Brews you can use

Look who’s helping me watch the game:

cute, but makes it tough to go get beer and chips

That is all..

What a last couple weeks…

Two weeks ago, went on a bicycle pub crawl around St. Paul put on by a friend I hadn’t seen in way too long, despite living less than two blocks away. Lots of fun, good company, and good beer. I had my ass kicked by the legendary Ramsey Hill, and made a few more sour beer fans at the Muddy Pig stop, where several of us shared Cantillon Bruocsella 1900 (a very rare find!) and Duchesse du Bourgogne. Both are authentic Belgian sour ales, in an era where too many Belgian producers are sweetening and pasteurizing.

Shortly thereafter, I left for DC to speak at an anti-spam industry group meeting/conference. I am not a public speaker, but the talk went pretty well anyway. The facilitator mercifully nudged the room into a group conversation, a format which I was much more comfortable with — I never have much to say unprompted, but I usually have plenty to say about what you said. Other than that, I spent the whole trip in the meetings, and the after-meeting socialization where the real work gets done. Didn’t get to the Smithsonian, or even the Brickskellar. I did manage to take a few people to Regional Food and Drink, the Brickskellar’s sister restaurant in DC’s Chinatown, and taste a Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA for the first time (wow).

That was most of the next week. The next weekend, I was back in town, and made it to a neighborhood homebrewer’s party and fundraiser. I brought about a gallon of my own (an old Belgian Dubbel and a my first post-hiatus batch), both of which were well received. Most drinkers found the Brown ale both drinkable and interesting, which is what I was going for; the Dubbel spawned a new (to me) word: “Beergasm”

Finally, last week was taken up by another business trip, this time to Clearwater, FL to be stuck in a hotel meeting room collaboratively editing documents all day, with the beach (and 85°F and humid weather) a mere 100 yards away. Nice venue for that. Meeting highlight: ~30 people spending one hour to draft a 3-sentence note to send to another group. Non-meeting highlight: notching off a drinking goal I’ve had for about a decade.

Since shortly after I could legally buy alcohol, I’ve been fascinated with the idea of drinking a beverage older than I am. Just the thought that somebody started making something before I was born, and I could drink it and appreciate it seemed … intriguing, for lack of a better word, phrase, or paragraph. It never actually worked out. Wines and ports that have been cellared for that long are almost always way out of my price range, and I don’t consider myself a wine expert, much less a port connoisseur. Scotches were the closest — I know a thing or two about the single malts, and enjoy them occasionally, but the 21 year old ones seemed too pricey when I was 21, the 25 year-old ones even worse, and the 30-year ones went out of my price range well before I turned 30.

I checked out the hotel bar my second night in Florida. The area was a beer wasteland — the best beer around was Sierra Nevada at this hotel bar — so I turned my attention behind the bar. I noticed a bottle of Laphroaig 30 year, and asked about the price, out of curiosity more than anything else. While the bartender looked it up, I flipped through the drinks menu, and noticed Glenrothes 1972 vintage. The bartender came back with the Laphroaig pricing (15-yr for $15, 30-yr for $30), I cringed a bit, and then asked about the 1972. He took a while longer checking this one out, eventually determining that it wasn’t in their system, but it was on the shelf, and for sale.

“So,” he said, leaning forward with a mischeivous look (that had me thinking “There is me, that is Alex, and my Droogs…”) “it’s not in the system, so I get to set the price. What do you think is fair: $18?” which I seemed a bit too pleased with, so he raised it to $20, at which I tried to make a better show of hemming and hawing. That was the final price, he handed me a generous pour, and I handed him a generous tip (to which he responded “Ah, so I was still a bit low then?”), and savored a fine whisky several years older than myself for much of the rest of the night.

After finishing and coming back down to earth, the bar scene devolved into the normal business traveller one: a bunch of bored, tired people drinking to delay their inevitable return to a lonely hotel room bed, a bit resentful of the vacationers who were there to (successfully) have fun. I stayed for a few more beers.

Now, at least, I’m glad to be home for a few straight months. Hopefully things calm down on the business travel front. More friends and/or (leisurely) bike and/or beer activities are, of course, still welcome

I can’t really decide whether this is funny, wrong, or both, but it will probably be running through my head all day tomorrow.

Wow, it’s been a while. I just haven’t had the motivation to post for the last couple months. The nasty stuff at work which prompted the last two bitter, fatalistic posts has continued and gotten worse, to the point where I generally didn’t want to talk about it outside of work. I’ve mostly come to terms with the downward spiral, and this should be the only work-tainted post before I get back to the more upbeat stuff (or to silence, more upbeat if only by omission). Read the rest of this entry »

Today was absolutely beautiful: sunny, about 50 (tropical in celsius, Minnesota-tropical in Fahrenheit), calm, but of course I spent pretty much all of it stuck inside at work. I did get to see the first sign of spring, though: today I saw the first pair of bicycling Mormons of the year. Yes, Mormons.

Mormon evangelists, in particular. I have bad memories of these folks from college. They would roam the campus, always in pairs, looking to corner someone and convert them to their religion. They were usually quite recognizable: two young cleanshaven well-groomed men wearing identical white shirts, black ties, black polished shoes, and black nametags. This stands out on a University campus (the well-groomed tie-wearing male population having dropped dramatically since 1957), and occasionally draws double-takes, even stares, which the evangelists latch onto as if “hey look, he’s wearing a tie” means “hey, come buttonhole me for the next hour talking about your religion!”

I once had a pair lock on to me — they reversed their course to follow me after I accidentally made eye contact. I tried to shake them by hurrying to my next class, but they also sped up. I ducked into the nearest building, and they followed. WTF? Finally I ducked into a bathroom, glancing over my shoulder. They followed me in, anyway. Holy shit, these guys are persistent. At least the stalls have doors that lock. I ducked into one, sat down, heard them walk around a bit, lose interest, and leave.

And these guys were on foot. I shudder to think what they could have done with the added mobility of bicycles…

I got back Friday from an anti-spam conference in San Francisco. Some highlights:

1. Sharing the second leg of my flight out with a certain infamous (supposedly ex-) spammer. I first recognised one of his employees, who could be played by Rob Schneider if they ever make “SPAM: the Movie.” They were, of course, going to the same conference as I was, but were much less well-received.
2. Staying in room number 1906. In San Francisco. I would have thought this room would be silently left off the floor plan, like they used to do with floor #13.
3. Feeling the need to say good things about the CIA, just in case there was a listening device in that thing.
4. Walking from Nob Hill to Lower Haight in search of beer, and finding that beer’s probably the least intoxicating substance served around there.
5. Meeting someone I’d chatted with and read on multiple online forums for about 10 years. I forget exactly what I said (something like: “oh… I’ve seen you around”), but I need to figure out the proper ettiqute for these situations. He reacted like I had produced his Stasi file…
6. Coming back home with a head full of ideas, somewhat depressed that 90% of them will probably never come to fruition, and taking a break as the plane descended into a cloud-covered MSP. So beautiful, so serene, so fractal. I was reminded of some of the imagery in Solaris (the book, certainly not the OS, and I really didn’t care for either movie…)

From a conversation with a fellow parent, discussing how much kids can drive us crazy:

Him: With [my kid], I sometimes got close to what’s the word I’m looking for… ?

Me: Defenestration?

(that wasn’t it by the way…). I will probably always be amused by the fact that “being thrown out a window” has its own word, while other perfectly good fates such as “being gnawed to death by hungry marmots” need to be spelled out in full…