beer

New Brew Thursday

As of this evening, we will be adding an IPA to our brew bill. Ever since I mistakenly thought I had drunk my first IPA and… wait – you don’t know that story? Oh. Well let me tell you about it. Don’t worry I’ll be brief. I brewed what I thought was an IPA a long time ago. It was my second brew. However, being a kit beer, and adding three pounds of dry malt to the grain bill, I balanced out the hops. I had no idea what I was doing at that point. I just knew I needed to add about three pounds of fermentables to the batch. So I unknowingly created a remarkably well balanced and delicious brew.

So fast forward a few weeks, I went to a BrewPub with some girlfriends (and my insanely hot red-haired wife), and ordered their house IPA. When the lady brought it out, it smelled like flowers, and tasted like weeds. Oh. So this is what an IPA tastes like. Not what I brewed. So I quickly did two things. 1: I changed the label of my beer to an English Brown. And B: I fell in love with the IPA style. I have since set out on a mission to taste as many IPA-style beers as I can find. I have in the last few months tried ten or eleven now. And fortunately for me, the new gas station by my house sells seven different IPA labels. SEVEN.

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Four Wake-ups ‘Til Florida

It’s finally here, friends: that time of year when we leave for the Big Penis. That’s right, the continental fallus we like to call “Florida”. My red-haired wife and I have gone every year for the last three years. This will make our fourth trip together. And the only difference between this trip and the previous three years is that we aren’t taking the kids. I figure they’re old enough to stay at home and take care of themselves.

My buddy Christian is in town from Omaha, and has been staying with us since Saturday. So he’s gonna hang in the house until we get back. Works out perfectly. You see, I like having someone stay in my house so I won’t feel bad about leaving the fridge plugged in and the air conditioner running.

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The Trifecta of Idiocy

Have you ever had one of those days where you just can’t do anything right? Well I haven’t. Everything I ever do is right. Ahem. Okay, well sometimes maybe I make a mistake or two. But… Okay, well sometimes I have those days too. And it seems especially bad when it happens to me because usually when I start messing up, people start getting hurt. I’m not sure why, but it just seems to work out that way most of the time.

For instance, the other day at my nephew’s birthday party, we all went to Blortbortham’s Seafood & Sausage House over on Cooper Street. I was carrying my two-year-old princess on my shoulders, walking around the restaurant so we could see what people were eating. I would stop by a table and bend over to examine their plates and ask them if it was any good. “How’s the squid bladder with octopus semen sauce?” I would ask, for instance. Some of the patrons seemed put off by the fact that I was asking them what they were eating, but come on – you’re in a public eatery! You should expect to have some human interactions with strangers.

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Space Vs. The Heater Bot

I’ve just ended my weeks-long battle with my heater bot. And while it might not be an interesting story to some, I feel like I should write about it in case anyone else ever runs into the same problem and needs some ideas for a fix.

You see, I’m of the opinion that if I can pay someone to come out and fix something in my home, I can darn sure fix it myself. Or I can at least try. I am not afraid to enlist the experience of my buddies and neighbors if they know something I don’t. But so far I’ve found I’ve been able to repair everything myself, and the only detriment to doing it myself is that it takes a little longer. Since I’m not an expert in any of these things that typically go wrong, I just have to use common sense and work backwards on the issue, troubleshooting and just figuring out what it could possibly be. Which, if you don’t know the system, takes a little longer. But it’s a lot cheaper than calling someone out and paying a trip fee and their marked-up parts cost and whatnot.

So you remember when my cooler bot went out during the summer. Well, my cooler bot and heater bot are part of the same physical unit. And in repairing the cooler bot part of it, I disabled part of the heater portion. So here’s what I did, how I eventually came to repair it, and why it took so damn long.

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Can the 1300s get a little love?

Haycomet just wrote a very nice piece about living in the middle ages, and it sort of touched a soft spot in my emotions. Because like her, I too have always wanted to visit a different time period. I actually wrote an essay about my time machine in the SpaceBrew Scroll. You can read it here if you’re interested. You probably didn’t even know that existed, did you? Yeah? Well it does. You should go check it out. It’s a small series of collaborative efforts by the entire writing staff at the time. Anyway, I’ve gone off on a tangent, and there’s your opening paragraph.

