An Armload of Shiny Junk

So I've been thinking a lot about where I want to live.

There are several reasons I like being in Houston: great friends, the brewery, CCSD, a good job market, good cost of living, pleasant weather, decent social scene, the independent Texas mentality.

I'm torn between other regions, though. I like the artsy-ness of Austin. My family (and some other really good firends) are in Oklahoma. I'd like the big city life, a la Manhattan.

But I don't see myself leaving for a while.

I've been thinking that, if I'm staying, what I'm going to do with my living arrangement. I like the house I'm in now but it doesn't drive me wild. It's been an excellent investment opportunity--I could resell it for almost twice what I paid for it. But I don't really want to sell. I like the area--a dead-end street that's far enough from traffic to be quiet, but close enough to major roads that I can be downtown in 20 minutes, or in the Gulf in 45.

So I'm looking at that it would cost to build on my empty lot next door. You know, put a house over there and rent out the one I'm in now. And if this rent house is generating revenue then I could probably afford to do it without too much impact on my current, balls-to-the wall bachelor lifestyle.

There's no garage on this plan, which is good, 'cause I'd want a detached garage anyway. And I like this plan because it's a fairly open one--the kitchen and family room are one space, and the family, dining, and foyer are another. Many of the rooms are oddly-shaped; square rooms are boring. (The fireplaces would likely go, though. Who in Houston needs even ONE fireplace?)

The garage would be custom-built. Wouldn't it be cool to have a detached garage with brewing space? It could even have a floor drain. And fire truck parking. And room upstairs for a party room, or a garage apartment for family, or office space to rent. Or what about a flat rooftop to sit and enjoy the weather.

Now, given the choice, my next house will have a pool. With a beach entry. Way cool. I like natural shapes over geometric ones, and I'd much prefer a saltwater system over a chlorinated one. Diving board? Meh. Slide? Maybe. Hot tub? Should it go there or on the roof of the garage?

Oh, well, it's just a dream. But it's my dream.

Posted by Joel at 03:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Went to my first-ever Rennaissance Festival with the gang.

Our first stop was at Ye Olde Black Plague Shoppe. We then went on to hear the dwarf choir sing. Next stop: a couple of potions (some good, some evil) and a quick joust against the Fiar Prince of Glondendale. Then a chat with a talking horse.**

I likes me some chicken leg! The food was awesome. Well, all I had was two turkey legs, but they were both really good.

Matt ponders another beer while the rest of us normal folk smile for the picture.

-----
** none of that actually happened

Posted by Joel at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Before I start writing about this year's Oktoberfest, I just have to say: should I rename this blog 'shiny beer'?

Anyway, the beer brewing / social group / brotherhood / group of f*ups to which I belong had our yearly Oktoberfest event this last weekend. It's really a food and beer party disguised as a public education event on beer brewing. Each member brings two batches (two five-gallon 'slim kegs') of homebrewed beer. We collect donations for the food and live bands, and the public gets to ask questions, sample the beer, eat the food, and listen to live music.

Since I typically have available garage space and a pretty nifty brewing rig, several of the guys left their beer at my place. I packed it all up in the truck and made my way to the event.

You can see nine kegs in the picture above, for a grand total of 45 gallons of beer. That I brought.

I put numbers on all my kegs so I can track what's in each one. (You can see where I made notes on my arm.)

Also, I like to rock.

Catfish, in the middle, is our president. Lando, at left, likes to do his Gene Simmons impression. I am showing how much I like his impression.

None of us won Best of Show, though. It was Chappy's Rye Ale, which is a killer. It's easily comparable to anything you can buy on the market and, were I ever to consider opening my own brewery, I'd have him guest brew that one, for sure.

Several of the guys spent the day slaving over a hot grill (Beaux always seems to get stuck with the task but damned if I never hear him complain) and the music was awesome. Near the end of the evening someone passed around chocolate cupcakes. As you can tell from my expression, they were divine!

At the end of the day, as the sun set, we packed it all up (more than one keg was empty, which made it a little easier) and headed home.

Next year I'm giving Chappy a run for his money.

Posted by Joel at 06:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

While on a trip down to hang out, Biff and I opened the last remaining bottle of the first beer I / we ever brewed.

It was a Mexican Lager recipe. Regarding lagers, Wikipedia says, 'The word comes from German and means "to store". Traditionally, the beer is stored for several weeks or longer before being served.'

We boiled it from extract. We sanitized with bleach. We fermented it in a white plastic bucket. We siphoned by mouth. We told it a bedtime story when we added the dry yeast. We certinly didn't lager it.

Several people asked me if it was bad. I just repliled with, "After ten years it tasted about like it did after one month."

Which didn't answer their question.

