It’s hard to believe the summer is coming to a close already. Well, technically I guess it already has. Have you noticed how quickly the years fly by when you get older? It seems to me that only a couple of weeks ago, the State Fair was selling all things fried. Well it was a year ago. Which tells me I’m getting old. I saw a sign the other day (more…)
Here we are, Two-Step and a couple of friends and I moseyed out to Alpine, Texas to see the stars. They say Alpine is the best place in the continental United States to see the stars. And boy, they’re right. Zero light pollution. No street lights, no bright signage, just perfect darkness and a hundred billion stars in the sky.
Our first night we stayed in Brownswood at a budget inn type place, just to knock a few hours off the nine-hour trek to Alpine. That was a good experience in itself though, as we all sat outside around a wire-mesh table and had some drinks while we talked to some other travelers who had just arrived on their motorcycle. It seems that everyone you meet at a hotel is always so friendly. It almost restores your faith in humanity a little bit. Everyone we’ve met so far has been great.
I remember the first full bottle of beer I ever enjoyed. I was fifteen. My buddy and I had a twenty-one-year-old friend, and six dollars. This guy ran up to the beer store with our six dollars with instructions to buy as much Michelob Dry as he could get. Well I don’t know what happened – beer was a lot cheaper back then – but somehow he only came back with two bottles. Well my friend and I enjoyed those two bottles of beer out on the driveway behind my house. We drank it like it was liquid gold. And it did taste good. So what happened?
I can no longer drink BMC. The Big American Three. But that’s what Some-Large-Percentage of the American population buys, in massive amounts, every weekend. I hand one of them my glass of Newcastle, or Full Sail IPA, or Arrogant Bastard and they make a terrible face and some comment about how gross it tastes. I handed a bottle of Newcastle to my cousin’s boyfriend the other day. He thanked me and offered a sip to my cousin, Lara. She took a pull of the rich brown beer and screwed up her face like she’d sucked on a rotten corn dog. She said, “Oh my God, that’s nasty.”
So I had a birthday party Friday night. This isn’t very peculiar. However, there were a few items of interest that do make that list labeled peculiar. First of all, as most of you know, I’m almost thirty now. So let’s just for ease of conversation, say that I am “twenty-seven” now. And then allow me to elaborate on those items I found peculiar.
First of all, I had a birthday party. That in and of itself should not be viewed as out of the ordinary. I wanted to have a few friends over, listen to some music, stand around and drink beer and tell each other war stories, and compare tattoos. Without necessarily taking our shirts off. It’s not even really all that odd that there would be a cake for me. I mean, well, actually I specifically told Haycomet not to make me a cake. But she wouldn’t have any of that. “If I make one for everyone else, of course I’m going to make one for my partner in rhyme.” She does have a valid point. So thus, I had a cake at my party. No candles, of course. But there was a cake. A ridiculously extravagant cake, no less. A Cake. Capitalized. One that someone might have paid perhaps upwards of a couple hundred dollars for. So what was so odd?
Good morning and happy Veteran’s Day week, friends and family of the Brew. This Thursday, of course, is Vet’s day, and I’d like to welcome you to another edition of the soon-to-be-award-winning segment here on SpaceBrew, called the Monday-Morning Magic. It’s basically where I write a column on Monday morning that magically changes your mood, and your day. It is sure to either make you laugh, make you angry, or make you bored. Studies have not shown that this segment actually posesses any sort of magical ability, or that it changes your mood at all, in fact. But it completes that alliterative title, so we’re sticking with it.
But I wanted to talk today a little about a new hobby of mine. We’ll go into this a little more on this week’s Bacon Talk, but I thought this was interesting enough to mention this Monday morning. My friends and I – all being intellectuals – have taken to a new hobby. And before you laugh and point your fingers at us and call us immature and gay, just finish the column. Yes, the being intellectuals has something to do with the new hobby. We like to find new and interesting things in which we can get involved. Most of these revolve around drinking and spending time standing around the diner table or the bar in the Space Bar. So what’s this new freak time-waster we’ve found?
