blog.circusgeek

a personal blog with nerdy bits thrown in

Category: Beer

  • Kelly’s in Vegas, and I have more Guinness

    Tonight Kelly left for Las Vegas, for one whole night. She had to fly out early this morning for an event this evening, and then comes home tomorrow afternoon. What a crazy thing to have to do. Wishing her luck!

    Today I went to pick up a fresh keg of Guinness. Yeah, the previous keg is empty already. Actually it’s been empty for a week, making it a record-breaking 1.5 weeks. To be honest, between Kelly, Snooks, my brother, and the party on the 24th, I had a lot of help but I was still pretty surprised. I drove to work today, packing the empty Guinness keg with me so after I could go get a fresh one. It’s home and tapped and happy in it’s little fridge. And the pints are happy in my belly.

    Tonight I’ve been trying out the new, Mac-friendly plugin from Netflix to watch sreaming movies. Works really well, and I’m pretty jazzed. I just watched Superman: Doomsday and am now watching Big Trouble in Little China which I haven’t seen in well over a decade, but it’s still a great cheesy 80’s John Carpenter flick.

  • The past week or so…

    I keep meaning to post, I really do! I just keep getting distracted and putting it off. Here’s yet another recap of the past week or so…

    Tues – Fri
    Worked. Lots of meetings, lots of planning, little actual work got done.

    Friday night (Halloween)
    Kelly and I went to Concordia Ale House for a beer, and then headed over to Kennedy School to witness the Halloween festivities. We arrived just in time to see some little kids all decked out (saw a tiny dinosaur, the kid couldn’t have been more than a year old — looked like a stuffed animal with a small child stuffed inside, very cute). We got pints and went to the front fire pit and watched the adults arrive for the evening party. There were a number of good costumes, including some zombies, 80’s style rockers, a thin and buxom Wonder Woman, a Sarah Palin (the scariest costume all night), and my personal favorite… Cousin Eddie, Christmas Vacation style.

    Rest of weekend
    Chilled out, watched some TV and movies. Had plans and they fell through so it was a generally lazy weekend. Perfect! One cool thing, my friend Eric sent me the invite code for the Call of Duty: World at War demo, which I downloaded and played for a bit. Awesome and loads of fun, though it did tax my two year old video card. Time to buy another I guess.

    Last night
    Met Snooks at Horse Brass for a couple beers last night, before returning home to have a salad and doze off on the couch. I think I’m fighting off a flu or something. Urgh.

    Today
    Worked from home and managed to get a lot of real work done. Hooray!

    Tonight (election night)
    Trying to ignore the results as they come in. Nothing can be gained by fretting over the numbers as they come in, moving upward and (sadly) closer together. I can only hope. And pray. And wait. In the meantime I’m gonna continue to play with my new shiny iPod Touch. Maybe play some Call of Duty, or Team Fortress 2 (oh yeah, thanks again for gifting that to me, Ghost Dog!).

  • Time off ends.

    I didn’t blog quite as often as I thought I would over the past few days… distractions distractions. So here’s a recap of my short holiday.

    Thursday was Kelly’s big Mac & Cheese contest finale at Kells, and I ate way too much food. Some of the finalists recipes were really good, and the ones I thought should have won top awards didn’t. Hrmph!

    Friday Kelly and I had a small party at our house for my birthday, had a good time hanging out with friends and neighbors, snacking and sharing my keg of Guinness with everybody. I suspect that night made a dent. 🙂

    Saturday I went to dinner with my family at the Ringside Steakhouse. Mmm, meats.

    Sunday (yesterday) I was lazy, but I did go and pick up an iPod Touch. Shiny.

    Today I was very lazy. The most exciting thing I did was to get the oil changed in the car, and play some Call of Duty 4. Oh, and of course play with the new iPod.

    Anyway, tomorrow I go back to the office. *sigh*

  • Guinness, and some fall color

    So today I went and picked up a keg of Guinness. Naturally this makes me a happy man. After getting the keg home and unloaded I swapped out the gas tanks, cleaned the lines, and swapped the faucet. Had a bit of an adventure with that, it’d been a while since I’d used that faucet and I didn’t clean it properly so when I first went to tap the keg, beer exploded from the faucet, but in really wrong places. After taking it apart and cleaning it like mad, got it tapped and it’s sitting, ready to go.

    Tonight my brother T came into town, destined for Moon & Sixpence so he could do some writing. I decided that it’d be a good opportunity to get out and enjoy the decent weather (65 degrees or so), so I walked the roughly 2 miles to the pub. On the way I snapped some photos of the deciduous trees that are now punctuating the streets. I’m not usually a fan of fall anything, fall colors, fall holidays (well, except the food at Thanksgiving), and my birthday (which is coming up, drats!). However today they looked, well, kinda cool. Even though they’re all dying. 🙂

  • Time off begins…

    So after a rough week last week, tonight I begin some well-earned time off. Starting now, I will NOT be working again until next Tuesday. Hooray!

