tubbylobster

i’ve finally discovered a place to buy all sorts of...

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:49:12 -0500

i’ve finally discovered a place to buy all sorts of awesome beers: wisconsin. a mere 20-mile drive puts an unbelievable selection at my disposal, including stone, dogfish head, three floyds, and of course new glarus and south shore, among others. oh, and i can purchase on sunday if i like (which i did today after a soccer game just over the river). too bad it took me six years to figure this out…

"summer days of joy watching the jabulani dissertation waits"

Fri, 09 Jul 2010 01:37:00 -0500

“summer days of joy
watching the jabulani
dissertation waits”

- enlai, 2010

scuttle scuttle

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 00:09:00 -0500

the month of june is almost gone, and apparently i haven’t updated since the beginning of may. i guess it’s no secret where the previous two weeks or so have gone, but before that i had quite a bit going on (relatively speaking).

on memorial day weekend i made my first trip to the UP for a weekend of wedding-related festivities, and had a blast. while the wedding was a lot of fun, we made a long weekend out of it and managed to do some hiking and sight-seeing. it’s pretty country up there for sure, and marquette was as pleasant as i hoped it would be; plenty of food options and even a local coffee roastery and a brewery or two. also seemed like all the locals i came across were super fit, especially for the midwest, but i think you’d have to enjoy an active, outdoorsy lifestyle to reside in the UP because there isn’t a whole lot else going on (and apparently they get a lot of snow!)

we did some car-camping on the return trip and i finally got to break in the new tent that i bought last year. naturally it got a trial by fire as the campground was hit with a series of storms pretty much right as we had finished dinner and were settling around the campfire with beers in hand. didn’t have much choice but to retreat to the tents and ride it out. it rained all night, but as you can see i stayed perfectly dry, and got a little reading in. oh, and i saw a bear on the drive home, but sadly, wasn’t quick enough with the camera.

the following weekend was the annual dam-to-dam 20k back in iowa. i think this made the 4th year in a row i’ve run it, and while we’ve had perfect weather every year, this was the first time i’ve experienced rain. i love running in the rain, but it apparently wasn’t enough to push me past last year’s personal best, not that i’m disappointed. i finished just inside the top 170 overall (out of almost 7000), with a ~1:26:00, good for a 6:55 mile pace. not too shabby.

from that point forward it’s been a bit of a blur, involving a lot of world cup - watching and feeble attempts to write proposals and thesis chapters. and while it was a tad painful to watch the US crumble in that last game, i could take comfort in the fact that they made it out of group play, while italy’s lawn-diving team went home early. now i can watch the rest as an unencumbered fan of the game, who is, at least for now, on a more normal sleeping schedule than before =)

beerweek

Fri, 07 May 2010 01:19:03 -0500

maybe it was just a coincidence that carlos miller was born this week, but i’ve been doing more than my casual beer-drinking this week. it began with a beer-tasting on tuesday (the first one i’ve ever been to, i think); i’ve also got an elusive surly brewery tour lined up for tomorrow, to be followed by a large graduation celebration (not mine, of course) on saturday. but i thought i should at least write down the beers i sampled on tuesday along with anything i can remember about them, lest i forget. without further ado:

brau brothers

rainwater vsod (imp stout)
elisha’s olde ale

boulevard

imperial pils
dark truth stout

great lakes brew co:

ed fitzgerald porter (?)
eliot ness lager

pauwel

kwak (strong pale ale)

urthel

samaranth (quad)

goose island

sofie (saison)

grand teton

bitch creek (esb)

lagunitas

WTF (strong ale)

southern tier

422 ale (pale wheat)
phin and matts (apa)
unearthly (imp ipa)

odell

90 shilling (amber)
IPA

sam adams

old ben ale (old ale)
barleywine

tyranena

chipotle smoked imp porter

victory

yakima (strong ale)

there were also a couple others in there i know i’m forgetting. however, seeing it all laid out like this makes it readily apparent why the bike ride home was such a wobbly adventure =)

i thought that perhaps i would regret not writing down my thoughts as i consumed the beers, but then i realized that i lack the connoisseur vocabulary necessary to really differentiate between the various brews. it’s pretty obvious i gravitate towards certain types, so this becomes more important. instead, i’ve just tried to remember the ones that stood out (or didn’t).

in general i avoided brewers that i’d not been impressed by before, or on the opposite side of the spectrum, couldn’t offer anything i hadn’t enjoyed already (bells, lagunitas, and victory fell into this category). southern tier was probably the biggest clunker, though their imperial ipa is still one of my favorite beers, period. i think the biggest surprises were the brau brothers and great lakes offerings; i’d never had great lakes before and was pleasantly surprised. brau has some really tasty seasonals to complement their rather average normal brews, but these specialty beers were pretty top notch (and packed a punch). might have to grab a few of these before they’re gone.

i had also shunned the sam adams table (even though it’s one of my favorite cheap beers) until i noticed a couple bottles with hand-written labels. these happened to be the barleywine and the old ben, which were both excellent. naturally i had to sample the old ben (an old ale, of course) a couple times. very slowly.

=)

Tue, 04 May 2010 23:36:06 -0500

congrats erin and samm! happy birth-day charles miller! <3 <3 <3

it was a beautiful weekend, and i celebrated on saturday in fine...

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 16:55:53 -0500

it was a beautiful weekend, and i celebrated on saturday in fine mpls fashion with some friends (new + old) by doing a 50-miler — the first real ride of the year. we started in seward and meandered through theo wirth, headed out around minnetonka and stopped in excelsior for beers (taking a drink for every ducati or lexus suv that drove by), then went home via hopkins and the greenway. the evening was topped off with a delicious bbq, which was also done in typical mpls fashion: kramarczuk’s sausage, an attempt at doc wong chicken, a monster pork loin, two kinds of homemade potato salad, cowboy caviar, and plenty of beer. between the biking, beer, and vast quantities of food, i can’t say i’ve been that tired in a long time.

oscar says: ‘this weather is AWESOME. thanks...

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 23:46:00 -0500

oscar says: ‘this weather is AWESOME. thanks sam.’

high of 76 tomorrow — perfect for our first outdoor pick-up soccer game, but perfectly abnormal for end-of-march mpls. and this on the heels of our first snowless march since the 1870’s (you know, over 130 years ago). just waiting for the catch… although i suppose i can thank the east coast for enduring yet another ‘worst in over 100 years,’ for what seems like the umpteenth time since december. but don’t worry, nothing’s f*cked =|

This is what your eye looks like a day after a soccer ball...

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:23:45 -0500

This is what your eye looks like a day after a soccer ball connects with your eye socket. A+.

Photo

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:05:39 -0600

bears!

Sun, 28 Feb 2010 22:05:15 -0600

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.

saaaam wooong this is good music!

Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:32:31 -0600

saaaam wooong this is good music!

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

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:37:04 -0600

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 =(

the victim: brian’s car.

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:33:00 -0600

the victim: brian’s car.

the weapon of choice: our neighbor’s ice chipper.

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 23:32:00 -0600

the weapon of choice: our neighbor’s ice chipper.

twenty-ten: year of the lobster?

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 13:44:00 -0600

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!

Thu, 31 Dec 2009 14:21:20 -0600

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

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 19:22:00 -0600

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!

Photo

Wed, 30 Dec 2009 18:32:04 -0600

smbw update

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:16:11 -0600

janke bros: world 7-1, 100% stars + cannons. performance really suffers after about 1am.

‘working’ at town hall this afternoon. baltic porter...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 15:33:09 -0600

‘working’ at town hall this afternoon. baltic porter a+, mn harvest (wild rice and maple syrup) strangely awesome.