Sometimes I feel close to it, but I'm not quite dead yet... the past few months have just been all over the place for me recently. Good and bad reasons, and not everything I'm necessarily going to discuss here. Just suffice it to say that with everything that life has thrown at me (and at people who I care about) in the past few weeks, we're not down yet. And if we are down, we won't stay that way. Not our style - any of us.




I bought myself a new toy recently - a netbook. I figure I'm making good money at the moment, I'm only taking care of myself, why not buy myself a toy, you know? Something I want - not necessarily something I need, but something that will make me smile. So I've been playing around on there recently, and will likely take it with me when I go on vacation in a couple of weeks (keep reading for more on that). It's a nice little machine - basically, a notebook computer, but an even smaller form factor. I've been installing a couple of programs on it to get it working just how I want it, and I'm almost there - I need to do some more reading about how to configure this one program I installed. Soon enough, though, soon enough - and I won't be limited to where I'll have to worry about packing and using a notebook with a 15 inch screen. This thing isn't much bigger than a fairly large woman's wallet (the wallet is large, not the woman. Just clarifying. *grin*). I even went through and made a custom wallpaper for the netbook - a new logo for my "brewery." Not tonight, but I'll get a copy of it up soon - just want to play around with these configuration files like I mentioned and I'll post a screenshot. :-)


So yeah - I'm going on vacation in a couple of weeks. Back out to Denver for the Great American Beer Festival again. Since I've done it once already, though, I'm making a couple of changes to my trip. (Of course, this is assuming I'm going - there's a slight chance that I might have to cancel it for family reasons, which (given what the reasons are) I wouldn't be too terribly upset... but I'd still like to go in general. If that made any sense.) :-) But I'll be out there Tuesday to Sunday - and Tuesday night, I'm planning on going to a Colorado Rockies game. I don't follow baseball too terribly closely, but I've always liked the Rockies - so why not? And like I said, I have a few extra dollars in my pocket, so it may very well be a box seat at that game. And then, afterwards, I'll walk the half a block or so to the Falling Rock Tap House. Quite possibly one of the greatest bars I've ever been to. Tons of different beers on tap, and considering it's the weekend of the GABF, they'll probably have some rare kegs to tap - they did a killer business last year for the festival and I can't imagine it would be any different this year. I also need to get in touch with Avery Brewing - they had a list of different beers they were tapping over the course of the week in their tasting room ("Only 8 gallons of this beer in existence!"), and... I just looked at their website. Wow. Wow is all I can say. They're tapping some RIDICULOUS beers this time through, and I think I'm going to have to head up there just for the sour beer that they're unveiling on Wednesday. Yes, I'll likely be up there on Friday as well, but still - I WANT a bottle or 6 of this sour beer. There's nothing like a good sour beer, if you ask me. :-)


Personal life is still personal life - some ups and downs, but other than that, nothing horrible to complain about. Like the mother of a dear friend of mine says, if no one's bleeding and no one needs an organ transplant, we can handle the rest of it. (I don't think that's the EXACT quote, but it's the general idea of it.) I'm doing my best to help my friends through their trials and tribulations, and they're helping me through mine. Sometimes I feel like they're doing yeoman's work, and I don't know that I can ever express just how grateful and lucky I am to have friends like them.


(And I'd like to take this chance to specifically tell my favorite world traveler that I hope she's doing ok. I hope you find what you're looking for soon, hon, and I hope you come back stateside once you do.) :-)


So I'm still a brewing fool. :-) Remember that slightly soured pale ale I mentioned a couple of posts back? Well, it's definitely taking on more of a sour character. Not a bad thing, though - I don't know how to explain the taste, but it's nice. I think I need to get through the rest of the bottles, though, before the sourness takes over and dominates the beer - but if one can "spike" a beer, well, I'd say in this case, it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, I'm not sure it's something I'll be able to recreate - but hey, sucks to be me. :-) I've done a couple of german wheat beers this summer, I have a fresh-hop APA (think Sierra Nevada, but with hops right off the vine) in the fermenter as we speak, and next up will likely be my holiday beer for this year - so I have a little while to get it into bottles to age properly - and the Orange Blossom pale ale I mentioned below. I'm still really curious how a beer like that would come out. :-)


So hopefully, things will calm themselves down for me in the near future, and I'll be able to get up more regular updates. Ideally, anyway. :-) I know of a couple of interesting things coming down the pipe, and at least one of them will involve lots of pictures. :-)


But for now, I have a 2 year old bottle of Left Hand Oak Aged Widdershins barleywine to attend to. Be good, guys, and comment up a storm. :-)