Woe! And alcohol

R.I.P. Radeon 9800 Pro. :( My vid card croaked yesterday afternoon when I loaded Half-Life 2. *sobs* Not a Windows or driver-related croak, but an honest to goodness hardware failure. Hopefully the place I bought it from will repair it under the warranty in a timely manner. I was hoping to get some good quality gaming time in this weekend, but instead, my comptuer is stuck with software graphics rendering, which means the damn thing gets confused scrolling thru my inbox. *grrrrrr*

On the positive side, the mulled wine experiment turned out well. I tried it out on some guests and they actually liked it, so here is the recipe, now that I've confirmed it's not poisonous.

Required kitchen stuff:
crock pot
decent sized pot

Ingredients:
1/2 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups water
3 cinnamon sticks
3 whole cloves
half a lemon, sliced thinly
1 750 mL bottle of cheap red wine (not the extra large bottle of cheap stuff).

Procedure:
Boil the water.
Dissolve the sugar in the boiling water.
Add all the other ingredients and stir for about one minute.
Pour whole mixture into crockpot, cover, set it on low, and cook it for at least an hour. It can simmer, but don't let it boil.
Serve in mugs.