tubbylobster

bears!

last week was barrel-aged week at town hall, and being the poor and/or lazy grad student that i am, took full advantage of that fact this weekend. on friday i ditched ‘work’ early to watch the us hockey game and try the port barrel-aged baltic porter (see above), which was as good as i remember it being, although i’m not sure how much the port flavor really added to it. i tried the barleywine next (which had been aged for a year in a jim beam barrel), and it blew my mind. it was a tad over-sweet maybe, even for a barleywine, but the complexity added by the aging process was incredible. i’ll really fail to do it justice by trying to describe it, but it was everything from butter and honey to the wood-and-bourbon flavors of the cask. easily one of the best beers i’ve ever tasted.

on saturday brian and i went back to sample the imperial stout, which had been aged for 8 months in a bourbon barrel. this was also an incredible beer, especially once it warmed up a bit. easily one of the tastiest stouts i’ve ever sampled. we also tried a wine-aged scotch ale (the only one they still had left from the week), but it was a bit underwhelming after the glorious stout, which was admittedly a tough act to follow. overall it was a good weekend for beer, albeit an expensive one — guess i need to get a real job to support my habits.

This befalleth when thou firk’st a stranger ‘twixt the buttocks

So the weekend got off to a bit of a rough start when I awoke Saturday morning to find that Brian’s car had been broken into with an ice chipper. Upon closer inspection I noticed they had not touched any of his CD’s or his (rather nice) soccer shoes, and was rather puzzled, thinking it a crime of spite. Of course it turned out that Brian had left his backpack in the front seat, and they had stolen it in hopes that it contained a laptop or ipod. However, they were ultimately foiled in the end since all it had was a textbook and an old calculator. After patching up his window with some garbage bags and ducttape (it was raining after all — just the usual January weather in MN), we fruitlessly searched the nearest dumpsters and alleys. At this point my contempt for Saint Paul, which had previously seemed so chill, was starting to grow. I would have expected a car break-in in any of my old ‘hoods in Mpls, but in this part of Saint Paul? Really?

A few hours later, after using my anger to take out the remaining ice on the sidewalk, Brian got a call from our parents that someone had found the bag and gotten in touch with them via an old fishing license Brian had left in one of the pockets. Turned out that nothing but the TI-83 had been taken from the bag, and even that had been discarded in the snow a few feet away. It still works. To top things off, the gentleman who found it was apparently from Des Moines originally, so it ended up being a fellow Iowan who bailed Brian out. Iowa ftw.

In the end I suppose I’ll give Saint Paul a pass on this one, even if its flawless reputation has been sullied. After all, it just seemed like an intersection of too many conveniences. If our neighbors had not left a shovel and ice chipper sitting in a snow bank next to the sidewalk (for the last 3 weeks, I might add), and if Brian had not left his bag in the car, and if the cars were on the street rather than in our relatively secluded driveway, none of this would probably have happened. I’m guessing some drunk students happened to be on their way home from a party or maybe someone was just in a really bad mood. However, the ultimate loser is Brian’s poor car, yet again =(

twenty-ten: year of the lobster?

we’re more than two weeks into 2010, figured the new decade was worth an update. so far not a lot going on, but the semester starts up again tomorrow, and while for the last couple years this hasn’t meant much, i have to TA again this semester. i had planned on being done at the end of last semester, but that plan got derailed when i had to teach. the only thing i got out of that experience was that it confirmed what i always knew to be true: i could never be a professor, and i don’t want to teach. however, what this means is that i need to put in some extra effort if i want to be graduated and unemployed by world cup time…

in other news i also turned as old as steve this week, which means i have just under a year to enjoy what’s left of my 20’s. i’m pretty sure i used to imagine 30 as a somewhat arbitrary gateway into full adulthood: i was supposed to be gainfully employed in my career field, have a wife and kids, a dog, and a house (with a 3-car garage for the boat). well, i have the dog. got some work to do on the rest. but perspective certainly changes with age, and it turns out there’s really nothing terribly special about 30 after all. if by year’s end i can secure a decent job (is abuck inc hiring janitors yet?) in a good location i’d be content for the time-being =)

scallion!

having been thwarted the last 4 or 5 times i’ve tried to eat there, i would have put the chances somewhere around 1 or 2% that it would actually be open, even to the extent of trying to decide what i was going to order at our backup option. perhaps it was steve’s proximity, or maybe just the decade’s last effort to throw us a bone, but the scallion was open for lunch! given that it wasn’t exactly busy (and closes at 2:00), we probably ate the last meal they will serve this decade: a double order of bulgogi and a stone-bowl bibimbop, served with the usual dose of love. made my day.

woo

it’s been a pretty awesome christmas break, i’ve really enjoyed being back in ames and relaxing a bit. i think i’ve managed to hit up most of the ames staples (jessbar, chc (2x), gps&d, sg, and the cafe) and engage in all the usual activities (playing mario + watching foreign-language war epics at sam’s, drinking lots of coffee and generally overeating, and last but not least, hanging out with STEVE). we even had a white christmas and got to see a bit of snow. but it’s definitely time to head back to the great white north tomorrow, especially if i intend to graduate next semester.

one of the big acquisitions this christmas was a new roaster: a nesco ‘professional’ coffee roaster with a catalytic converter for ‘smokeless’ roasting. with the demise of my old roaster just a day before heading back to ames, santa’s timing was excellent; needless to say i’ve been roasting a lot this week, trying to get a feel for the new roaster. it’s definitely going to be harder to get a darker roast, as this one runs at a lower temperature over a longer duration than the old one, but this also provides more room for error and lowers the chance of nuking a roast (always a hazard with the old one). the lower temperature also makes the cracks less explosive and harder to hear, but i’ll get the hang of it. another nice thing is the auger maintains an incredibly even roast, even for unwashed beans or varieties with lots of chaff. so far i’ve been really impressed. gwncc is back in business!