is actually present in the whiskey.

“Burritos and whiskey,” he writes. Hah. Nice.

Don’t expect anything burrito-ish about this dram. Although it might pair well with a mildly seasoned steak that, in its after-dinner leftover form, is cut into strips, painted with salsa, and wrapped in a soft tortilla.

Maybe.

There’s a lightness about this whiskey in the nose. It’s cooled barley bread with a little bit of butter and a dab of dark berry jam. There’s a noticeable bit of vanilla wafting from the bread basket.

A sip brings along the sense that the bread is a little undercooked and gooey, but it isn’t necessarily bad. In fact, it works to highlight other ingredients stirred into the batter: butter toffee, blueberries, and cream.

The finish is short, but still rather delightful, giving over a better-than-expected compilation of the vanilla with a distinct sugary nip.

This is pretty good stuff. In fact, the next time the kids are called to the Rocky Mountains for military exercises or some sort of geological expedition, I’ll encourage them to make a stop at the Stranahan’s distillery in Denver for a visit. I’m sure the folks there would be more than happy to receive such celebritous guests.