From: ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu (AjD) Date: 24 Nov 91 21:42:06 GMT Newsgroups: rec.food.drink,alt.drugs Subject: Everclear FAQ (preliminary) [Sorry for the ghost posting that went out first.] Everclear FAQ Table of Contents - Introduction - Where is Everclear - Includes notes on other >150 proof grain alcohols, and on kinds of Everclear available. - Prices for Everclear - Recipes - Liqueurs - Other uses - The Chemistry and Dangers of Grain Alcohols - Includes first-hand stories and information on Everclear and lab-grade ethanol. - Legal Problems - Everclear Myths and Legends - Miscellaneous ________________________________________________________________________ Introduction It seems that a lot of people have a fondness for drinking paint thinner.(:->) There was a good load of response to my question about where to find that relatively notorious 190-proof drink, Everclear, and although only a half of the states in the union are covered, it has taken me a while to patch everything together. This list is definitely open to additions. My original question was where Everclear was available, and what truth were there to the rumors of it being banned for import in some states. The question is mostly but not only academic. I've been wanting to try my hand at making "electric jello" for years! Some notes on the compiling of the list: All material between and including "Recipes" and "Misc Notes" are direct quotes from postings and mailings; any comments I have to make will be in brackets [ ]. Some material has been edited to get to the point and move on; several people have pieces of their paragraphs spread over various sections to fit the categorization. I beg forgiveness for misinterpretations due to my editing. People who wish to have their names removed from attributions, or have corrections to make in what they said, should e-mail me (AjD) directly. Please be kind -- this is my first attempt at compiling something with this volume of references. Some notes on the first edition: This is intended as a preliminary version of a more conclusive FAQ, which will be updated as the legal status of Everclear and other very strong (>150 proof) grain alcohols change. The final version of this edition could use the following information: - Documentation of legal implications of Everclear, and of banning - Information about the distillery - Citations about grain alcohol in medical and technical journals - Filling out and clarifications of any information given below which seems vague. I forgot to ask whether people would like to receive credit for the information they provide; Given the content of some entries, they may not. For this posting, I have included the names of people as given in the header of their messages. I will take no response to this posting to mean that they would like to keep their name attached to their quote. Other comments relevant to the issue or to my compiling are welcome. e-mail to: ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu ________________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Where is Everclear? Everclear is available in the following states: [Note: I speculate that various cities and counties within a given state may not allow grain alcohol of that strength; this is based on the fact that I couldn't find it when I lived in Erie, Pennsylvania.] Arizona Colorado Illinois Indiana Kentucky Louisiana Mississippi Nevada New Jersey New York North Carolina North Dakota Oklahoma Pennsylvania Texas Virginia Washington DC Wisconsin (possibly) Wyoming The following places have grain alcohol of a high enough percentage to be worth consideration here, but may not necessarily have the Everclear brand. Alabama New Hampshire Ontario, Canada Quebec, Canada Tijuana, Mexico [Alcohols (specifically, rum and vodka) are available in proofs of up to 151 in most states, and so they were not considered in this survey; states carrying Everclear 153 were retained, because they fit the original parameters of the survey.] Everclear is not available in the following states: California Ohio Minnesota Washington State (possibly) Massachusetts (possibly) The followings states have no results yet: Alaska Arkansas Connecticut Delaware Florida Georgia Hawaii Idaho Iowa Kansas Maine Maryland Michigan Missouri Montana Nebraska New Mexico Oregon Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Utah Vermont West Virginia The "plain" Everclear comes in two strengths: 153 proof and 190 proof., the weaker apparently replacing the stronger in several states. There are several fruit punches and coolers marketed with the name "Everclear" on the label; the most widely known seems to be "Purple Passion", which is a grape fruit drink. There is also a tropical-style fruit punch. These have a strength of six to eight percent alcohol. ________________________________________________________________________ Prices for Everclear Some people offered prices for Everclear where they live. The range of reports are: $10-$15 for 1/5 in New Orleans [=$12.50/l] "About five dollars" per 375 ml in Arizona and Louisiana [=$13.33/l] $11 for a fifth in Pennsylvania [=$13.75/l] "about $16/liter" in Indiana $12 for "a liter, I think" in Austin, TX "about $14 a bottle" in New Jersey [either a fifth or liter] Overall, no savings great enough to merit crossing several extra state lines. ________________________________________________________________________ Recipes I have found that about a five or six to one ratio of everclear to water in your jello mix works the best. by this i mean it maximizes alcohol content while still jelling in a reasonable time and at a reasonable temp. Have fun with this recipie. Another use for everclear... is to make melon balls. slice a watermellon in half. into each half pour a flask of everclear. allow the melons to sit so that the everclear soaks in well. then eat the melon, and suck the rinds. the rinds are especially good as they have soaked up most of the everclear. enjoy. - alex chermside It goes well with grape Kool-aid. Any proportion you want. The recipe for making regular jello includes three ingredients: 1. Jello powder 2. Very hot water 3. Cold water To make rum jello, substitute 80-proof rum for the cold water. If you want to avoid the "rum" taste, you can use 50% everclear + 50% water instead. I have made rum jello, and the above recipe worked well. I have tried using more alcohol with bad results. - Kieth Lewis Everclear can be used, with good results, as a substitute for Gin or Vodka in almost any mixed drink. The problem with the Jello is that I think there are problems with getting something to Gell with such a high alcohol content. - Fotis Xipolitakis We tried a Black Russian, substituting Everclear for the vodka. I added the Everclear to the glass, then the Kahlua, and the Kahlua curdled! It was way too strong and I ended up adding milk and making a White Russian out of it. One successful recipe is to take a 16 oz. tumbler, pour in 2 shots of Chambord (raspberry liquor), 1/2 to 1 shot of Everclear, and then add ice and fill the glass with Classic Coke. You really can't taste the Everclear, the raspberry flavor comes through, and it packs quite a punch. We dubbed this drink the "Leg Spreader", since we figured that women would like it more than men, and that you could get quite smashed on it without realizing it. I have made 'hairy buffalo' with it in college, which is a Hawaiian Punch-based drink. Take oranges, marischino cherries, apples, limes, and lemons, slice them (except for the cherries) and soak them in Everclear overnight, or at least for a few hours. Pour the fruit and Everclear into Hawaiian punch (you'll need to experiment with the ratios, but you shouldn't be able to taste the Everclear too well). It's really cool if you add dry ice to make it fog up. I don't recommend this if you have light-colored furniture or carpeting, because unfortunately the Hawaiian Punch does a great job of staining should it be spilled. - Sheila Wallace I finally got some everclear for the first time last week and made a halloween punch with it. Bit of a hodge podge: OJ, a can of Sprite, pineapple juice, and everclear, plus a packet of Pat O'Briens cyclone mix. Not bad, the guests liked it. - Brian Bloom ...the world's cheapest Tequila+Everclear+the world's cheapest O.J. == BAD NEWS!!! - Brian "Zamboni" Aslakson My favorite method of serving the stuff was mixed with Kool-aid. I had two ways of figuring out how much ethanol to add to 2 quarts of Kool-aid: 1) Since it was 95%, I just rounded up and considered it pure alcohol for the purpose of calculations. I would decide a percentage I wanted to arrive at, usually between 5 and 15%. Say 10%. So: 2 quarts=64 oz. I COULD use algebra, to the effect of x = (64 + x)/10 , making x = 7.1. Fuck that--I would have just estimated, and guessed 7 oz. anyway. I would have taken a measuring cup and poured somewhere between 3/4 and 1 cup ethanol into the 2 quarts of punch. I say would have, because I forget what percentage I usually decided on, the few times I've done this. This method is the one I would use at the beginning of the party. More frequently, I would use method 2. 2) Make Kool-aid, add ethanol to taste. This is the method you use after the first batch. Face it: you're going to have to sample your work out of professional pride. And if you're like me, you're going to realize that WOW--you can barely taste 10%. So you're going to add more ethanol to that first batch, after you carefully figured out how much to put in, and then you're going to taste it again. And you're going to do this a couple of times, until either you get it perfect, or you overshoot with the ethanol, and realize that you're going to have to add more kool-aid or water or sugar (sugar helps if you overdid the alcohol), and then you're going to have to taste it again. Etcetera. And if you're stupid enough to tell you're guests about the true origin of the alcohol, they're going to assume that