blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Category: Beer

  • Past couple weeks…

    I’ve managed to ignore the blog for almost 2 weeks. Damn. I’m a slacker! Here’s a quick-ish recap:

    A week ago Thursday I met up with my brother and Ghost Dog at the Goose Hollow Inn for some beer and food on the patio. Had a good time, and of course had the reuben sandwich! It was good to go back, it’d been several months.

    Last weekend was a "no plans" weekend. Kelly had a big nasty paper due, so I kept myself busy and out of her way by doing a lot of yard work, and getting caught up on some of the movies Kelly had seen but not sent back yet.

    During last week I was out a lot; with Snooks at Kennedy School, with my brother at the Moon & Sixpence, and then the Goose again on Friday with Jen and Jason (who we’d not seen in quite a while). After dinner we went to Multnomah Village to see their new condo and meet their new kitten Tiki. Had a great night out, and it was good to see J & J. Need to do it again soon.

    Yesterday was pretty busy. In the early afternoon Kelly and I had a BBQ to go to for some friends expecting a ‘little one’ in about two months time. We had a fun time (I ate way too much, but I couldn’t let those poor, lonely looking hamburgers go to waste :)). Then, we rushed home and ran down the street to catch a bus. Destination: Rose & Thistle. Ghost Dog celebrated a birthday last week, and had a bunch of people join him for some food, drinks, and later darts, to celebrate. Had a great time (even though my darts skills are poor, and Snooks, who wasn’t wearing his glasses, kicked my ass).

    Today I got out and did a bunch of yard work, and did some much needed waqtering. I’m very tired now, and am soon going to attempt to watch a movie without falling asleep on the sofa. 

  • Day ’round the house

    Today I went no further than a half-mile from my house, and it was nice. After last weekend’s running around it was good to just anchor down a bit.

    Since Kelly had class all day, I had intended to sleep in late, but by 9am I got up and decided to have a full day. I fixed myself some coffee, had some cereal, and then spent some quality time with my new toy (the MacBook Pro). After a couple hours playing / tinkering / learning (and paying bills online, urgh) I set out to do some yardwork. This was at around 11am. Just as I was about to go outside, it started pouring down rain. Oh well, more play time! About an hour later the sun emerged again, so I got all ready to get outside and… rain again. Hrm. Ok, more geeking out. Finally, at around 2pm I decided I needed to do something productive, so I did a bit of grocery shopping at the local grocery store. After getting home and looking at the ominous clouds I decided not to bother going out and mowing my lawn, and instead decided to wash the car. This may sound foolhardy, but think about it… the rain helps wash the soap off! 🙂 However, I got the car washed, dried, and into the garage before any further showers. Kelly got back from class shortly after I finished washing the car, but needed some ‘decompress’ time, so I decided to detail the car pretty heavily (vacuum, wiped down all the vinyl & plastics, cleaned the windows inside and out, etc). After about three and a half hours of all that car cleaning nonsense (resulting in a super clean car) I got cleaned up and Kelly and I went out for some dinner.

    We decided to walk to the Concordia Ale House (still within the half-mile range mentioned above), which we hadn’t been to in quite a while. I was very happy to see they were pouring the Terminal Gravity ESG (Extra-Special Golden), a delicious, light, summer-y golden ale. I also had a pint of Hales ‘Dublin Stout’, which was really good (creamy, not overly strong or bitter, somewhat remarkable for a Northwest stout). We also had some really good food… I had a turkey melt (with jack cheese and bacon, mmm), and Kelly had a tomato, pesto, cheese sandwich. We both had a nice relaxing time out, and then walked home. Good day. Feeling refreshed, though a little sore. Surprising what 3+ hours of car cleaning will do. 🙂

  • The Big Recap

    Yes, it’s been a bit, mainly due to the house guests mentioned in my last post, and my new toy. I won’t recap the whole thing, as Kelly did a good job of that, but here’s some bits from the last few days:

    Friday: The BBQ at Snooks place was fun, though I was feeling a bit ‘out of it’ from the work week, so I don’t remember feeling massively social. My brain just needed some "switch off" time I guess. I did however have an excellent hamburger. Along with the other food items Kelly mentions in her post, Snooks had also picked up some patties from the Sapphire (raised naturally, containing a mixture of spices other veggies, and about two inches thick) which he grilled to perfection.