Posted by Joel at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I realized after I landed in Denver that I first attended the Great American Beer Festival ten years ago. What an observation that was. SPRINT! Chick-a-pow-pow! Ninja fighting in the street! Dave hanging perpendicular from street lamps! Photo after photo with serving girls!

This year wasn't that much different.

After guilting my boss and sales guy into letting me off the hook last week, I arrived in Denver. The 'fest was scheduled for Oct 11-13: one session each Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday afternoon, and Saturday night. In order of preference, though, the Saturday afternoon session is the connoisseur's tasting so it's the least crowded and that's when they award medals. (St. Arnold took a Gold for the Kölsch!) Thursday is second best because it tends to be less crowded, even though they sold out this year. Friday and Saturday pretty much suck due to the high ratio of frat kids to normal folk.

I stayed with Jim, Diane, and Erica on Sunday. They are the coolest people. Not only did Jim drive up from Littleton (aka, "BFE") to pick me up at the airport, but he served beer and homemade chili to boot.

Most of the time I just hung out with Biscuit. We ate at The Egg and I. We went to the 75-cent movies and saw Transformers (again). And, of course, we toured lots of breweries, including:

Boulder Brewing
Awesome food; I had the chicken wrap. Boulder was the first microbrewery in the area, founded by a group of physics nerds who liked good beer. Boulder's tours involve a brief walk-around then a dozen or so half-full pitchers of beer split among the half-dozen or so attendees.

Avery Brewing
Probably my favorite of the breweries we visited, the Oak Aged Reverend was one of the best beers I've ever tasted. This beer is the reason why I will be investing in an oak cask. Plus, the guys were extremely laid-back. We just sat around tasting their beer and chatting about brewing.

Bristol Brewing Company
Pretty tasty beer. This is also where I saw the "We Want Beer" photo that will soon be adorning the walls of my humble abode.

Phantom Canyon Brewing
The beer was good but the thing I took from Phantom Canyon is that they served, quite possibly, the best ribeye I've ever eaten.

New Belgium Brewing
Home of Fat Tire, my least favorite of their offerings but good as a "gateway beer" which gets people interested in craft brewing. I love the company. Their brewery strives to be 100% green, it's completely employee owned, and has a very fun corporate culture. And their sour beers are incredible.

O'Dell Brewing Company
These guys were okay but I wasn't impressed. The beer seemed dull to me. Maybe it was because it was the end of the week, maybe my tastebuds were shot due to Cascade-overload. One of the beers--the wheat, I think--even tasted like it was infected.

Ft Collins Brewery
The smallest of the breweries we visited, Ft Collins was also the most comfortable. Perhaps it was the Jason-Turley-look-alike from Arctic Brewing who brought in a growler of his beer (and shared with all four of us in the joint) and took a growler of the Ft Collins stuff; maybe it was the cool bartender who chatted with us about brewing. (I find female brewers attractive for two reasons: they're female and they're brewers.) We even set up a potential beer trade, so we'll see if anything comes of it.

Aside from a plethora of Colorado breweries, Biscuit and I also visited a few tap houses of note.

Falling Rock Tap House
Consistently rated as one of the best tap houses in the United States, the Falling Rock did not fail this time around, either. With hard-to-find guest taps rotating in-and-out, and shoulder-to-shoulder patrons vying for a place to sit upstairs or down (or on the patio), this is a beer nerd's mecca.

Bar V
The thing I like most about Bar V is that it reminded me very much of a martini bar. Dimly lit and changing colors, the high-end liquors were illuminated behind the bar. But the patrons that night weren't drinking martinis at all; nine out of ten people in the place were sipping local brews instead. Only a couple of places in the US can you experience that from a club like this.

On a side note, I recommend trying BD's Mongolian barbecue in downtown Denver. Yummy.

Posted by Joel at 07:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tried to wait for the 32GB model but it just didn't happen. So here goes:

• Good: bright, hi-res color screen
• Bad: no MMS/picture messages--what?!
• Good: Wi-Fi support much faster than EDGE
• Bad: Google maps had no "find business nearby"
• Good: Easy-to-use, effective web browsing!
• Bad: Easy-to-use, effective web browsing with Safari! Ha!
• Good: Almost all the applications I want and need
• Bad: No ssh client! No solitaire! No third-party apps! Yet...
• Good: People want to talk about it
• Bad: Doesn't spontaneously generate beer from the headphone jack

Posted by Joel at 07:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This morning I walked out of the hotel to find something odd with the rental car: the mud flap inside the rear, passenger-side wheel well was hanging down onto the tire. I wondered, "what did I possibly run over to make this happen? I don't remember hitting and road trash."

I figured I couldn't very well leave it like that so I just gave it a hearty tug to pull it loose. It pulled free easily. I was ready to be on my way.