you're an absolute idiot who's trying to poison them with methanol, and to assuage their fears, you're going to have to drink a lot of it before they'll even think of touching it. (Hint: lie like a dog and tell your guests that it's Everclear that your Uncle Bob bought in Kentucky.) For these reasons, when I serve ethanol punch at a party, I'm usually the first one to cop a major buzz. (And if it weren't for the LSD, I probably would have completely passed out from it a couple of times :-) The code word that I and my friends use for 95% ethanol from the lab is "the Motts", not because of the commercial ("I've got the Motts"), but because after one particularly good haul, I kept a half gallon of ethanol in a 2-quart Motts apple juice jug. Lab grade alcohol...there's nothing like it! - Brian A. Bargmeyer A couple of years ago, we bought a fifth of Clear Springs [another grain alcohol] (we usually just call it 'PGA') and a 1.75 liter bottle of vodka. We got a styrofoam cooler, tossed in about 8 packs of Kool- Aid (Tropical Punch, I believe), a bunch of sugar, and filled it with a garden hose. We then poured the PGA and vodka into the cooler along with some various fruits. It turned out quite good... - Keith Seymour Let me tell you about this thing called Purple Passion. You buy it at the liquor store in a 2-liter plastic bottle like soda. It is basically carbonated grape juice and wine mixed with Everclear. The trace taste of alcohol is so small that you can just sit there drinking it and drinking it and get toasted in a big hurry. The label says it's 6.1% alcohol, but I would bet that's a little downplayed. Maybe I just drink so much I get wasted as though I were drinking whiskey, but the point is that you drink this to get drunk. The first swallows have kind of a bitter taste to me, but keep going. If you really want to get wasted and you don't like that piercing aftertaste that scotch and vodka have, this is the one. - Shea [At the given alcoholic percentage, a two-liter bottle has the alcoholic strength of eight and a half cans of Budweisers and can be drunk "like soda"; it is not to be "downplayed"! -- AjD] I've heard of some recipes, but they're all for drinks; one involving extracted THC ("green dragon"), and one involving 1 part everclear, 2 parts 151 rum, and 1 part some bright blue alcoholic drink whose name I can't remember. - Rachel ________________________________________________________________________ Liqueurs I haven't been able to make a batch of homemade Kahlua since I moved to California. And don't say "Oh, just use vodka": It's just not the same - Arch Mott The main reason for [not using vodka] is, depending on the proof of the vodka, the proof of the final product after dilution with the sugar syrup is between 40 and 50. If some 190 proof is substituted, the proof can be brought up to that of a commercial liquor on any homemade liquor. - Ted Feuerbach - Find a glass container with an opening large enough to comfortable accept a medium size orange. the small the container the better. - Invert a glass shot glass and center in the bottom of the container. - Pour a cup of Everclear into the container without wetting the shot glass top. Place a fresh orange on top of the shot glass. The orange should have a moderately thick skin, but not excessive. - A ground glass top is ideal, if not, a closely fitting plate will do to cover the brue. - Check daily as the orange "sweats" its oils. It will slow after three or four days (a week is OK but not necessary). DO NOT OPEN AT ANY TIME till done. - Remove orange and shot glass and pour in a cup of bar syrup. Theres no majic here, find your own sweetness level, this is just for openners. - Pour into a regular bottle and stopper tightly (after you've tasted it, clear, crisp, intence, pure, WOW, no more of those orange liqueurs again). This stuff is fragile so plan on using it soon and don't make more than you can use, one week is fine, after two it very drinkable but the flavor is noticably less. And, it will get cloudy with no appearent affect. Yes any citris will work (never tried a grapefruit), we even put two dozen mint leaves on a thread and hung over. The leaves turned black and crumbly, but the tast -- sheer POWER. To answer the obvious next question, no Vodka will NOT work. - [attribution missing--please contact me (AjD)] [in reply to the previous posting:] Oh yes it will. I have done this exact same thing many times using ordinary 80 and 100 proof vodka although admittedly it takes longer than 3 days. However, it also lasts a bit longer than a week! Here's how I did it last weekend: Into a 2 liter glass apothecary jar, pour a fifth of vodka. Using a long needle and white cotton thread, run a thread through a medium- sized orange. Suspend the orange over the vodka, wrapping the threads around a brick or similar heavy object. Cover, do not disturb for 10 days. Remove the orange, mix corn syrup to taste. This stuff is potent and the orange flavor is overwhelming, although