But I have to admit something, friends. I mentioned where I had gone and what I had done with my time machine in that post, but it wasn’t really true. I don’t really own a time machine. I know, I know, I’m a bastard for misleading you and everything, but it was fun to pretend for a while. I really want one though, if that’s any consolation. I like to think I could go back and meet some of those really cool, influential people in history. Albert Einstein. Seka (when she was younger)… Adolf Hitler. You know, just those people you really kind of want to get to know. Find out what made them tick. Well, I know what made Seka tick, if you know what I mean. :perv:

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Another Week at Sunset Beach

Welcome back, everyone, from what was hopefully a glorious and wonderful Independence Day weekend. I, for one, can tell you that I was on the road for most of the weekend. That’s right, folks, I am NOT writing this live as of Monday morning. I’m writing it on Tuesday morning of last week, the day you all knew as June 29. I know, it seems crazy, but all writing is sort of like time traveling for the reader anyway. You read something that happened in your past, but was the writer’s present tense. It is a very powerful tool.

But yes, I am now (I hope, and by all means should be) in sunny Treasure Island, Florida for our Third Annual Watch Fireworks and Drink Beer On the Beach All Day While Women Bounce Around In Skimpy Bikinis Festival. The festival lasts about a week, and typically happens right around Independence Day weekend. Last year I attended and ended up married to a redhead. So some crazy stuff is known to happen during these soirees.

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The Beer CANundrum

My friends and I have this hobby we like to refer to as “Sitting Out On The Patio Drinking Beer”, which involves sitting out on the patio, drinking beer. We do this quite frequently. And we, being men who drink beer frequently, can drink a lot. So that you’ll know what a lot is, let me tell you what a lot is. When Siege shows up with a 30-pack, he sets it next to the 30-pack Two-Step brought home when she went by the Target’s earlier. So we have sixty beers in the SpaceFridge, which is a pretty good amount. Between the four of us – that’s Two-Step, Stout, Siege and me – that’s about fifteen beers apiece. I’m not saying we drink all sixty in one night. But I’m also not saying we don’t.

See, sometimes, Haycomet and Byron, Fletcher and Julie, Rines and TL, Bill and Amanda – sometimes they come by too. And sometimes they all come over. Sometimes Captain McRight will even come by. What I’m getting at here is that when that many people come over, sixty beers split twelve ways suddenly isn’t that much beer. We’re talking somewhere around five apiece. You know what that means? It means someone’s making a beer run. We’ve been known to drink as many as two 30-packs and a case in one night between our group. On a typical weekend, we go through an average of around 130 beers or so. That’s a lot of damn beer.

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Malt Liquor for my Truckers

I never told you about the time I was coming back from Abilene and a truck driver road my ass, did I? It was late at night, I was heading to Dallas and it was dark. Mainly because it was late at night. But it was also raining. And I was driving a shitty little four-cylinder Chevy Cavalier. And I had a truck driver riding my ass. So I will tell you all about it now.

He was riding my ass, kind of like someone would ‘ride your ass’ if you were giving them a piggy-back ride. Basically, this big ass semi was drafting off me. I don’t remember what had set him off, if anything, but something made him decide he was too cool for school, and he owned the road. And for some reason, he got on my ass. I think he was just screwing with the small car on the highway, because there was no other traffic that late at night. Maybe he was looking for something to do to keep him awake between jerking off in his sleeper at truck stops.

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Remember Memorial Day

So how was your Memorial Day? Did you remember? I know most of you did. And most of us remember by drinking beer and grilling out. Any kind of meat seems to be appropriate. Any kind of beer seems to be appropriate. And as long as a swimming pool is involved, people are enjoying the hell out of their Memorial Day. But are we really remembering why it’s even called Memorial Day? I hope so.

I know Siege dressed in his full Class-A Marines dress uniform and visited the Dallas Memorial Cemetery. He went to pay his respects to those who have fallen in the line of duty. Stout and I were going to go as well, but it was too short notice, and we found ourselves lacking parts of our uniforms. But that won’t happen again. Next holiday we will be ready.

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I don’t believe in the Goat Man.

After a weekend like I just had, you want to write about it. And the funny thing is, I happen to have a website, so I think I will. Saturday, Byron and Hayley and Step and I went to the horse races out in Grand Prairie. And now I can say with a cute little smirk on my face that yes, dear readers, I did bet on the Preakness. They had nine other races there at the Lone Star Park, but the Preakness was simulcast. You know, shown on the big screen across the track. It wasn’t near as exciting as the local races.

But we had good beer, great fun, and placed a few bets on the races themselves. I only won a few hundred thousand dollars, so it’s not that interesting, and I won’t go into details. Just suffice it to say, the Ones were Cold and the Sun was Hot. Whatever. The point is that we went to the damn horse races and that was the first time I’ve ever bet on them.

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