Author: ryan

Categories
Beer Work

Organic Brewfest, and a Ghost Dog birthday

Today I went to the North American Organic Brewers Festival. Kelly is volunteering there today and tomorrow, so I thought I’d go and show my support. Which meant going and drinking beer. Pretty hard to pass that up.

The festival itself was a quite a bit of fun, and was fairly mellow compared to other brewfest’s held in Portland. It was held at Overlook Park, a spot I hadn’t been to before (though I’d been by many times over the years). On my way in (after having dropped Kelly off an hour or so earlier for her volunteer shift) I ran into a coworker and his wife, so we hung out for a bit, and later another coworker joined us. The weather here has been scorching hot, so we spent most of our time in the shade of a tree, between picking up samples of delicious organic beers.

After Kelly finished her shift, we went to Rose & Thistle to meet up with Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog, to celebrate GD’s birthday (“I’m 37, I’m not old”). Happy Birthday Ghost Dog!

Had a great time out, despite how disgustingly hot it was (through midnight). I really dislike 90+ degree days, and today was pretty nasty. Gimme 75 degrees and I’ll be happy. Urgh.

I’ll be back at the brewfest tomorrow (Kelly has another volunteer shift until about 5pm) in case any of you can join me. Hooray for delicious, organic beer! Oh, and the cups are made from corn, so they are biodegradable / compost-able. Neat!

Categories
Entertainment

George Carlin, RIP

The comic genius George Carlin passed away yesterday at the age of 71. Sad. I’ve been listening to his comedy for 20 years, and am going to miss is musings on society, faith, and everyday inane subjects.

Found this video just now, thought it’s a fitting way to end the post… some of George Carlin’s standup on the topic of death.

Categories
Beer

Believe it or not…

The keg of Guinness is dead. My brother and I finished off what was left of it tonight. It died at approx. 10:30pm PST. It lived a short, but mirth-filled life of two weeks, one day, and three hours. I will take your condolences now.

I was surprised at how quickly the keg went, but as I mentioned in my previous post, I was working at it harder than I normal would due to all the rumors of a one and a half, to two week lifespan. While I now have no conclusive evidence to dispell such rumors, I can say that a keg of Guinness on the Nitro/CO2 mix (with a slightly lower than specified PSI) will live at least 15 days. I was hoping to find out exactly how long it would last, and make Guinness-filled stews and cakes with what was left, but the rumors of a ‘life cut short’ caused me to both drink it, and push it on my friends and family, at such a rate that I wasn’t able to find out.

Maybe next time.

However for now, I’m switching back to a beer made for CO2, something that I know will last for a couple months. More importantly, something I won’t feel pressured to drink up so quickly. That’s a good thing all around.

Categories
Beer Entertainment Television Work

Guinness continues to flow

Over the past couple weeks I’ve been drinking a lot more beer than I normally would. I’m torn on whether that’s a good or bad thing. It’s good in that I really like beer, especially Guinness, but it’s bad for my waistline. Oh well. The good news is that it’s been 2 weeks tonight since I tapped the keg, and it’s still pouring fine. While I’m not sure how much is left in the keg, I tried lifting it last weekend and I can tell there’s quite a bit left. Not sure what to expect now (given that after two weeks everybody says beer on nitro goes flat), but I hope it last through one more weekend. After that I guess it can be used for cooking (stews and cakes come to mind). Even if the I return a half-full keg of flat beer at the end of all this, it was worth the experiment. Though I’m pretty sure I’m going to move to something on CO2 that I don’t feel pressured to drink (and force on all my friends).

Last Sunday Kelly and I watched the fantastic final episode (of this year) of Battlestar Galactica. To anybody who hasn’t seen the show, watch it. It’s a great reimagining of the original. We’ve also been getting caught up on this season’s Doctor Who, which is also good, if a bit more kid-friendly than BSG or Lost (oh, yeah, it’s season finale was also really good).

Last night we watched the film Jumper, which was also a fun film, despite starring an actor who I will always associate with the horrid Star Wars, Episodes II and III. The effects were well done, the story was interesting, and since I didn’t know much about it before watching it, had a couple twists (and an obvious, made-for-a-sequel ending).

Work continues to be crazy busy, but good. My stress and happiness levels go up and down, but it’s still all good. Lots of stuff I’m working on, and hope to get to do, in the coming months.

Anyway, sitting in my back yard with a beer and thought I’d write (finally). Mmmm… Guinness.

Categories
Beer Food Humor Technology Television Work

Since the trip…

Since the last post, I had a nice end of my two week vacation. A couple relaxing days that allowed me to get back into our timezone. During that time I also discovered that Belmont Station carries the Bruges beer that Kelly and I had much of on our trip, Brugse Zot, so I picked up a couple bottles of that. Hooray!

Last Wednesday Kelly and I had M & B over for dinner, to thank them for watching over our house and our cat, and I figured that would be as good a time as any to tap my keg of Guinness. The countdown begins. Tapping it proved to be more complicated than I’d thought. The first problem was that I hadn’t tightened the stout faucet all the way, and when I first went to lock the tap on, beer sprayed everywhere. Damn! Once I’d fixed that, the tap wouldn’t lock down easily (making me wonder for a bit whether I’d picked up the wrong tap). Finally realized that it just needed a bit more ‘elbow grease’ than other taps, and finally got the delicious black stuff flowing Yum!

Kelly and I went out to my hometown on Friday after work for a belated birthday dinner for Kelly. We went to this newly opened Chinese place, the food was mediocre, but it was still a nice dinner. Afterwards we drove to my folks place for dessert (ice cream cake, yum!) and I got to spend time playing with my rapidly growing nephew, Bart. After getting home I had a couple pints of Guinness (naturally) while getting distracted by this Comcast site Fancast, where you can watch full episodes of TV shows… I ended up watching some of the original Battlestar Galactica. I hadn’t seen it in many, many years.

Last night we went out with Mr. & Mrs. Ghost Dog to the Goose Hollow Inn for delicious sandwiches and beers, before coming back to our house for a bit. Had a great time, and it’d been quite some time since we’d seen the GDs.

Today, finally, the unseasonably cold and rainy weather broke, and Kelly and I were able to spend a few hours outside doing yardwork. Soon, we’ll be grilling some chicken kabobs on the barbecue. Hooray!

Between all this, was a crazy first week back to work. Loads to do in the next few weeks for the next software release. Gonna be nuts.

Oh, also, discovered a new web comic, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal. Enjoy.

Edited to add one more thing: My friend and coworker Aaron recently blogged about this news site The Big Picture, where I found this photo/article about an uncontacted tribe in Brazil. Really found the photos amazing, imagine not being in contact with the ‘modern’ world and having a helicopter buzzing around your tribe’s camp. What must have been going through their minds.