Hey, Space! It’s a beautiful cool crisp day. I brought the pumpkin pie flavored coffee, and I see you have brought my favorite meat candy. Uh, I better clarify- I’m talking about your giant sack of bacon.
I love Autumn. The leaves are changing, it gets darker earlier, the air has a slight chill, and Halloween has just passed. That gives me a great idea for today’s topic… friends!
Seriously, dudes, I have to tell you about our night Friday night! Okay, well – okay, well hang on. Let me catch my breath. It’s Saturday morning here – well, feels like morning, it’s actually well after noon – but I got my damn face (and most of my ass, neck, thighs, back and arms) rocked the hell off last night. Son of a bitch. Okay, let me back up a little though.
I was sitting at my damn desk at work when the HR director came up to my desk and said, “Hey, yo, Space. I got these tickets, dude,” and gave me four tickets to Nickelodeon Storytime at Verizon Theatre. And yes, they spell it with the tre instead of the ter. Idiots obviously don’t know the difference in the definitions. Anyway, yeah, we took the girls to the theater to see the Backyardigans and Dora the Explorer on stage and all that. They loved it, of course.
Just so you have a frame of reference, you need to know I am lying in bed right now writing this on my SpaceBook. It is Friday night, 18:05 and I’m lying in bed on my laptop. You’re probably out painting the town, tearing it up, getting some trim, drinking some Cold Ones, and I’m lying here in bed. On my computer. On a Friday night. Have I emphasized that enough yet? Well allow me to pour a little salt in the wound. Even though it’s just after 1800 hours – six for you non-military types – my evening is already set in stone. There won’t be a break. I’ll be doing the same thing in two hours, and in six hours. My night is ruined.
Last night my red-haired wife and I were sitting out on the back patio just enjoying the cool summer breeze and a couple of Ones that were – at least to the best of my recollection – pretty Cold. When all of a sudden, from out of the corner of the backyard, I spotted something terrible and sinister. And before I could gather my senses and react appropriately (which would be to grab my Browning from the deep-conceal holster in the small of my back and put two in dead center mass), it was on me. I’ve never been attacked and overcome with such rapid efficiency or tactical precision in my life. My defenses were useless.
Happy Friday, SpaceBrewers! For this special day, we thought we’d do a special co-authored column for you with your favorite two writers. And we’d like to dive into a subject that’s seldom touched upon here: marriage. Yes, we’re going there. See, Haycomet and I are married. Well, not to each other. But we are both married to other people. The point is that we both know what it’s like to be married. We’ve both been married a long time, and we both have the same core values and outlooks on the big M word. So what’s it like to be asked the same questions?
So that’s what we’ll get into here. We believe that ‘on the rocks’ is a good thing, as it refers to a special way of drinking bourbon. So keeping your marriage on the rocks is always desirable: it represents success and prosperity. If someone were to approach a man and a woman and ask them both the same questions about marriage, how different would their answers be? If the most important thing in a married man’s life is sitting on the couch drinking beer, what then, would be most important to the woman? Well, obviously it should be cooking and cleaning, but we’re going to find out!
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We made it back. It took twenty-four straight hours on the road, but we did indeed make it back. Man, that’s a lot of driving. We never stop into hotels or anything, what with having several drivers to switch out, we can just catch up on sleep a couple at a time while the others are pulling shifts. We even let the kids drive for a while when we all got too tired to carry on. The closest we came to actual stopping down was this morning around 04:30, we pulled into a rest stop and just leaned the seats back for a few hours. Tampa Bay to North Dallas is just under 1200 miles though. And like I say every year, next year we’re flying.
We had a great time. We got rained out the first few days, so a lot of our time was spent up on the deck at mom and dad’s, or at Ka’Tiki Bar, where you’re basically outside, just covered with palm fronds. It’s nice, the Ones are Cold and there’s always live music. Not all of it is great, but it’s all at least tolerable. Not like the guy who plays the keytar at Caddy’s.