St.-Pats – Nothing to See Here

Post-vacation weariness

I’ve been unable to think properly for the last week and a half since coming back from St. Pats. Because of this, I’ve sorta slacked off on posting pictures and such. Also, I didn’t take my camera to St. Pats (because I’m an idiot), so I’m just really waiting for everybody else to send me their pictures and thus I can create a compilation.

Still, I have some newer pictures, so I may as well post those instead.

Beer Tasting

Last week, Mike and Paola had a beer tasting party. It was a hell of a good time, and I’d like to thank them for having it. I look forward to brewing a bunch of new beers up for the next one. They posted some pictures, which I shamelessly stole and stuck into my own web album because this lets me keep things in one place.

Fun with Spuds

On Sunday, we were having brunch at the Majestic, when Mikey gets a call, walks outside, and comes back with a plastic light-up Spuds MacKensie. Naturally, we had to take him on a tour of the town before returning him to his rightful owners. Mikey has more pictures than I do, these were taken using my cell phone, which I’m getting better at using nowadays.

So that was last weekend. I missed Trivia night at the Saucer last night, because a) I was really tired, but mainly because b) I was actually unconscious on the couch at the time. I’ll be there next week though. 🙂

On the plus side, I received my cell phone gear from Cingular, including a data cable (pictured to the right), which I used to modify my phone. See, the LG CU500 I have now is a 3G phone, and thus capable of good data reception. Google Maps Mobile is extremely cool, for example.

However, Cingular annoyingly broke this functionality when they released the phone. After installing any “unapproved” Java application onto the thing, it asks for approval every single time it connects to the damn network, while you’re using that application. With Google Maps, this makes it damn near unusable.

But those clever people over at howardforums.com figured out a way to bypass this. So with the cable and a piece of software called BitPim, I was able to modify the phone to stop asking me those stupid questions. Suddenly Google Maps Mobile and GMail Mobile are the greatest things ever. 🙂

St. Pats pics up soon. 🙂

Weekend madness

Unfortunately, I’ve been entirely too busy this last week to say much, so here’s the brief rundown.

Last weekend was a massive blowout on all fronts. Friday night, I was at Sleep Out’s for the last Friday ever. What a blast. I went in early, hung out to hear the band’s first set, and then headed over to Mikey’s for the housewarming. Mikey’s place is cool. I like it. Mikey got a little drunk, so I left and headed back to Sleep Out’s at about 11 for the evenings end. 4 hours later, I passed out. 🙂

Saturday, I tried very hard to make it to Sleep Out’s for the last day, and I was there that morning, but I had this weird delayed migraine hangover thing going on. It kicked in around 2 and I was unable to move very rapidly until about 10. So my Saturday was spent in pain, with iced tea.

Sunday was a lot more fun. We had brunch at the Majestic, which I like for a couple of different reasons:
a) They always have good food at good prices, and,
b) It’s literally right downstairs from me, so it’s not like I have to walk anywhere for it.
They showed off their new brunch menu, which was fantastic. I had a andouille sausage and cheese frittata that was just incredible. I highly recommend it. Paul had good things to say about his smoked salmon hash browns, so I’ll try those this weekend.

Sunday afternoon was spent back at (now closed) Sleep Out’s, helping Mikey remove some TV’s and such. Kinda sad to see it all torn apart like that. I know I’ve only been going there for the last year or so, but still… That place had character.

Sunday evening I went over to Chad’s place for his and Rebecca’s Oscar party. It was a lot of fun and I drank a lot of Boulevard Wheat and had a really good time. I also got the worst score of anybody else in the Oscar pool (a whopping 2 correct answers! woot!), so that was good. 🙂

The rest of the week I worked. A lot. It’s been a vicious week. I put in almost 60 hours.

This weekend is shaping up to be interesting though. Apparently , we’re having a multi-brunch. There’s the brunch at Texas de Brazil on Saturday, followed up by the Majestic on Sunday. And Saturday night, the trivia team is spending the winnings at the Flying Saucer, so it should be entertaining to see how much beer we can go through.

On the whole, all this drinking is good training for St. Pats, which I’ll be going to in T-minus 277 hours, 23 minutes. So that’s nice.

Brewing: Father’s Day Cream Ale

I bottled my latest brew the other day, a Cream Ale. Basically it’s a Canadian Draft mix with some Northern Brewer Hops. I also have a Vienna Lager maturing and which I plan to drink next weekend.

The only reason I’m posting about it is that after I was done bottling, I tried some of the yeasty flat leftovers at the bottom of the keg. By god, that stuff was delicious. It’s going to be a quality beer. I just hope I didn’t screw up the carbonation like I think I did. I keep waiting to hear a loud popping sound from one of the bottles exploding. Fortunately, I use a cooler for the storage, so it won’t hurt anything if it does blow.

My next brew is going to be a Dopplebock. I’ve already got the ingredients, I just need to make bottle room. It looks to be a hell of a beverage, with three different kinds of malt extracts, a whole ounce of hops (instead of 1/4 ounce as per usual), and my first attempt at using liquid yeast. It also takes 6 months to bottle condition, so I’ll have it around October or November. But it’ll be about 9.2% ABV, so at least it’ll have a good kick to it.

Some inventions are just pure genius…

Check this one out: The Lazydrinker

It’s a modified portable cooler that is designed to hold, cool, and mix up to 16 bottles of beverages. Basically it pressurizes the bottles and uses that to pump the liqour out, which then goes into your drink. It therefore produces whatever drink you want on command. The mixer device is reprogrammable via a PC to put in your favorite mixed drinks, and the thing uses a CO2 tank to pump out the sweet, sweet candy.

Some pictures:

At $750, it’s a bit too expensive for my tastes. However, they offer a $550 DIY kit, which seems like it would be an excellent addition to a home bar.