Category: Beer

Sick, dammit all to hell

Hrmph. This figures. I have a nasty head & chest cold. It started the day after Christmas (Boxing day), and hasn’t let up yet. I’ve spent the last 3 days in the house coughing and blowing my nose. This SUCKS. I take time off from work… valuable, precious time off work… and I get sick. Argh!

I’ve watched a bunch of TV (more Law & Order: Criminal Intent than most people see in an entire year), some movies (including finally watching Blood Diamond, good film), and playing Call of Duty 4 when my head feels up to it.

I’m starting to get antsy. Mid-day today I felt pretty decent, but by 4pm it all started going wrong again, and now, even after Kelly went and picked up Thai take-out (mmmm… spicey fried rice from Tuk Tuk), I’m completely stuffed up. I am, however, saying ‘to hell with it’ and am sipping on a beer. I figure, it’ll probably help me sleep, so whatever. And it’s Friday.

Beer Entertainment General

Christmas ‘n stuff

Merry Christmas (and other, less religion-specific seasonal wishes)! Last night Kelly and I met my family out in Hillsboro for a Christmas Eve church service, followed by a short stop at my sis-in-laws parents place for some food at their annual open house thing. At around 9pm Kelly and I left the quiet shindig and headed up to my folks house to spend the night. After a few hours hanging out with the family (mainly my mom and my youngest brother C) Kelly and I went to bed. Since the spare room was full, we spent the night in my folks 5th-wheel trailer, a giant, apartment-sized thing that’s parked in the lower driveway.

We woke up around 8:00am, pulled on our coats and walked to the house where we got some coffee and some heavily sugared cookies in us to wake us up. After Brother T, sis-in-law, and nephew arrived we got around to opening gifts. Then, during the gift giving, it started snowing! And then, it just kept on snowing. By the time we’d finished opening gifts the ground was getting very white. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a White Christmas, and it’s very rare nowadays (compared to when I was a kid). Bonus photos: Kelly enjoying the snow, and the burning of the torn up wrapping paper and empty boxes.

Kelly and I left my parents place before dark to make sure and get on the highways before the snow got any deeper. We made it home and were unpacked by 5:30pm, early enough for me to install and play a little bit of Call of Duty 4. Pretty sweet! At around 7pm we met Snooks & L at Kennedy School for a few Christmas Day beers.

Oh, and no, I didn’t get the life-sized Cylon.

Beer General

Family get-together, & beers with a friend

Post author By ryan
Post date December 23, 2007
2 Comments on Family get-together, & beers with a friend

Woke up around 8am today after crashing around 10pm last night. I guess I’m still feeling exhausted from the work week (and I might be fighting a bug, feeling generally blergh). I spent most of my day tinkering about the house, cleaning up music files, and playing ‘tech support’ for a friend.

This afternoon Kelly and I went to my Aunt’s house for a Christmas gathering, where I got to visit with with some family I rarely get to see, including my cousin “J” whom I had a really fun time chatting with, something that rarely happens.

After leaving my Aunt’s place we met our good friend JB at the Mash Tun for some drinks and some fun conversation. While there I got to try the Tun’s current brews, including the Watership Brown and a stout (the name escapes me), both of were pretty good. The barkeep had at one point poured himself a little sample of both combined and said it was really good, so I had my next pint a half-n-half of the brown and the stout, and it was pretty delicious. Ended up having another couple of those before Kelly and I went home. 🙂

I still need to wrap gifts. I keep getting distracted. Hrmph!

It sounds like Kelly and I will be going out to my folks place tomorrow night and staying through Christmas day. I think I’m going to bring my old WiFi router out to my parents and leave it there, so I can bring my laptop and get online without being stuck in the back room. I will probably blog again from my folks house tomorrow night. If not, Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays to y’all.

Beer Food Work

End of a week, Night at the Goose

Post author By ryan
Post date December 21, 2007
No Comments on End of a week, Night at the Goose

After a fairly long and mentally exhausting work week, Kelly and I went back to our old haunt, the Goose Hollow Inn, for dinner with our good friends Jason & Jen. Been a while since I’d been to back to the Goose, and even longer since we’d seen J & J. Had a great night catching up with them. I had a few pints of Guinness and the Goose’s famous reuben sandwich. Delicious, and filling. I’m feeling quite drowsy as I write this. Looking forward to my week and a half off, which starts… NOW! *passes out*

*wakes up briefly* while linking to the Guinness website I discovered they have some new strange contraption called the Surger, some kind of sonic burst delivered to a flat-looking pour from a can that activates the nitro bubbles forming the cascade and head associated with a keg pour (videos on guinness.com). Huh. I want to try one someday, hopefully a bar around Portland has one at some point. I’m interested in comparing it to a real keg pour. *passes back out*

Beer Entertainment Movies Work

The Bourne Potter Hobbit

After another long days work I met Kelly and our friend Miranda at Kennedy School at around 6pm for some dinner and then to the theater to watch The Bourne Ultimatum. The movie was good, however I find it hard to give a fair review of it for a couple reasons. First, we met early enough to eat dinner and have a few beers, which made me a little ‘relaxed’, and second, the theater was heated to about 100 degrees, only adding to my generally sleepiness… so I found myself fighting drowsiness during some of the film. Not to say the film lacked any action. It was packed with it. Just that the combination of everything didn’t put me in an attentive state. Without seeing a seeing it a second time I can’t say for sure, but I liked it, just not quite as much as the first one of the series.

After getting home around 10pm I headed straight for bed to finish the last 20 or so pages of the last Harry Potter book, The Deathly Hollows. I’d been trying to finish it for a few days, and early this morning I was reading it while sipping on coffee before I had to force myself to get cleaned up and go to work. It meant stopping during the big finale. I think I want to re-read the last chapter or two straight through this next weekend, but it was a good finish to the series. Also, I’m glad to finally be done with those seven books. Time to move on.

In other news, The Hobbit is finally getting made! (queue a little Hobbit-like jig from me) The spat between New Line and Peter Jackson has apparently been resolved so he will be executive producing what will be two more films (still unclear exactly as to whether it’s going to be simply splitting The Hobbit in two, or if it will attempt to broaden the story to include some of the other, related stories. Either way, I’m very excited about being able to watch more of PJ’s interpretation of Tolkien’s world.