Down Time

Just for shits and giggles (and because I have enough time accrued) I took Friday and Monday off.

Nice long weekend.

I'd like to claim I did something constructive and useful with that time off. In fairness, I did get a lot of jogging and walking in, especially today.

But it wasn't a net win in terms of health. Friday was a brewery lunch that was followed by an extremely ill-advised brewery crawl in the evening. Saturday was my monthly game. Could have been better, but I think I was off my game (so to speak). Sunday was ridiculously-good Mai Tais with the family. Then Monday was exploring to find a new brewery. A new brewery that offers not one, not two, but three smoked beers on draught. Fucking hell.

Life doesn't suck. Tomorrow morning, however...

Good for what ails ya

The other day I was looking at my accrued time off. Looked good. Actually, looked kind of on the high end.

I think I deliberated for about thirty seconds before I put in the request for time off. Fast forward to this morning and I'm looking at a long weekend.

It felt damn good to wake up at a sane hour. It felt even better to traipse out, devour an unhealthy breakfast (mmm... bacon...) then meander home with nothing really to do. I took a run an hour later. Went further than I'd planned or expected. I regret nothing. Any healthy benefits I got from that was undone by lunch anyway.

Yes, lunch was mostly beer. Mmm... beer...

And now? And now I think I'm due to poison myself further while catching up with an old friend.

Sometimes it's the simple, little, things that make life worth living.

Damn but I needed this weekend.

Overdue Commentary

To celebrate the growler of tasty beer in my 'fridge, I feel an urge to post to my neglected blog!

REJOICE!

Why am I drinking on a Monday night? Well besides the obvious answer of "why not?" there's always the celebration that we're about a month-and-a-half into the Trumpocalypse and the nukes haven't sailed just yet. I'm cautiously-optimistic that we might make it through March before all hell breaks loose.

It's a game among people I know: to start the day asking "What godawfully fucked-up and stupid thing has Trump and his Legion of Evil done today?"

I try not to speculate. It just irritates me. I'm also afraid word might get back to Der Gropenfuhrer and he'll get inspired.

In other news, I'm working on a new slew of fantasy and sci-fi novels grabbed from Amazon. I'm currently working my way through "The Crimson Queen" by Alec Hutson. It had a slow start, but I have to say I'm quite enjoying it now. I'm about halfway through and things are getting horribly fucked up in a delightful way. I'm not entirely-clear I know what's going on and that's just fine with me.

Thanks to a friend's generosity, I'm able to see season two of "The Expanse" (currently airing on SyFy). It's surpassing my expectations and making me quite giddy. The introduction of Bobbie Draper is all I'd hoped for. Oh glory day! Please Tweety McTangerine! Don't nuke us before season two ends!

At the recommendation of a friend, I've started to make modifications to my wardrobe. I'm now getting tailored shirts made. Shirts with buttons! That should really be ironed!

It's a far cry from my shitty t-shirts and frayed hoodies. I'm still sticking with my jeans for the time being, but I may pony up for some chinos at some point and maybe even (gasp!) another suit.

Crazy times.

Speaking of crazy times, it's been raining like Biblical endtimes in parts of California this year. I feel for folks near Oroville Dam. That shit is just nuts. I can't believe how fast we went from drought to floods.

Wait. Trumpy-poo is prez. Yes. Yes I can believe that. I can believe that and more.

A bright note as the year winds down

I searched in vain for much of yesterday as I was fighting a bug. I sought to satisfy my craving for Calicraft Oaktown Brown.

Everywhere I went, it was sold out.

While shopping for groceries today, I did a detour past a sketchy liquor store I rarely go in.

And lo: they had it. They had a healthy number of bottles.

I just had a bottle with dinner (ill-advised as I'm still struggling not to succumb to a cold, but whatever).

Now I have to decide if I'm going to tough out the next four hours and toast 2017 with some High West Campfire or call it early with Nyquil.

Decisions, decisions....

Thoughts on beer

Ah beer, how I love thee.

My long weekend was spent partaking no small part of the bounty of hops and other things. I had my Smoked Amber, my brown ales, and other beers as I tried different lunch locales over an extended President's Day weekend.

As almost an afterthought, I bought a bottle of Lava, an Icelandic smoked stout, from a taproom I visited yesterday.

As today is Mardi Gras (or, as they say in the UK, "Pancake Day"), I opened the bottle, toasted some folks and drank the beastie.

