This Post is from the Weekend of August 1st

This was moving weekend for me, so I didn't exactly "go out", but I promise there will be beer in this post. We got the key to the new apartment Friday evening and spent the next day and a half breaking our backs moving furniture, packing, loading, cleaning, and stopping to randomly use things up we'd never gotten around to using in the past 1-3 years (for instance, I rubbed on a sunless tanning sample I'd gotten for free over the internet several months ago). On Friday night, our friend Katie brought her truck and took a load of our stuff to the new apartment. Right afterward, these two Mormons packed a load into their SUV and brought it to our new apartment.

Now, the two Mormons are a married couple, though one of them is clearly a lesbian (as in, dyke hair cut, has a soundproofed room in her house full of percussion equipment, is on a lot of medication for depression - due to being married to a man and a member of a religion that teaches homosexuality is wrong? who knows - etc.). So on Saturday night, after Kristen and I worked on the arduous task of moving for about 12 hours, we needed another run with a truck to finish the process. We ran out of all other options besides taking the Mormons up on the very gracious offer they'd made the night before to borrow their friend's truck and help us again.

We were loading up as much as possible so that Kristen and I would, at most, only have to do one more run on Sunday with just her car. I was carrying out one of those three-high stacks of Wal-Mart Bins (well, that's what I call them. You know those bins college students tend to buy.) I had just spent a couple of hours taking everything out of these bins, thoroughly cleaning them, sorting what had been in there, throwing away or recycling what we didn't need, and organizing them. As we packed up the apartment, all the important things that didn't really have any other place to go (like a piggy bank full of coins, a plastic bag full of coins, book covers, a few books, several wires, etc.). I didn't really pay attention to what I was putting where since I knew I'd be unpacking all of these things pretty much right away. I ran out of duct tape right before taking this out to the car (with the other bin stacks - full of socks and underwear - we'd duct taped them shut, just in case). So I was carrying the stack out to Kristen's car, where they'd be safe, but, as with everything else I'd tried to put in Kristen's car, the Mormon man insisted I should put the stack in the truck bed. I explained the nature of the bins and their contents, but he was sure it would be fine. I said, "Okay, well let me at least go get a few towels to put around them." I did that, and then he stacked some cheap patio furniture on top of them as well.

On the way, in Kristen's car, Kristen almost T-boned a cop who forgot to change our light to red. Neither of us heard or saw him until it was almost too late. That was scary. Then I started talking about how the Mormons could tell a story in testimony meeting, which I realized would be the very next day (first Sunday of the month), that they had helped these two lesbians in need (one of whom is an ex-Mormon) move that weekend. They'd probably go on to say that, while neither of us is likely to call the missionaries to set a baptism date this weekend, they perhaps planted a seed that might one day grow.

When we got to the new apartment and started unloading everything, we realized that the top bin and some of the contents of the middle bin, were clean gone. The Mormons promised they wouldn't stop until they found our stuff, or what was left of it anyway. I said I'd prefer to go with them. Kristen was too depressed to go, and pulled me aside to let me know that there were a few sensitive items in there that made this tragedy particularly shitty.

The Mormons and I drove the truck back to their friend's house to drop off the truck and get their own vehicles. At this point I realized their testimony meeting might go a little differently, and I couldn't decide whether I wanted to ask them to say a prayer with me. I quit praying years ago, for mental health reasons as well as non-belief. I thought A-it's always possible God is real, is testing me, and wants me to pray, B-believing that prayer will help can help in a number of ways (especially if it turns out that existence is all in my "mind"), and C-they'd have a way better story in testimony meeting if I asked them to pray. So, on sort of a whim, I went ahead and asked, and we said a prayer at their house.