I figured I'd just throw it in the trunk, so I pressed the remote entry key. Nothing happened.

I pressed it again. Nothing still happened.

I walked three spaces down to where my car was actually parked and threw the liner into the open trunk.

Posted by Joel at 03:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I was in Dallas last week at a customer site. It's the first time I really spent any time downtown. Now, Houston and Dallas have a history of rivalry. Case in point: head to Austin and you'll see bumper stickers urging you to "Keep Austin Weird". Drive around Houston and you might catch a "keep Dallas Pretentious" sticker.

You know the best thing about Dallas?
It's 250 miles away.

Anyway, I had a positive experience last week so downtown Dallas and I are back on speaking terms. It actually reminded me just a bit of the time I spent in NYC last fall. (Which was exactly one year ago, by the way.)

Soi stayed at the Fairmont and rented my first in-hotel movie last week: Knocked Up. The reviews I read were positive and I liked the movie a lot. But there was a scene near the end when she and her boyfriend have their baby and it hit me again that I'll never know that feeling.

I told Christy about that and she offered words of encouragement.

I know I'm physically capable of procreating. I just don't think it'll ever happen. Just a simple outcome based on the choices I've made in life.

Life is a bell curve of sorts. When you're young you have all this potential and doors start opening. Then you go to school and more open. Get some experience and even more open. Then, at some point, you reach a plateau and those same doors start to close.

C'est la vie.

Posted by Joel at 10:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I brought out a contractor to price a 20' x 20' deck and replace some of the facing under the eaves of my house. His estimate: just under $10,000. Which averages out, for the deck part of it at least, to be around $20 per square foot.

Apparently, I asked for the deck to be made of solid gold bricks and/or blocks of $100 bills.

That just seems silly. My neighbor built his whole house for $60,000. And a house seems like a lot more work than a deck. LIke more than six times the work. Indeed, this article mentions "the quotes given by installers around the country for the decking boards for a 12 by 20-foot deck ranged from a low of $720 to a high of $1,200, but they most often fell in the $950 to $1,000 range."

Anyway, I might have a lead on somebody else local. I'll let you know how it goes.

Posted by Joel at 12:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I'm a member of the CCSD, a fraternal/brewing club. One of our brothers, Dusty Blackboard, was in a motorcycle accident a couple of months back so we decided to have a silent auction--you know, maybe slide a little spending cash his way.

It worked! We raised a little over $2000 for the old turd.

I donated an electric guitar that was given to me (no skin off my back) and I asked the brewery to donate a two-hour party for up to 100 guests. I also walked away with about $50 of stuff that I bought from other guys, including a small Guinness light. Cool!

Other coolness: the Deadend Cowboys played LIVE, Beaux cooked up some awesome fajitas and 'dogs, and my bar tab came to a whopping $5. Dusty's still in a wheelchair but he dropped by and expressed his gratitude by saying a few words at last night's meeting.

He's our bitch now.

Posted by Joel at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Brad, Troy, Mike, Kelly, and I took a motorcycle ride through Texas hill country to the Twisted Sisters, a set of highways that took us through twisty curves, rolling hills, and hairpin turns. Here's the route we took out of Houston.

We left Friday morning at 7:00am and rode all day, returning to Houston at around 3:00am, stopping for lunch in Boerne at the Dodging Duck brewpub and dinner in Fredericksburg at the Fredericksberg Brewery. (Local breweries-- yay!) All in all, the route was about 735 miles, give or take a few. It was the longest motorcycle road trip Mike had ever taken!

We saw a lot of weird things that day. We were accosted by a 50 year-old woman woman at one of our rest stops who told us if we cut off her head, we'd identify her body as that of a 20 year-old; we saw a giraffe, mountain goats, and a herd of kangaroo at on a Texas hill-country farm; we saw a Dyna keep pace with a Deuce. All amazing things.

Near the end of the day my low-beam stopped working so I rode home with my high-beams. I'm also noticing a bit of wobble in the front-end now. (Not my front-end, the bike's.) So I'll be taking it up to Mancuso soon for an inspection.

On a side note, I used Coppertone Sport SPF 50 sunscreen, which was the stuff Christy used last year in Florida. I wouldn't recommend it on a motorcycle ride, though. It acts like superglue. And while superglue does act as a pretty good sunscreen if you're gluing dirt and road grime to your skin, eventually you'll want to clean it off. And that's easier said than done. (Stick to the Coppertone Sport rub-on stuff.)

I also ended up with a sore shoulder. I think it might be a pinched nerve.

Here's a link to some other bikers, who took more pictures than we did.

Posted by Joel at 11:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There's a store next to my hotel called Condoms to Go.

I thought that was funny until I thought about the alternative: Condoms for Here.

Posted by Joel at 10:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)