it tends to diminish after six months or so if you open it too frequently :-) - Gary Benson General Instructions for Herbal Cordials [This can be modified to make Green Dragon as well as other (legal) drinks; information has been gathered and summarized from the following books: Cooking With Cannabis by Adam Gottlieb, The Herbalist by Joseph E. and Clarence Meyer, and The Master Book of Herbalism by Paul Beyerl] Basically, throw the herbs into a mason jar, fill with Everclear, seal and let sit in a dark place for several weeks or months. Generally, if you don't use heat to extract, it will need to sit for at least two weeks. It is good to periodically swirl the jar around to loosen the contents. You then have the option of storing the jar as-is, and draining fluid to use as necessary, which will entail filtering on every use, but the formula will progressively get stronger. Or you may drain the stuff out, filtering through a cone-shape coffee filter into a bottle for longer storage. A more complex method is to dump all the herbal materials into a jar, fill with alcohol, and let sit as above for a week. Loosen the top of the jar and place in a hot bath; in which the water in a pot can boil freely without splashing into the jar. Heat for 30-45 minutes. Remove the jar and strain the alcohol into a second jar which has a fresh collection of herbs; this process can be repeated up to four times but for most people's purposes one repetition will be plenty. The final step is heating the formula as above and filtering into an empty bottle. I suspect, without experience, that one could improve the flavor of some herbal cordials by adding a bit of corn sugar, but then, there are elaborations and nuances to be had on all of the above steps. Any good book on herbs and herbal lore will have further information. There are also books specifically about making liqueurs and cordials, for those interested in the subject. - AjD ________________________________________________________________________ Other Uses In 1985, I was working at Goddard Space Flight Center with a group that used radio astronomy techniques (VLBI) to measure distances between the observatories, and use this to measure continental plate motion. I was sent to the observatory in Hat Creek, California to take some data. The data is recorded on enormous tapes (not the standard 1/2-inch computer tapes) with a special drive. Between each tape mount, the drive must be cleaned with pure alcohol. That's right, Everclear. But alas, the bottle was practically empty, so another flunkie and I drove to Reno ( > 100 miles) to buy some. The guy at the liquor store gave us a peculiar look when we asked him to sign the offical government purchase form! - Ilana Stern ...pure ethyl alcohol for extracting flavors from herbs & spices. - Geoff Steckel I personally use it to clean wounds, because it doesn't sting and it kills infections. If I notice a cut getting inflamed, I splash it with Everclear and it heals up just fine. - Paula Goldman ________________________________________________________________________ The Chemistry and Dangers of Grain Alcohols I had a little everclear left over so we did shots of it. I took an everclear shot with no chaser. *Ouch* I can see why you have to be careful near open flames with that stuff! - Brian Bloom I tried drinking it straight just once, after my wisdom teeth were removed, and one socket felt inflamed. It was a very nasty experience. All of the moisture in my mouth was evaporated at once, the fumes were terrible, and my eyes attempted to leave my face. I've had 160 proof rum straight before, and Everclear is much worse. - Paula Goodman I tried drinking straight Everclear twice (just one shot each time). Both times I (later) came down with a sore throat followed by a cold. I think it does something to the protective mucus coating on my throat. This seldom happens with rum, vodka, or tequila. Once in my freshman dorm, a guy came staggering down the hall toward the men's room. He was barely able to stand up. A guy following him told me that the guy had just chugged a pint of Everclear. He never made it to the bathroom; he ended up leaning against the wall, whipping it out, and pissing for 5 minutes (!) right there in the hall. - Kieth Lewis I once did a shot of straight 190-proof Everclear. The sensation was like drinking liquid sand or something. The alcohol basically just absorbed all of the water from my mucous membranes, leaving me with an incredibly dry mouth. (This didn't last long, as I had a beer chaser ready.) I don't know that there is any significant difference between 190- proof Everclear and lab-grade alcohol. Pure alcohol (200 proof) is deliquescent -- it absorbs water from the atmosphere until it reaches 190 proof (95% pure). - Steve Byers I do recomend that you not drink it straight as it will burn your throat and drinking very much of it straight can dissolve the mucus membranes in your throat and do considerable damage (i have seen someone go to the hospital after taking six shots of Everclear because he was coughing up blood from his now-raw throat.) - alex chermside Distilled alcohol will have a taste to it because of the actyl (?) aldehyde that will be produced with the alcohol. Can't remowve it by distillation, and it's what give the alcohol the nasty taste. Everclear is 95% alcohol by volume, not because by choice, but because you can't distill pure (100%) alcohol. You wouldn't want to be drinking pure alcohol anyways, since it contains trace amount of benzene in it (in order to remove all the water). - Stephen Everclear is food grade 95% ethanol, and is quite widely available. 