    Kelly got back from New York yesterday. Last night we made dinner and nearly got caught up on Heroes before Kelly passed out, since she was so exhausted. Tonight (and tomorrow night) she’s staying in a hotel in downtown Portland with her coworkers leading up to her big work event on Thursday night. Basically I’ve seen her once since last Wednesday, and I probably won’t see her again until Thursday night. Hrmph!

    Oh well, the important part is that I’m at home, chillin’ out listening to music, sipping on beers, and generally relaxing. Ahhhhh…

  • Trouble at the mill

    This past week has been rough at (and for) SuperSweetCo. The struggling economy is starting to have an effect, and there were some tough decisions made. It hasn’t been a good week, but in the end, I believe the decisions and changes are for the best, and give the company the best chance to survive. I can’t really talk about it in any detail however. So instead, I give you something brilliant (the start of the vid is a bit funky, but it clears up).

    “I don’t know. Mr Wentworth just told me to come in here and say that there was trouble at the mill, that’s all – I didn’t expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition.”

    Kelly left today for New York. She arrived safe and sound. I’m sitting at the Moon & Sixpence at the moment, having a pint of Guinness. It’s helping. 🙂

  • Trumer Pils: get the glass, kill the keg

    Trumer Pils in a Trumer GlassTonight Kelly and I ran over to Belmont Station to pick up some beers. I was primarily going to pick up a bottle of Brugse Zot, and I also picked up a couple bottles of Paulaner Original Munich, and a Weihenstephan lager to try. While there, Kelly was browsing through the shelves of beer glasses and spotted a Trumer Pils glass (which is what I have, well, had on tap) so I figured I’d buy it. After picking up some groceries, I got home and figured I’d pour myself some Trumer in the strange shaped glass (which, according to a website or two, claim to enhance the aroma and flavor). Just as it got near the top of the 500mL line, the keg blew. Drats! I was able to just barely get it filled up, so the photo to the left is the glass, with the last of the keg. Oh well, I suspect that someday I’m going to get this beer in the kegerator again, it’s probably one of my favorites I’ve had pouring so far, second to Guinness… which will be my next keg I think. Hooray!

  • Busy working & Run Fatboy Run

    This week I’ve been swamped with work, frantically trying to hone in some big design changes for the next version of SuperSweetCo’s web app. A bunch of work has been done, both by myself and my team, but there’s a lot of details to work out, and development starts, like, now. It’s going well, but just a bunch of stress. Taking some time off in a couple weeks, looking forward to that.

    Kelly and I set our preferences on Netflix to ship movies from our queue in Bluray (since we now have a player) and our first one arrived yesterday… Run Fatboy Run, which we promptly watched. The movie itself is funny, if a bit overly slapstick at times, but it was a joy to watch in hi-def. I get the feeling I could watch the worst movie ever right now, and still enjoy it just because of the picture clarity. 🙂

    In kegerator-related news, I think it’s about Guinness time again, now that the weather here has suddenly turned from summer to almost winter-like cold. And just in time for my birthday. Hooray!

  • Happy birthday Ty

    Tonight Kelly and I went over to our friends Ty and Aymie’s place for Ty’s birthday party thingy. Happy birthday man! Had a great time hanging out and catching up with all the crew.

    Been a while since the last post, so since then:

    • Saw Hellboy II: The Golden Army (finally), liked it quite a bit
    • Been working my ass off, lots going on
    • Been fighting a sickness this past week, ughhh
    • Saw Dogville, what a depressing flick
    • Saw Doomsday, what rubbish
    • Went to the Goose last night with Mr & Mrs Ghost Dog, brilliant!
    • Bought a Blu-ray player today, brilliant!
    • Bought Iron Man on Blu-ray, also brilliant!
    • Still pouring Trumer Pilsner in the kegerator, alsø alsø brilliant!

  • Lazy day, Goose night

    Today I had all kinds of plans to get outside and get something done in the yard. However, none of that worked out, as I ended up spending (wasting?) my day at the computer, browsing music, playing games, and generally not getting much done.

    Tonight Kelly and I went to the Goose Hollow Inn to have dinner with some friends. On our way we visited one of my coworker’s for a little bit (who was having a small BBQ gathering). We had a fun time even though we were only there for about an hour… the Goose and their delicious sandwiches beckoned.

    The friends we were meeting had never been to the Goose before, so the evening was largely planned due to my raving about their reuben sandwich. Had a fantastic time, and our friends were soon praising the Goose reuben as well. I think I won the Goose a couple more converts. Amen! Goose Hollow reuben be praised!