    Saturday: Went to Ground Kontrol with Sean (one half of our house guests) and Brian, and got our classic arcade on. I had fun playing some old pinball machines, including this very old Star Trek machine. After a few hours, we went over to the infamous Low Brow Lounge for some beers. Afterwards we met up at Khun Pic’s for dinner, which was, as Kelly mentions, fantastic.

    Sunday: Sean, Brian, Snooks and I spent a few hours at Mash Tun while the baby shower thing was going on at my house. Had a blast playing pool, throwing darts, and drinking beer. After that we (minus Brian) went to Kennedy school for a bit, and were met there for dinner by the ladies.

    Monday: Worked all day and then went home. Kelly brought me some delicious spicy mac & cheese from the Montage though. Spent my last night with Sean out in the garage, chatting away, sipping on beers, and listening to music. Went to bed WAY too late, but oh well.

    Today: Said my goodbye to Sean (his wife was still asleep by the time I left the house) and worked all day. On the way home Kelly met me at the Mash Tun for a quick pint, before arriving to a relatively empty house. Had a fun time over the past few days, but I’m pooped. 🙂

    There you have it, all caught up. Also, I’ve been playing a lot with my new Mac. It’s been running great. I got Windows XP installed on it (on a second partition) and it runs great. Also tried out VMWare Fusion, allowing me to run my Windows apps (from the second partition) inside of the Mac desktop. Pretty slick! I’ve also been able to narrow down the crashing issues I mentioned previously. There is something very specific happening with the OS X drivers for the new WiFi hardware this new machine has. At the office, when I enter the range of one of the two WiFi access points, I get the crash. Also, while at the Mash Tun, something about it’s access point won’t let me connect, though while booted into XP, I was able to connect. It’s become apparent that it’s the OS X drivers, and I’m sure that Apple will release an update for it sometime soon. But until then, my WiFi may be a bit spotty depending on where I am. Kind of sucks, but it doesn’t outweigh all the other benefits of the machine. I’m still very happy with my decision. 🙂

  • The Fountain, the Walking, & the Garage

    To follow up from Saturday, I spent most of yesterday playing with my photo gallery software, in an attempt to better link it with the blog. Kelly and I also watched The Fountain, which Snooks had recently metioned. It was indeed a beautiful film, and one that left me pondering afterwards (even now), and led me to some rather interesting dreams. At least I think so. I never seem to remember my dreams, but I distinctly remember waking up feeling rather introspective. Woah, that’s heavy man!

    Work today was filled with meetings, mostly around upcoming work and planning the next release of the software I’ve been working on at SuperSweetCo. The next few weeks are going to be pretty nuts.

    Fortunately I was able to get a good amount of walking in today, as the temperature has finally dropped to more sane levels. Early this morning I got few miles in walking from my house to a bus stop a bit further than I’d normally go to. During my lunch break I was finally able to do my three mile walk around the waterfront. Again, the weather (and workload) last week prevented me from my usual lunchtime walks. After work I went to my friend Jenn’s place (same spot as Memorial Day), to have some beers (Mount Hood Brewing’s Ice Axe IPA) off of her new kegerator (which she was supposed to have had by her party last week). After that I walked another few miles from her house to mine. In total I walked a bit over 7 miles today. Hooray!

    Once I got home I helped Kelly unpack the espresso machine I got her for her birthday (which finally arrived today), and then tidied up my garage a bit. Kelly and I have some friends coming to stay with us in a few day (for about 6 days). Kelly has been doing a lot of work on the house itself, but the manly area that is the garage was a mess. It’s a bit better now. The looming guests have been a good exuse to finally get in and clean like I’ve been meaning to do for a while. There’s talk of renting a projector so we can play classic arcade games on a wall in said garage, while sipping on beers and talking about manly things. The garage is now a bit better set up for such manly / nerdy activities. 🙂

  • Weekend Report: Backyard edition

    Been a very busy week. So let me start off with…

    Monday (Memorial Day): as Kelly wrote, my friend Jenn threw a big BBQ / Housewarming. I was there far too late and had far too much beer (from a keg of IPA from Pelican Brewery), but it was a blast. Though I paid for it on…