Mr. Mormon and I drove his car up and down the 30 mile drive, retracing his and his gay wife's steps, while the lesbian did the same in her motorcycle (oh yeah, she also drives a motorcycle). Kristen texted me to let me know they must have lost the lawn furniture as well as it wasn't at the apartment with the other stuff we'd unloaded and that she was just going to start drinking beer (see, beer, a Bud Lite I think). Well the Mormons had apparently decided it would be best to take the tollway instead of sticking to the slower roads. This turned out to be the problem as, after two hours of Mr. Mormon and I driving together with our eyes peeled and singing songs from Camelot and My Fair Lady together, the lesbian finally spotted some of my stuff right at the entrance they'd taken onto the tollway. Apparently accelerating to 70 mph causes sufficient lift to pluck patio furniture and a bin with probably 40 lbs of contents (remember all those coins) up and out of a truck bed despite being tied down.

We spent the next hour or two walking along part of the George Bush Tollway, picking up bits and pieces of books, movies, wires, a pill bottle, etc. A few things were salvaged, one of which, thankfully, was a library book. All told, I think this probably has cost Kristen and me around 150 bucks. It turns out that we lost all of our phone chargers ($50), the iPod shuffle connector ($30 at Wal-MArt, waiting for the $1.50 one from Ebay to arrive...), the wire that connects the printer to the CPU ($16.82 after tax), all that change, the sensiitve materials ($45), two remotes we really needed to replace anyway, all kinds of crap that doesn't matter too much, a dvd, a piggy bank with a good deal of sentimental value as well as change, and a lot of change on top of that, and hopefully nothing else we still haven't realized is missing. I've found a broken wire from Logitech and some broken piece of plastic with a Logitech logo, but I can't for the life of me figure out what the hell it might be. "God" bless those Mormons. They were so kind and generous to help us with that. Sadly though, we would have saved money had we hired movers to do the whole damn thing for us in one trip. Then again, we wouldn't have had this interesting life experience.

Speaking of which, when we got back to the apartment finally, delirious from the late night, never-wracking adventure, we compared the various things each of us had salvaged. Lesbian said, "Well, I think I had the best find." At this point, I figured she'd found the bag of change with the sensitive materials of which, strangely, no one seemed to have seen a trace. She continued, "I saw a brown bag in the middle of the road, and it looked heavy, so I just knew I had found that bag of change you guys mentioned (we didn't tell her about the other contents). I figured I had the find of the night. It was two lanes down, so I waited for traffic to clear, ran out and picked it up, and it was a bag of poop. Just crap. Diarrhea maybe. It...got on my glove."

I laughed my ass off, so the night wasn't a total loss.

7/25/09

This weekend was pretty tame (lame). My roommates and I are moving out of our apartment next weekend, so we were supposed to have a moving out/please consume or take away my extensive liquor cabinet party. I was interested in liquor for several months more than a year ago and accumulated a large collection of liquors and liqueurs I haven't been able to get rid of in all the time since. Long story short, not only did I hardly get rid of any of the liquor (the only person who took any home was a Mormon who recently left The Church), I actually wound up with an additional can of pineapple juice, several Bud Lites, and a Raspberry Smirnoff. Sigh...

Anyhow, I did have some beer. First up was a Julius Echter Hefe-Weiss (4.9% ABV, Hefeweizen). I liked this one a lot. I didn't pour it well, but it's definitely a heady beer, always a good sign in my opinion. I realize I really like these cloudy beers. and this one was really smooth with a lot of flavors.

I still had some of the old beers to finish up, so after that beer I had one of the Pyramid Apricots and then a Honey Brown. We then went down to the pool, so I brought the only two cans I had, the Modelos.

Like I said, this weekend was fairly boring, hopefully next weekend's adventures will be more my style.

Making up for Lost Time

Well I certainly drank this weekend. And the weekend isn't even over - it's fucking Saturday morning. Last night, I started the evening getting sushi with my girlfriend. At the restaurant we saw some people drinking beer from a beer tower in these adorably small glasses, which put the idea of drinking in my head. So I called up a few friends and invited them for a tame evening of a few beers and some Trivial Pursuit. I then popped open a beer: Paulaner Salvator (7.8% ABV; doppelbock). This has actually been my least favorite of the Paulaners. I didn't taste all of the flavors purported to be in the beer.