I have to say, the Icelanders don't impress me with the smoked beers.

The Germans? They can do smoked beer right. The Scots can do some good smoked beer. I expected an ice-laden volcanic island to have a good sense of smoked flavoring but while I liked my bottle of Lava for its taste, I found it distinctly lacking the "smoked" flavor I so craved. It was a tasty bottle, but severely overpriced.

Next time I'm off to BevMo to buy some bottles of the German stuff.

stuff-n-things

I'm having one of those weeks in which everything I touch seems to want to turn into a hydra of complicated mess or just turn into crap.

I still don't know why my main DVD player died. Power supply? And the second one is... fussy.

On the plus side, I got my copy of Tower Lord by Anthony Ryan yesterday. So... goooood.....

And now that it's the Third of July:



Compelling argument.

Review: Mikeller Bar

So you're in San Francisco, near the Powell Street station. You're suddenly craving lunch and wouldn't mind a nice pint of beer to go with said lunch.

What to do? What to do?

I've a suggestion: Mikeller Bar.

Possessing a constantly-rotating list of delightfully-tasty beers (most of which are local to the Pacific Coast of the U.S.) and a delightfully-tasty menu (I had the merguez sausage... mmm...) it ain't cheap, but it's worth the price.

The Right Priorities

At this fine establishment in Eugene, OR, I had a couple of pints of Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar ale. Delicious stuff and very smooth. While buying a few bottles for later consumption, I was introduced to what the staff call a "Snickers":

A glass of the Hazelnut Brown Nectar with a splash (or, more like 1/4 to 1/8th of the glass) of the Rogue Chocolate Stout.

I dunno if it tastes like Snickers so much as it tastes like victory.

Seven Days

Seven days of driving up and down Hwy 5. From the Bay Area to Seattle and back. Oh sure, it could be done in a shorter time, but there were complications that made it nigh-impossible for me to drive longer than 5 hours at a pop.

Saw Ashland for the first time ever. Neat town.

Saw Mt. Shasta City. I heard someone earnestly extol the virtues of certain crystals when channeling one's chi.

I drank at many an Oregon brewery.

I compared California, Washington, and Oregon rest stops (California has - hands down - the worst).

I rode in a ferry across Puget Sound to an island then went along befuddling roads to a hidden location along a dirt road.

As trips go, I found myself quite enjoying it.

Except for all the driving. That is a HELL of a lot of driving.

A moment of blind panic

Stopped to run an errand after work. Noticed my credit card was missing.

I'm OCD. I NEVER misplace my cards... well, clearly that's not true now.

Pondering... where was it last? I used it last night... when I bought dinner and beers... ay carumba.

Ran to the pub. Breathless, asked if my card was there. The bemused bartender went through the cards and lo, there it was.

Relief, followed by a beer.

Sometimes fate demands a pint.

The most important map ever

East Bay Beer Map

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area (especially the East Bay) then YOU'RE WELCOME!

Wherein I talk more about beer... and other stuff

• Our rainstorm was a bust. Big shock.
• Last day of cat-sitting.
• Computer issues. The fun never stops. Why is it so hard to have technology that works?
• Found that I'd set aside some brownie bites from a lunch thing on Friday. SNACKS! JOY!!! Wonder if they're stale...? Wonder if I care?
• When not cat-sitting over my weekend, I spent a lot of time communing with the beer gods. At least one of those times was a visit to Brotzeit Lokal, a new biergarten along the Oakland waterfront.
  A bit difficult to initially find (and a locale that pretty much requires driving or bike riding), Brotzeit Lokal has a delightful selection of German and local beers as well as some Belgian offerings. Their food is outstanding. One of the chefs comes from Chop Bar (a wonderful eatery in the Jack London Square area) and it shows. I had the burger (Chop Bar does an outstanding burger) and Brotzeit Lokal's burger was heavenly. The fries... oh God. Unreal.
  The view is also outstanding (provided you snag an outside seat under the umbrella and you have one of those rare clear days).

bleary-eyed it shambles forth...

Oooof! Lots of terrible-for-you snacks for dinner coupled with more beer than is a good idea on a Monday night. And this was somewhat work-related.

Probably wouldn't be too bad except that something among the fried foods does not agree with my stomach. Ye gods.

Doesn't help that some jackass neighbor was playing his TV/radio fairly loud at 3am.

The week of crazy has just begun...

