I helped my sister-in-law and her family move today. They live in Lacey WA (just north of Olympia), which is about a two hour drive from Portland. We wanted to arrive as early in the day as we could, so Kelly and I got up at 6:30am, got on the road at around 7:45am, drove up I-5 through a nasty rain storm and arrived in Lacey shortly after 9:30am. The move wasn’t too bad, a lot of the small things had already been moved during the past week, but that left the really heavy items. My brother-in-law and I moved desks, dressers, cabinets, beds, etc, and then some of my brother-in-law’s friends arrived to help pack some of the heavier things (giant entertainment center, huge and heavy matress, etc) and finished moving at around 1:30pm. Boy was I exhausted (still am).
Before Kelly and I drove back home there was this mission I had to complete. There’s this beer I love, a German beer from Munich’s famous Hofbräuhaus, the Hofbräu Original (a delicious lager, my favorite beer next to Guinness) that had been distributed here in Portland until a few years ago when the distributor stopped importing it (which still confuses me greatly). It is, however, still distributed in parts of Washington, and since I was in a vicinity known to sell it, my mission was to track some down. Fortunately, the one store a friend of mine had recently purchased Hofbräu from was no more than a few miles from my sister-in-law’s house. So we drove to the store and I did a little dance of joy when I saw the beer on the shelf. I bought what they had on the shelf (ten 500 ml bottles) and left the store, still dancing (well, as close to dancing as I could manage, after spending four hours moving heavy furniture).
Drove the nearly two hours home (frustrated all the way by folks from Washington who insisted on using the passing lane for cruising at slow speeds), and on the way decided to swing by our favorite English pub, Moon & Sixpence, for a couple pints before going home. I’m home now (as of 10pm), sore as heck, but enjoying the Hofbräu Original very much. What a day!