Categories
Beer General Music Work

May’s Mega Recap

Since I realize I’ve so blatantly disregarded the ‘ol blog pretty much all month, here’s a mega-recap of the month of May.

Most of the month has been spent working some very late nights. This is largely why I haven’t written in so long. Spent several nights designing and coding some prototypes until nearly 2 AM, trying to meet deadlines. It’s been a crazy busy work month.

I finally retired Guinness from my kegerator (which I’d been pouring since October). Got a half keg of Trumer Pils going at the moment. Decent beer for the hot weather that Portland has had for the past couple weeks.

Kelly had her birthday last weekend (happy birthday Kelly!!!) and we had a super small BBQ at our house to celebrate. Really low-key, but a lot of fun. I spent the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend working in the yard for 5 hours, the house for 2, and had the BBQ that afternoon. Woke up Sunday with what I thought was merely a mild hangover. Only it got worse throughout the day. Spent the rest of the weekend with a nasty cold/flu (which I dubbed PigManFlu). My Memorial Day was spent watching TV on the couch with a box of tissues. Hrmph!

Last night Kelly and I went to see this 80’s tribute band show at the Wonder Ballroom. Three bands; Black Celebration (Depeche Mode), The Love Vigilantes (New Order), and This Charming Band (The Smiths). It turned out better than I thought it would. All three bands were competent musicians, and did a fair job at emulating the character of the originals. The clear winner for me were The Love Vigilantes, who were, honestly, better than the real New Order live (who I’d seen only once but are historically not a good live band). Fun night.

Today was yardworkapolooza. I mowed, pruned, raked, trimmed, and generally cleaned up the place. Later, my parents and brother T (and his family) came over for another dinner to celebrate Kelly’s birthday (since they weren’t able to join us last weekend). While they were over (and with the aid of my dad’s truck and chainsaw) I finally pulled the stump of the tree T helped me trim down a few months back. The stump came out easily enough since the tree was so rotted, but it meant a lot more cutting, chopping, and stacking. The upside, however, is that I have loads of wood for the outdoor fireplace.

After the tree carnage (and finally ending a total of 8 hours of me working in the 80+ degree weather), we all ate the delicious dinner my mom had lovingly prepared for Kelly’s birthday. After everybody left the house I took a nice, long shower and planted myself in a chair on the front porch with beer to write this post. Hurrah!

And there you have it. I suspect I’m going to be a little sore tomorrow. 🙂

Categories
Beer Travel

San Francisco, day 2

Kelly and I walked today. A lot. About 6 miles in total, including the Embarcadero from Pier 1 through 45 (including the touristy Pier 39 and Hyde Pier) and then up the very steep Hyde St back towards our hotel). Wandered inside both an old ferry boat, and an old cargo ship, shared a delicious hot fudge sundae at Ghirardelli Square, had a few beers at a pub not far from our hotel, and some delicious pizza at a place called Uncle Vito’s. Good day. Long day. Tired. More photos added to the gallery.

Categories
Beer Food Television Work

Leverage, Lolo, Lompoc

After the KABOOM on Wednesday, Kelly and I saw a bit more Leverage filming Thursday on our way to work. They were filming outside the US Bank on Broadway. Nothing too exciting, loads of people, filming gear, etc, but I caught a glimpse of two of the actors I recognized from what little I’ve seen of the show (Christian Kane and Aldis Hodge).

Yesterday after work Kelly and I went to a tapas restaurant near our house for dinner called Lolo for dinner. Good food, good service, and a good atmosphere. Granted, it wasn’t massively busy (it was a Thursday after all) but the happy hour prices are worth the visit alone.

Today I worked from home since I needed to take Kelly and one of her coworkers to the airport at 10am. During the day a friend arranged a meet-up at the New Old Lompoc on NE Williams for some after-work drinks. I decided to walk the 3.25 miles there to get a bit of exercise in. After a couple beers and some good conversation with friends, I hit the streets for the walk home. Good amount of walking. My feets are now sore. Good thing I have Guinness on tap to help soothe the pain. 🙂

Categories
Beer Technology Work

Guinness. Yes, again.

Well, I went and did it. I got yet another keg of Guinness. I know I’ve said it before, but I swear this is the last one. I swear! Honest!

Looking through my blog, it appears I’ve been pouring Guinness from my kegerator since October. I think it’s been 6 kegs (roughly one per month), with several little gatherings and nights with friends to help me polish each of ’em off. Worth every penny.

I debated getting Trumer Pils or Amstel Light, but the weather just isn’t quite warm enough yet to warrant such summery beers. Though I suspect that by the time this keg of Guinness runs dry, it’ll be about that time.

Øther news: Work is keeping me busy

Øther øther news: Yardwork is coming along, the place is starting to look somewhat decent again. Still a lot to do, but it’s getting there. I’ve also continued my picture scanning extravaganza with my new scanner. Being able to scan negatives rocks, and makes the process so much faster. That’s about it for now.

Categories
Beer General Work

March roundup

Again, I’ve been slacking on blogging duties. Work has been keeping me very busy, so much so that I’ve lacked the energy to blog. Since my last post, Kelly and I hosted a little St. Paddy’s Day gathering. Had a great time (thanks to everyone who made it out), and my peeps did some serious damage to the Guinness keg. So much so that it went dry about 4 days afterwards. That meant the keg was dead in about 10 days. A new record!

Since then, no new keg, just been slammed with work. The only other ‘news’ is that I picked up a new flatbed scanner (an Epson Perfection V500) so I could make some real progress scanning in all my old pre-‘digital age’ photos, and a new video card (a BFG nVidia 9800 GTX+ OC) so my games would run better (and boy do they! Call of Duty 4 looks like a brand new game).

I’ve also continued my yard work, clearing up more debris and throwing down a bunch of grass seed to help replace my balding lawn… now I’m just waiting for it to start growing in.

That about covers March. Next up, today’s hike to some very pretty (and off the beaten path) waterfalls.