    Tuesday: the final push week for a development cycle at work. The company has engaged in something known as a ‘release train’ model, whereby every 6 weeks the company will release a new versions of it’s products. In this model there are three weeks of development followed by three weeks of quality assurance testing. This means that at the end of the dev. cycle, the developers begin work on the next release, while supporting any bugs that QA finds. So basically, development and QA happen at the same time, just for different releases. Since we’re just now getting on this model, it’s been hectic. ANYway, it was a mad rush to try and get everything done by the end of the week. Fast forward to…

    Friday: barely got everything done for a 4pm demo to the company. Following that, the company held a big happy hour bash. Since the company has gotten so big, it’s been decided that once in a while each department sponsors a happy hour, complete with a small budget for whatever it is they want to do. This first time out, the engineering department got the task, and decided to go with the theme "ice". The break room windows were blacked out, there were blue glowing things (both to wear, as well as set around the room), buckets of dry ice pouring vapor all over the floor, and images cycling on the big TV of glaciers, snow-covered mountains, and Vanilla Ice. Hehe. It was pretty fun, and I didn’t get out of the office until a bit after 7:15pm. Waited a painful 40 minutes for a bus to arrive and finally made it home a little after 8pm. Kelly and I sat in the back yard for a bit before I grilled up chicken (both real for me, and fake stuff for Kelly) and ate dinner. Then I fell asleep on the couch shortly after 11pm. This leads me to…

    Saturday: Woke up just before 8am and couldn’t go back to sleep, so I shuffled downstairs, made coffee, and though of all the things I was going to try and get done today. Once I had a cup ‘o joe in hand, I went upstairs to my office and sat at the computer to read some news for a bit. Well, I got heavily distracted (mostly with this blog) and didn’t end up doing anything I thought I might get done. Oh well I guess, it was a fun nerdy day. You might notice one new feature of the blog, there’s now a ‘Random Image’ sidebar item that’s pulling images from my new photo gallery software (Gallery2). One thing I was trying to figure out was how to more tightly integrate that application with my blog. I’m a bit frustrated with one of the blog plugins (it’s not working quite as well as I want it to) but that led me to do all kinds of other things (more behind-the-scenes) to the blog software iteself. Still tinkering, but thought I’d write a bit here before I lose myself in nerdiness again. I’m finally sitting outside (now that it’s not so damned hot out), beer in hand. Ahhhh.

    Other interesting tidbits: It’s been hot this week, very hot. It hit 90 once already, and it was still May at the time. Even today the temperature was about 13 degrees F above normal. We basically went from winter to summer with only a couple weeks of sprint-like weather inbetween. *sigh*. InfoWorld posted a positive review of the product I’ve been focusing on for the past several months. Also, as of next week, I’ll have been employed at SuperSweetCo for a year. Man how time flies!

  • The holiday weekend begins

    It's Memorial Day weekend, and I'm glad I've got an extra day off, as the past week has been pretty exhausting.

    Thursday (Kelly's birthday) Kelly spent the afternoon downtown. We went and had a delicious lunch at Mother's Bistro & Bar and then I went back to work while she wandered around town and shopped until I was free. After work we drove out to my parents house for a little birthday dinner for her, and then at around 9pm we left for home (about a 45 minute drive) so we could watch the season finale of Lost finally. However, we get home and discover somewhere between 30 and 50 little ants on our kitchen counter, specifically (and oddly) in and around the coffee maker. This meant about an hour of killing and cleaning, including a trick a friend of mine told me about; put liquid dish washing detergent on your finger and mark a line, they won't cross it. I was able to trap a few near where I thought I saw a hole by marking a circle with detergent, and then I placed some Terro within the barrier I'd created, hoping they'd be forced towards than and then retreat to their lair, unwittingly carrying their deadly package with them… cue evil laughter. A little after 11pm we were finally able to put on the 2 hour Lost season finale, which was really really excellent.

    Yesterday I was a bit tired all day. Kelly had made dinner plans with some friends at around 7pm, so after work I took the bus to Belmont Station to meet up with Kelly and pick up some things for the weekend. Dinner was at Wild Abandon, where I had a really top-notch hamburger (a thick, half-pound patty of free-range beef, with a lemon-garlic aioli, mmmm). Dinner was long though, my patience level for sitting at a restaurant for three and a half hours watching courses come and go is a little low. This is because I'm a very simple and direct person when it comes to eating: go to place, order meal, eat meal, done. 🙂 That said, it was a nice place, and the food really is excellent. We sat out on the patio which was nice, until dusk settled in and the mosquito's and spiders came out.