95% is the concentration that can be achieved with straight distillation. That is the composition of the minimum-boiling azeotrope, i.e. the mixture that has the lowest boiling point. If you want to get it purer than that, you can get absolute alcohol (200 proof American, which is different from Brit proof). That last 5% of water is removed in one of two ways. The easy way, used for industrial purposes, is to distil the water out with benzene. The ternary mixture has a minimum-boiling azeotrope which has substantially more water than the 5%. If memory serves, it has about 17%, but I may be wildly off about that. I have not thought about this in the last fifteen years and more. In any case, the water gets distilled over rather quickly, leaving quite dry ethanol behind. Getting it benzene-free is quite difficult. Benzene and ethanol have very similar boiling points, within a degree Celsius or so of one another. And benzene is very nasty stuff. You really don't want to drink any. The other way to do this is to distil the alcohol from quicklime, which reacts with water to form calcium hydroxide. If you want really, really dry alcohol, it gets distilled, after that, from magnesium and iodine. I suspect that would not be satisfactory from a food point of view. It takes at least some technical competence to make dry alcohol. That is aside from the problem of whether you blow yourself up. Alcohol is quite flammable. High concentrations of alcohol will diffuse across mucous membranes and disrupt cells by bursting them open. This is a common technique for disrupting cells in the lab. I would expect everclear to do quite nasty things to the throat and mouth, given any significant exposure. At much lower levels, as low as about 30%, alcohol will precipitate many proteins out of aqueous solutions. So expect to have jello "curdle" on you if you get the concentration too high. Also, at those concentrations many emulsions will get broken up. Expect cream liqueurs to fall apart at not much higher. Undenatured alcohol costs between two and three times as much as denatured alcohol. The difference is due to the excise tax extracted by the federal government. If you have a license from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, you can buy it without paying the premium. The tax gets waived. but they impose dramatic record-keeping requirements on you. Enough to be a real pain. The idea, quite clearly, is to keep people from drinking the stuff. Once the tax gets included, everclear is about as expensive as cheap liquor. I am pretty sure that pure ethanol has a taste and an odour of its own. It would be pretty surprising if it did not. The odour is quite different from that of acetaldehyde, the corresponding aldehyde, but I cannot swear that the odour I associate with acetaldehyde is an accurate guide to how acetaldehyde smells at very low levels. The stuff I think of as pure alcohol has a faint sweet odour. Quite pleasant, really. - Shankar Bhattacharyya Ah...lab grade EtOH! That clean refreshing drink! My personal experience comes from snagging and drinking 95% EtOH from a bio lab I was working at. The brand was Midwest Grain Products, and on the bottle it said "95% ethanol, USP". Anyway, the stuff came in 1-gallon jugs in one of the labs (where we mixed it with distilled water to 70% strength for cleaning and sterilization). The other lab carried it in a five gallon carboy with a spigot for dispensing it. I used it (officially) for killing fruit flies--it was a genetics lab, and unwanted flies were tossed in a bottle of alcohol called "the morgue". Both labs had the same brand. Apparently, MGP is common stock in biology labs. Being a naturally curious lad, I asked my employer in one of the labs exactly which alcohol I could drink and still see the light of day the next week. Purely hypothetically, of course. He informed me that the Midwest Grain Products 95% was fine to drink (sure there were trace impurities, but nothing to hasten your death any more than the alcohol would). He recommended against drinking the 100% ethanol, due to the presence of benzene in amounts which might make one regret one's actions later in life. However, the 100% ethanol wouldn't kill you immediately, either. And he definitely recommended avoiding the denatured alcohol, which in our lab was a mix of