It wasn't bad though - I just couldn't really taste a bunch of interesting flavors. Next, I downed another of those Honey Browns we bought last weekend (gotta drink 'em sometime).

We proceeded on to Sherlock's, where I tried to order a Shock Top Wheat Beer, but, as always, the beer I want to order is the one of which they are out. Supply and demand, le sigh...

I ordered their "seasonal Paulaner", which I have determined to be the same kind I got at Fox and Hound the other weekend.

After these I was finally tipsy enough to tell one guy he gave off a bisexual air. Of course he adamantly denied any leanings at first, but soon he admitted he had made out with a dude before. Then he out and out lied about it to his friend Joe McHomophobe across the table who hadn't quite heard him. "Dude, you'd better not be gay, we've been streaking together before!"
"No, of course I'm not!"
"Well, did you just say you've kissed a guy?"
"No, no, never! Ugh, gross, man, of course not!" Hah.

Moving along, I ordered a Smithwicks on tap to see if it did indeed taste better on tap than bottled. I think it did, I think it did.

By the next beer, the waitress was flirting with me a little bit I think. She rubbed her finger up and down my shoulder four times (four times!) and leaned in to ask if she could get me another beer. Well I clearly couldn't stop drinking at that point, so I ordered the only other beer I hadn't ever had before, a Boddington's Pub Ale (4.7% ABV; English Pale Ale). The kind that looks like this in a can. I was probably a bit too drunk at this point to really say how this beer was. I certainly don't remember it being remarkable either way. Be right back, gotta go get food.

Ugh, I just had some delightfully horrible food that is going to prompt me to finally start the blog I care most about: my restaurant blog.

Anyway, after the Boddington's, I asked the waitress if she could think of a beer I could try that I haven't had yet, and she suggested the seasonal Samuel Adams they have right now. At this point, I probably wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between a wheat beer and an imperial stout, so I have no idea how that one was. Oh! and right before I ordered it, one of the dudes from our table had bought the table shots of "vegas bombs" (obviously from the name and taste some red bull concoction, but I have no idea what the other indgredient(s) might have been). He actually meandered his way through the throngs of people through 3 or 4 rooms ana a few staircases and doors to find us outside on the patio to deliver these shots to us (Caleb and me, that is). I don't know why he would go to the trouble - maybe he thought my questioning of his sexuality was somehow flirting.

I wanted to play darts and went over to the dart boards but didn't know from where to get the darts. Some guy took the opportunity to get the darts from the bartender and then offer to play with me, which I did for about 10 seconds before making friends with the 4 guys playing darts next to us and totally abandoning that dude. One guy lectured Caleb and me about the dangers of smoking (he was a total health nut) but relented when I explained I smoke about 3 cigarettes a week all on the one night a week I drink (on average). I don't really know how it came up, but one of the guys ended up confessing that, while he is at least 80% "totally straight", he has some bicuriosity and was interested in Caleb. I told him I could set up a totally safe, easy, situation for him to test the waters with Caleb (and I hope to pursue this because the idea just tickles me). Oh and this guys also told me that he's a chiropractor and wants to try to fix my knees. He said he'd take me out for sushi and fix my knees and we could set the thing up with Caleb then...maybe he's looking for a threesome, now that I think about it...