Tasty Beerness and not-tasty heat

Beers with a good friend last night for her birthday. I love finding new and interesting beer-serving establishments. Especially when their beer selection is most tasty.

Add in excellent service and friendly staff, and it's a dream meal of tasty fermented awesome.

---

Unseasonably-hot weather. I hate it.

Found myself in a surreal situation yesterday with strangely-warm weather in San Francisco. I'm on a patio, having the aforementioned beers and the rest of the folks in the patio area were sufficiently chilled by the not-quite-sunlit patio to respond positively when the efficient server turned on the heaters.

When I whined that I'll never understand folks in the City, my dinner guest made excellent points that I'd missed about fashion choices that contributed to the situation. I'm getting blind and dense in my old age. Or I was overly-focused on tasty beer. Not ruling either out, really.

---

BART ride home. Belligerent nutjob on my train. Clearly he was on drugs. I always wonder where the increased BART police presence is at these times.

---

One nice thing about the hot weather: my morning bike rides are freakin' fantastic.

For four

If I were not a snob and were the sort of person who drank beer out of a can, I would require - nay DEMAND - one of these.

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Rain. Actual rain. Like a lot of it. Enough to require an umbrella and fear a little for my life on the freeway. This is a novel experience. It's been so long, I'd almost forgotten.

---

I've been loaned a novel by a friend: Theft of Swords by Michael J. Sullivan.

It reads like an RPG campaign. I can't help but enjoy it. I'm on page 43 of 649 and this is part of a series. Apparently Sullivan self-published in ebooks this before getting picked up by a publisher for print copies.

While I'm enjoying it, I'm kind of mired in exposition at the moment. I'll probably have more to say when the plot starts to form.

---

After jogging a few miles yesterday, I returned home and convinced myself that I needed to undo any health benefits gained from running by making dessert.

I've already pretty-much mastered the fine art of making angel food cake from scratch. While tasty, angel food cake is a little boring and it's a bugger to shoot those little Cherubs out of the sky, skin them, and... um... yeah. You don't want details.

So I went a little towards the Dark Side and made chocolate angel food cake. I needed the practice.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

The experiment was a success and I am pleased with the unhealthy results. It's not my first (or even tenth) time making such, but it's been a while. Good to know I've retained the skills.

I say, old chap

I am a snob and I need a monocle now.

Though I love Guinness and have a streak of Egalitarian in me.

Creeping closer to the weekend

History almost repeated itself last night when I did something I can't properly do and nearly damaged my good shoulder. This is how I damaged my now-bad shoulder.

The lesson here is that either I really need to learn how to do this maneuver properly, or don't f***ing do it ever again.

I'm weighing my options.

---

I'm kind of hoping today isn't as weird as yesteday. It was a circus of bizarre yesteday with drama all over the damn place. And that was before I nearly tore my shoulder to hell.

If it is as weird or weirder, I'm prepared. There's just something about Thursdays that makes it easier to deal with the bizarre.

That wasn't a challenge, gods of perversity and irony. Just to be clear.

---

I got to explain Pastafarianism to some college students yesterday. It was satisfying and amusing. I may have expanded the flock.

The bit about beer volcanoes in Heaven was what probably sealed the deal. The potential-converts were unsure how to react to the stripper poles, but I'm of the belief that the FSM really only provides stripper poles to people who are into that sort of thing.

Honestly, I think the would-be converts were more impressed that I can make pasta sauce from scratch (or so I've claimed).

---

I plan to break my beer hiatus today. It's time. Yes, this is how I'm going to be prepared for the weird, should it come today.

Brewing up a cool look

I admit I struggled to be witty with this headline.

Not that I'm all that witty under normal circumstances.

Where was I? Oh yes! Cool thing.

Enjoi Beer Hunter Jacket.

Bask in this concept for a minute. Go on. I'll wait.


Coolness, right? If I were the sort of person who drank beer out of cans (maybe Guinness...) and carried beers around with me instead of dominating seats at the bar, I'd totally get this.

I still might.

Probably not, though. Still, a cool concept!

Ninkasi would be proud

Apparently yesterday was International Beer Day.

Huh.

I was wondering why the local pub was so damn crowded when I dropped by for my dinner. I figured it was just one of those days.

Little did I know, I suppose.

my poor liver

Gourmet Haus Staudt
Local Edition
St George Spirits
Takara Sake

That's a non-inclusive list of the last two days.

Yikes.