ethanol, methanol, kerosene, and other delights. Somewhat less than tasty, I'm sure. Note that the denatured stuff was a completely different brand from MGP (exactly what, I'm not sure), and that the MGP bottles made no mention of being denatured. I would THINK (I don't know) that companies would be required to label the bottle accordingly if the alcohol was denatured, and therefore capable of killing you on ingestion. - Brian A. Bargmeyer ________________________________________________________________________ Legal Problems When I was last in Reno (September, 1991), I bought a half gallon of Everclear from discount liquor chain. I was only intending to get a quart, but the retailer there said that when his current stock was depleted, there would be no more. Ever. Never Ever. Never Ever any more Everclear. :-) (sorry,...) He mumbled something about a MADD campaign and national(?) legislation passed, and that soon the only place you could buy Everclear was some place in Tennessee (where it's made?), with a $10,000.00 fine if you tried to smuggle it out of Tennessee. - Douglas DeMers There will be no more 190 proof Everclear in Nevada. The Everclear that is sold in Nevada now is 153 proof. I assume this travesty has spread to other states as well. Have y'all inspected your Everclear labels carefully? :-) - Brian B. Young In Canada, we sometimes reffer to it as Alchool (pronounced alcool). It is outlawed in Saskatchewan for sure and probably in Alberta and Manitoba. It is generly not leagle were there is an abundance of grain. It is a very potent grain alcohol. From my understanding the laws in these parts of the country were designed to prevent home distilation (moonshining). - Fotis Xipolitakis ________________________________________________________________________ Everclear Myths and Legends Oh good the fun part! How's this for legend: My friend's Mom claims that she was at a party in her youth and one of the party-goers decided to take a big gulp of PGA straight from the bottle. So he put the bottle to his mouth and proceeded to chug it. He immediately passed out & died. I dont know if that's true, but I certainly wouldn't try it. - Keith Seymour A friend of mine at UT Austin said that a friend of hers drank a very SMALL amount straight and she threw up immediately. However at 95% alcohol it's very toxic, and you can have exactly the same effects as drinking 100% alcohol (which is not legal to sell, even to laboratories. They detone laboratory ethanol with 5% acetate so that people wouldn't try to drink it.). In other words, you can go blind, into a coma, die, etc. - Shea [See the note by Shankar Bhattacharyya in "Chemistry and Dangers..." above, for more accurate information on the content of lab-grade alcohol. -- AjD] ________________________________________________________________________ Miscellaneous Everclear also masquerades as grain alcohol in some states. - Terri Huggett Some places don't have it on the shelf. You have to ask for it. - Joel A. Walberg In Pennsylvania, they just started tracking the bottles with serial numbers... - Carl Robert Klemmer ...I had to sign a release form to purchase it [in Pennsylvania]. - The Mad Texan I don't have the address, but it is marketed by World Wide Distilled Products Company of Saint Louis, MO. Maybe you could ask them why they are dropping the proof to 153 in some locales. - Brian Young It comes in a clear, very plain bottle, very generic looking. The label doesn't really say a whole lot either. There is a picture of a partially shucked ear of corn on it and there is some warning about consumption being hazardus to your health and it says to keep it away from open flame. - Dave Reed ...there is something called diseal which is much cheaper (about $7-$10 for a liter) and is also 190 proof (so it should be the same stuff)... - David Smith [Where is this available? -- AjD] ...at the Ontario Liquor Board stores. It's not everclear, but they have some distilled spirits that are 150 proof or more, so the effect is the same. - George Scott When I was last down in Tijuana, Mexico, they sold liter bottles of "Alcohol de Cana" (Alcohol distilled from Sugar Cane) for $2 (mid 80's). This stuff was 192 proof. Nasty stuff. Half an ounce of it with a 12- oz can of Coca-Cola, and you could really taste it. - Bruce T. Hill [in Alabama] We always bought 'Clear Springs' Grain Alcohol (basically the same thing, it's 190 proof). - Keith Seymour I've seen 90% or 180 proof in Quebec... - Fotis Xipolitakis I don't know about distilling, but I know that 200 proof (100%) alcohol did exist when I worked in a Oregon State Liquor Store in about 1970. It wasn't kept on the shelves and there were very special regulations about who could acquire it, but it did exist. - Jerry Gaiser "Everclear: It's not just for breakfast anymore!" - Brian B. Young [I love it -- AjD] ________________________________________________________________________ Thanks to everybody who replied and clarified. AjD ajd@itl.itd.umich.edu