So, probably thanks to that damned shot of liquor, I ended up feeling queasy on the ride home, to the point that my friends stopped at a gas station for me to try (in vain) to throw up in the sink. When I got home (at about 2:45 am), I didn't want to bother my girlfriend, so (and I don't really remember this part, but I've pieced it together from glimpses of memory as well as my girlfriend's account) I got the good barfing bowl from the cupboard and then inexplicably cleared off the long black table in the living room and lied down on it with the bowl next to me on the ground. There's a perfectly good couch right next to that table, so I'm not sure what my reasoning was. My girlfriend found me akimbo on the coffee table at 6 am, then asked if I might not be more comfortable in bed. I said yes, then got up and lied down on the couch. I woke up in my bed this morning, though. Look at the note my girlfriend left me so I wouldn't wake up with bad, paranoid hungover thoughts that she might be pissed at me for getting piss ass drunk:


Isn't she sweet? :)

Slow weekend for Beer

I actually only had one beer this whole weekend. See what ha' happened was, my girlfriend's co-worker Chasidy was celebrating her birthday at On the Border (before going off to the club, of course), and she invited me to be her date. Well, I figured there would be a lot of black women there, so I was nervous because black women intimidate me. Therefore, I decided I definitely needed a beer beforehand. My girlfriend had wanted to try Dundee's Original Honey Brown Lager(American Amber/Red Lager, 4.5% ABV), so we bought a 6-pack. I didn't really have high hopes for it as for one thing, it's a lager and for another, a 6-pack costs only 6 dollars. Unfortunately, it's just never going to be a great beer for a dollar a bottle. As you can see, there was almost no head at all. It's pretty much just a cheap lager with a bit of a honey taste. Certainly not horrible, and I'd take them over Bud Lite.

Anyway, at OTB I had a regular margarita and a sangria margarita and had a great time, but this is a beer blog!

The rest of the weekend I was starting my period and bloated, so I didn't feel like drinking beer. Especially when I have a selection of other...treats at my disposal :D Well, until next weekend!

Independence Day

Well, the 4th of July and Saturday night have come and gone, which of course means I drank a whole bunch of alcohol again. I started the evening out at a park with some friends and, after a delicious Jimmy John's vegetarian "unwich", I opened the last of a 6-pack of Smithwick's (4.5% ABV, Irish Red Ale) I bought a few weeks ago.
It's pretty good, but it's definitely better on tap than from a bottle. I think you'd say that drinkability is high but complexity is low...something like that. Anyway, next on the agenda was Pyramid's Audacious Apricot Ale (5.1% ABV, fruit/vegetable beer), of which I had purchased a 6-pack.
I sincerely wish this beer could've been purchased by the bottle so I wouldn't have had to endure so many of these. This is one of those quirky beers, one of which is fun to drink. It tastes exactly like apricot, with a beer aftertaste. Having one of these bottles around is great because everyone around you will want to take a sip and say shit like, "Mmm! It really does taste like apricots!" and then either, "ew and then it has a bad aftertaste," if she's not a beer drinker, or, "Ah, and then it has a good aftertaste," if he's a beer drinker who is trying to sound like he has sophisticated taste but really doesn't. Anyway, the point is that it seems to me that this is generic "meh" ale with apricot flavored syrup poured in.

I had 2 of these at the park (bringing my beer total to 3 and my CLBV* count to 3.5). Then my girlfriend wanted me to go swimming with her and some friends. I ended up walking about 3 miles in flip flops while having to pee really badly (3 beers!) trying to make it to my girlfriend. At first, there were complications with the directions, so I had to double back, after about a 1/4 of a mile, to re-ask for directions. Then, it turned out that all entrances to the park were blocked, so I walked another two and a half miles to where I could find her parked. Anyway, after getting home, peeing, and eating the last 3 bites of her Jack-in-the-box something or other, I attempted to have another audacious apricot thing, as did she. I only got half way through mine, then put it in the mini-fridge (as if I'm going to want to drink the rest of it in a few days?), and asked if we could stop at the beer store on the way to the pool.

I always forget that I have to have cans at apartment pools because they all have no glass policies. That shit severely limits my choices. Besides the domestic, lite swill, it came down to Modelo, Tecate or those big Fosters cans (I couldn't find a good enough picture to convey the size of the kind they were selling). I'll try the Fosters one day, but I'm always afraid that they'll just get way too warm before I can make my way through them, and I'm just not at the level of beer connoisseur where I can appreciate utterly warm beer for all it's worth. So I wound up with a 6-pack of Modelo Especial (4.4% ABV Mexican pilsner).
It just kind of tasted generic to me, but I was tipsy and swimming. The dude at the counter told me beer salt was a good idea, so I had some of that with my Modelos, but I accidentally bought the lemon/lime kind instead of regular. Oh well. I ended up drinking...probably 3 of these and playing water volleyball and football with some friends and their 2 kids.