    After dinner a few of us went up the street to the Horse Brass for a pint or two. I was designated driver, so I was taking it easy all night, though I did have to have 2 pints at the pub, especially when I discovered what they have on tap now: Old Speckled Hen, and Bluebird Bitter, two really delicious English beers. Oddly, I'd picked up bottles of these while at Belmont Station earlier in the evening, but on tap they're so much better. Anyway, it was a nice end to a nice evening out.

  • Outing with work folk

    Today SuperSweetCo launched a new version of the fancy new web-based collaboration software. To celebrate, the team who make it go went out after work for food and drinks. We started off walking up to Jake's Grill, which is on the ground floor of the historic Governor Hotel. The happy hour menu at Jake's is incredible, everything is $1.95, and it's not all small appetizers, but full meals such as the 1/2 pound cheeseburger with fries. I had a small hummus plate and it was delicious. After sitting around and sipping on a few pints of Guinness we walked down to Kells to meet up with a few more coworkers. Had a great time.

    Kelly met up with us at Kells (she had a happy hour with a friend not far away) and we rode the bus homeward together. We ended up taking a bus that ends up pretty far away from home, but the weather was great so we decided it wouldn't be a problem. We get off the bus on the corner of 15th and Alberta, only to remember that it's Last Thursday, a monthly event held up Alberta for about 20 blocks, with art, crafts, musicians, hippies, yuppies, and everything inbetween (good blog about it with pics here). As we turned the corner we ran into our friends Ty & Aymie (Aymie had a table set up selling her bead works). Chatted with them for a bit before wading through the heavy crowds to get home. Apparently a couple hours later there was a brawl between some drunken idiots and cops, ending up with riot cops showing up. Some moron apparently threw a beer bottle at a cop, the cop tazer'd the moron, and then the moron's friends started fighting back, and it escalated from there. Sheesh. Bunch of morons.

  • Unghhh

    What a week, and what a day.

    The past week has been pretty crazy at work. SuperSweetCo is prepping a new version of the software that I worked on a few months back. The UI is changing a little bit, which means that there's quite a bit of work for me to do. I can only hope the changes are received as big improvements. Stress!

    After work yesterday I decided to walk homeward for a bit, the weather was nice, and I needed the physical and mental break from the week. I ended up walking about halfway home (at little over 3 miles) before catching a bus. Once I got home I drank a few beers and watched some movies from Netflix that K had already seen during the week. One of them was a pretty good (and quirky) romantic comedy called Happy Accidents. In general, anything with Vincent D'Onofrio I like… and Marisa Tomei isn't hard on the eyes either.

    Today I had to get up early to help my friend Jenn move. In general helping a friend move is relatively easy, not because I'm all that fit, but it's normally pretty straight-forward… move stuff from point A to B. However in this case my friend Jenn swapped houses with a friend who lived about 3 blocks away. This might sound simple, but it's not. It meant that myself and the 10 other hard-working blokes had to fill the moving truck for a couple hours (climbing and descending steps and stairs, weighed down with heavy boxes, furniture and appliances), only to get to the other house, unload all that stuff, only to refill the moving truck with the stuff from the other house… effectively starting all over. Despite a couple beers and a short pizza break, after four hours I was exhausted. I'm not used to that level of strain. Oh, and the best part was about half-way through it started raining. Whee! All my complaining aside, I was still happy to help Jenn move. Just hope I never have to help move a house-swap ever again. It's a bit like rubbing salt in a wound. 🙂

    After getting home and washing the stink off, and spending a couple hours relaxing (and letting the soreness set in) K and I joined Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog at the Mash Tun for a fantastic meal and some delicious beers. One of the beers that both GD and I enjoyed was a brown ale called Turbodog from Abita Brewing Co. in Louisiana. It was a delicious, quality brown ale with a slightly sweet and bitter flavor. And, it's got a cool name! 🙂 Had a great night, but I'm feeling very sore. I suspect tomorrow is going to suck. 

