Drink this. Read This

Holy heat wave folks.  It's like DC has been turned into one giant sauna (complete with gross, sweaty old men).  There's something weather that like this that just screams gin drinks to me.  And, while some might turn to palomas, or lighter drinks . . . I like my gin drinks strong, dark, and bitter (sort of like my personality).  After traveling to Italy last spring, I fell in love with the Negroni, a Gin and Compari concoction.  Mr. C, our friend, Leo, and I would sit in the main square in Sienna, sipping negroni after negroni and solving all the world's problems.  Then, when we were in New York a few weeks ago, I had one of the best Negroni's I've ever experienced at the Hour Glass Tavern's Betti Bar.  The bartender there used Hendricks Gin and the strong juniper flavor really complemented the Campari.  The best part about Negroni?  It's super easy to make:

Combine equal parts of Gin, Campari, and Sweet Vermouth and garnish with a lemon twist.  If you want it to be a littler sweeter, increase the sweet vermouth.  If you want it to be more bitter, add more Campari.  Drink. Enjoy. Repeat.

One warning, this is not your mama's wine cooler (though my mama was a scotch and soda type of gal . . . explains a lot about my taste in liquor).  It's pretty potent and also only for true Gin lovers since the juniper-flavor is pretty strong.

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While you're sipping on one of these, or the beverage of your choice, you might want to check out this article from the New York Times on the steps that some stores, like Nordstrom are taking to capture data on consumers' shopping patterns, including tracking shoppers via their cell phone signals.

Apparently, some shoppers were weirded out and Nordstrom stopped the program, but it raises some interesting questions.

Probably unsurprisingly, I really like the idea of capturing data on consumers to figure out how to better reach them or how to personalize their shopping experience.  I mean, if a store could figure out that I am much more likely to leave a section of the store if the sales people come up and talk to me . . . that would make my shopping experience a lot more pleasant.  That said, the idea of using video cameras to determine what I was looking at and my mood, kind of weirds me out.  This is kind of silly given that I live in DC and sort of assume that there are street cameras everywhere . . . but still.

The New York Times pointed out that the data Nordstrom was gathering wasn't that different from the type of data that e-commerce sites track. Yet, somehow we're a lot more comfortable with our actions being tracked on the internet, than we are with someone monitoring us in a store. Perhaps it's because we still feel some sense of anonymity when we're browsing on-line.

I also wonder if it's hard for us, as consumers, to see how we benefit from a store capturing our information.  Interestingly, the article pointed out that people seemed a lot more open to stores gathering their information when they were offered some sort of "perk" in return.

Are you ok with a store tracking your movements using your cell phone?  Or using video cameras to determine what you're looking at and, even your mood?

If you're interested in this story, the New York Times had two more articles on the topic:

• Rules of In-Store Surveillance
• You and Your Cell Phone (on Candid Camera)