Then I had more Jack-in-the-Box, took 2 ibuprofen, and passed out watching a DVD of Designing Women. Happy 4th!


*Coor's Light by volume is how I keep track of how much beer I've had. That is, until I'm too drunk to do that kind of math and just keep drinking. It's just a conversion into how many 4.2% beers I've had.

The weekend of June 26th and 27th, 2009

Friday:

On Friday night I started the night with a bottle of Sapporo I had purchased at Sprouts. I think what I learned from this was that I do not like lagers. At least not at this point. It's just plain malty/grainy tasting, meh. Also, very little head, especially out of the bottle.

Brewed by:
Sapporo Breweries Ltd.
Japan

Style | ABV
Euro Pale Lager | 5.20% ABV

Notes:
Year-round. Serving types had: can (76), bottle (38), nitro-can (1), cask (1).

Next I headed out to The Fox and Hound again for a beer and some pool with a few friends. I ordered a beer they had listed as Paulaner Seasonal since I had so enjoyed that Paulaner Hefe-Weizen last weekend. It wasn't quite as tasty to me, but it was definitely different and still pretty good. Unfortunately, I can't figure out which Paulaner beer it was.

Some Miller promotional people were handing out little sample cups of Miller 64. Ugh. Even a 2 oz. cup of it was brutal. It turns out that this is Miller's 64 calorie answer to Michelob Ultra's 96 calories light beer, which previously held the record of lowest calorie domestic piece of shit beer. I'll brake this down for anyone who might care about this sort of contest: Since, taste-wise, they are both swill, that factor pretty much evens out. However, while Michelob has 4.2% ABV, Miller 64 is only 2.8%. This actually evens out to exactly the same amount of alcohol per calorie, so the only difference between these two beers is that with Miller 64, you can/have to drink more servings.

Moving along, I wound up at a house party of a bunch of college students and recent graduates, so of course all that was there was the usual supply of domestic lite lager crap. I had some Coors Light, which now tastes abysmal to me of course. Same story with Keystone lite. Had some Bud lite lime, which at least tastes like fruit loops and piss rather than just piss.


Saturday:

I went to hang out with a few friends and have a few beers Saturday night. I stopped at a beer store to pick up a couple fun, new beers.

The first beer I drank was Aventinus' Original Wheat-Doppelbock. I didn't have any pint glasses at my disposal here, so I worked with what was available.

Brewed by:
Private Weissbierbrauerei G. Schneider & Sohn GmbH
Germany

Style | ABV
Weizenbock | 8.20% ABV

Notes:
Year-round. Serving types had: bottle (1214), on-tap (78).

This beer was pretty good and very drinkable. I could clearly taste the clove and banana the back of the bottle mentions, but the chocolate and vanilla pretty much eluded me. Oh well, everyone had a good time passing this around and trying a sip. I don't know why they all insist on sticking to their Bud Lite.











Next up was Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel.

Brewed by:
Spaten-Franziskaner-Bräu
Germany

Style | ABV
Dunkelweizen | 5.00% ABV

Notes:
Year-round. Serving types had: bottle (496), on-tap (45).

Not bad, I think it actually kind of tasted like a muted version of the Aventinus.

I honestly don't remember too well what it tasted like. What I mainly remember is that it wasn't terribly spectacular or interesting tasting.

A Slight Change in Direction

I think I'll just describe my experiences instead of just listing beers and a minimal amount of information.

Last Friday night I decided it was a drinking night. I started out by sharing a bottle of Smithwick's from a 6 pack I had on hand with my friend Caleb.