  • Ant report, beer, hotel, and a trip to Washington

    I've been busy the past several days. Work has been very stressful. I have a lot to get done prior to a new software release (coming in a couple weeks). On Wednesday I worked from home, and had an "Orkin Man" come over and look into the ant issue. To my great relief, we don't have carpenter ants (whew!) but instead have a non-destructive nuisance called oderous house ants. Apparently it's pretty common in the area, and while they can be hard to get rid of, they're not a destructive. We'll see what we can do with store-bought ant-killing pesticides first before paying for an extermination treatment that's usually reserved for carpenter ants. Apparently the inspection was free, at least, unless we get a bill in the mail later.

    On Thursday my brother Travis and I got together for our weekly beer drinking session. Had a good time, though made it an early night (due to the aforementioned work stress).

    Friday after work I met Kelly and our friend Miranda at the McMenamins Back Stage Bar (mentioned before) and had a delicious spicy mac 'n cheese dish with blackened chicken, and a couple pints of Terminator Stout. Later we drove Miranda home to hang out, but not before stopping at Belmont Station to buy a few beers for the weekend (Smithwick's, Coniston Bluebird Bitter, Old Speckled Hen, and a few other things). 

    Today was pretty productive, despite sleeping in a bit. Kelly and I finally booked a hotel for our upcoming trip London. We chose the Park Plaza 'Sherlock Holmes' Hotel. Despite the rather touristy name, and after digging around for probably 20 hours total in the past week (using a combination of Bookings.org, TripAdvisor, and a great Google Maps and hotel search mashup called MashedHotels) we found the Sherlock Holmes was in a good location for a "decent" price (I added quotes because pretty much everything in London is really expensive). After some knuckle-gnawing, I opted for the more expensive 'suite' room. I figured that since we will be there for 8 nights, I wanted to spend our nights in as nice a room as I could afford this time, rather than going for the low-end budget route we usually go for. After booking the hotel, and going to get a haircut, Kelly and I drove about a half-hour north into Washington to visit my longtime friend Sean and his family at their new house. They had just finished moving this morning to a house that sits on ten acres of land in a beautiful and secluded area. It was great seeing them again, and I'm glad they finally found the spot they'd been looking for (for the past several years). After getting back to Portland we hung out at the Mash Tun with our friend Jenn at the Mash Tun for a bit, before going home. What a day! 🙂 

  • Busy day, Goose evening

    Due to an early evening last night (with me falling asleep on the couch at 11pm like some kind of old person) both Kelly and I got up just after 9:00 this morning.

    As a result of having a full (and rainy) day ahead of us, we both got a lot done around the house. I got my finances in order (entered receipts into my personal finance app, paid bills online, etc), fixed a small bedroom closet issue (the weight of all someone's clothes broke the plastic holders of the hanger rod, for a second time, so I installed some metal ones!), and we did a massive refrigerator clean-up. What an icky mess a fridge can become after only two years of use. We pulled everything out (shelves and all) and wiped all the gunk out. We even pulled the fridge away from the wall to sweep underneath and finally disovered that there's a water hookup in the wall behind it… that means that one day we can get one o' them fancy fridges with the water & ice dispenser in the door. Hooray! After that, I took the bottles & cans that had been piling up to the local New Seasons, and did some grocery shopping.

    After all that I ran by my friend Brendle's house for a smoke. While there, he mentioned he was going to Gartners to pick up some meat for some stew he going to make. Since moving into the neighborhood two years ago I'd heard about that meat mecca, so I offered to take him over there so I could finally check the place out. And what a place it was! Every kind, cut, and style of meat a carnivore's heart could desire, and all of it made my mouth water. I'm definately going to be making pilgrimages there throughout the summer for my BBQ needs. 🙂

    After all that, Kelly and I met our good friends Jason and Jen at our old haunt, the Goose Hollow Inn, for some dinner and drinks. Had a fantastic time hanging out on the deck, catching up, eating delicious reuben sandwiches, and sipping beers. Great night, and the perfect way to end a busy day.

    Tomorrow Kelly and I are going out to my hometown to meet up with my family at one of the few (and soon to shut down) restaurants in town, the Brown Derby, for an Easter brunch. I'm a little sad to hear the place will be shutting down, I've been going there since I was a little kid. It was really the one 'fancy' restaurant in town, and right next door to my grandparents old house. The signature Brown Derby Burger is something to behold. I'd put it far above anything Stanich's has to offer. *sniff* I can only hope I can get that burger tomorrow, before it's too late!