Then another friend Cortney, he and I headed off to the DMA for a bit of an event there. I enjoy the DMA of course, but having already been there, my favorite parts of the evening were the rides to and from the museum on the DART. On the ride to the DMA, there was a schizophrenic woman talking to no one in particular about Juneteenth and how today felt like the kind of day when someone told you that you only had 7 days to live. On the way back there was a dude with a glove and a switchblade with which he was playing who, out of the blue, turned to Cortney and asked "Do you like me?" which prompted us to move to another part of the DART, ostensibly to find seats. Where we wound up there was, among other interesting characters, a guy who actually took out a bag of coke and bumped some right then and there.

Anyway, back to the beer. So Caleb and I were going to join two other friends Eric and Nedd to go out to The Fox and Hound for a few beers. In order to save money we were going to pre-drink, of course. I had another Smithwick's, a beer I enjoy fairly well but find is better on tap than from the bottle. After that, I broke out my new beer, a Paulaner Hefe Weizen.

It. Was. Delicious. This was a totally new experience for me, starting out as I am in this new world of beer consciousness. I could taste the spices, the clove. It was so different from any beer I've ever had. It was sort of fruity, and so smooth. It's an unfiltered beer, so that was different too. I think I like this unfiltered business - I'll have to try some more and see!

Brewed by:
Paulaner Salvator Thomasbraeu AG
Germany

Style | ABV
Hefeweizen | 5.50% ABV

Notes:
Year-round. Serving types had: bottle (176), on-tap (10), can (2).

Moving on...we went to The Fox, and Caleb owed me a beer for half a roll of sushi, so I just got a beer on tap that wouldn't be too expensive. I got a Fat Tire since I've never had it, or at least not since my new consciousness:

Brewed by:
New Belgium Brewing Inc.
Colorado, United States

Style | ABV
American Amber / Red Ale | 5.20% ABV

Notes:
Year-round. Serving types had: bottle (825), on-tap (193), can (23), growler (1).

To me it tasted hardly any differently from a regular old domestic lager, so that was lost on me.

Next, I wanted to have something interesting, and they had all these Guinness mix options such as a black and tan, a snake bite, etc. I tried to get the Snake Bite since that sounded the most interesting, but they were out of whatever the other beer was, so I got the Black XX. That's just Guinness and Dox Equis, but I figured I probably wouldn't happen to have them both around at the same time to mix. It was tasty stuff. A couple of years ago when I tried a Guinness I remember I didn't like it, so this was a good sign that my tastes are truly developing.

Possibly the most definite change in my tastes came next, though. Now, I started out my beer drinking days at the age of 19 on Coors Light and pretty much stuck to Coors Light, Bud Light, and Keystone Light. I hated Miller Light from the get-go. I would have rather had Natural Light or Milwaukee's Best than Miller, it tasted so bad to me. Well, Eric offered the rest of his Miller Light to Caleb and me, and when I drank it, it tasted LIKE WATER. It was crazy. I was pretty tipsy getting on towards drunk at this point, but still, neither Bud Light nor Coors has never tasted like water to me no matter how drunk I've been.

Anyway, we ended up back at my apartment to chill for a bit, and I had another Smithwick's or two. Good times.

...

And I may as well mention that the Sunday before that I tried a new beer: Steam Engine Lager:
It was pretty good. I drank the whole 6 pack at the pool, which led to me blacking out for about 20 minutes afterward, around 4 or 5 pm. I've really got to start doing the math every time I drink. A six pack of these puppies is about 7.86 Coors Lights, and I drank them in only 2-3 hours. I don't have the tolerance of my youth, so that was a bit too much for me. Oh plus I might have had a bit of my girlfriend's Bud Lights...

Brewed by:
Steamworks Brewing Co.
Colorado, United States

Style | ABV
California Common / Steam Beer | 5.50% ABV

Notes:
Year-round. Serving types had: bottle (41), can (16), on-tap (6).