nope, not dead

hellllloooooo everybod-eeeee!
(sorta like Christopher Mad Dog Russo on the radio...)

anyways, what the hell have I been doing in neglect of the old blog.

Let's see. Beer Review: Sam Adams 12-pack for Christmas. Let's just say this about the cranberry lambic. I love beer and hate cranberries. My wife loves cranberries and hates beer. We BOTH hated this one. Luckily, their idea of a 12-pack is only two bottles each of 6 different kinds. Unfortunately, what we'll call "plain" Sam Adams shouldn't count as one, but it does. Not that Sam is bad, but if I wanted plain Sam, I coulda bought a 6 or 12 of that by itself. The best in the bunch was "Old Fezziwig Ale", a medium-dark offering.

My family does a Yankee swap every year, and we're required to home-make the gifts. If I'd been smart, I'd have saved a 12-pack of my own award winning beer and just put a bow on it. Instead, I went for a ginger-flavored cheesecake with a crust made from gingerbread cookies. Not too bad, but because I wanted a disposable container for it, I bought a cheap foil pan at the store, and the cheesecake cracked. So I put an "IOU" with the gift of 12 of my NEXT beer. Which I tried to cover up the fact that it doesn't exist yet. Anyway, mom ended up with the cheesecake and served it after dinner Christmas Eve. I have amused my daughter into suggesting we call it a "Red Sox Swap" instead.

Mom gave me a gift card for Dick's Sporting Goods, to get a new backboard and rim for the yard. We were going to have our driveway paved, but didn't have any funds available for the project. So it may wait, unless I want to play on crushed stone. Might not be so bad, especially since when I was 8 I shot at a rim bolted onto an oak tree....no backboard at all. (That was actually rectified only a few weeks later.) Anyway, the lesson here, is that Dick's website address is the FULL www.dickssportinggoods.com, for reasons that may or may not be obvious unless you try to guess, um, something different.

Work is pretty good. My new job has already had 2 Christmas parties (one luncheon, and then drinks after work the next night), and I got a couple of presents from the establishment there. Follow that up with two straight three-day workweeks. Of course, the obvious lack of bonus that comes with switching jobs in December sucks.

My wife's cat pees as I type. At least it sounds like pee. This morning I got to hear the diarrhea squirting out of her ass in the litterbox. Yup, it's pee this time.

The Patriots are 15-0. I fear they shall lose in the playoffs, however. They're definitely not a cold weather offense. Oh, and lest I forget to thank Mr. Brady for the clunker that got me eliminated from my fantasy football playoffs. Never mind finishing 13-3 when nobody else was more than 11-5. I lost the wrong week.

We have an electric pump to drain water that settles on our pool cover through a garden hose. However, it's currently submerged in ice. Oops. We need one of those three-day stretches of temperatures around 50 or something. The cover's starting to get pretty weighed down.

Tomorrow I see the doctor for the results of my MRI. I hope I don't have to become right-handed for a couple of years to let my shoulder heal or whatever....

Beer Review

Here's a good use of the blog....

Roxy Rolles. Made by Magic Hat in Vermont. I normally hate Magic Hat....especially their signature "Number 9" beer. But this one is actually pretty good. Full bodied "foretaste"....oh yeah, a couple of times I've had a 365 beers calendar, and they'd have such flowery descriptions using goofy descriptions like that. So then the hops take over at "midbottle" and I'm left with a slightly bitter aftertaste.

My grade: B

Women and Children First!!!

I could have also called this post, Led Zeppelin III.

Namely, two relatively lousy albums by two really good groups. My point being, a band forms, they've got about 20 songs that they're good at, and they all go on the first two albums. Then it's like, uh oh, we gotta come up with something now from scratch. Obviously both bands recovered just fine -- Zep's 4th and Fair Warning are both awesome.

So that brings me back to this. Most of my snarky comments on the universe in general have been used up. I don't really wanna re-post "cash is like a gift certificate, redeemable ANYWHERE", although it's appropriate at Christmas time, I suppose. And turning this into a diary certainly doesn't appeal to me, either. Like, Oooh, I was invited to play "Talisman" this weekend for the first time. I actually think it's good to use a diary format to launch into decent discussions, but really, the last few weeks -- I got nothin'.

Yeah, my new job starts Monday. Posts will be less frequent -- I'll actually have co-workers to discuss things with -- as the blogosphere tended to be the equivalent of a water cooler at times for me. (Comment on the interesting ones, but get back to work in a couple of minutes.)

Here's a story. One that my daughter was able to re-tell at school in their unit on family traditions/backgrounds, etc. When I was two I was up in Maine, crawling on the kitchen table and noticed a plastic salt shaker. I proceeded to drink the salt straight out of the shaker. Then I threw up all over the place. My mom had to clean it all up. Like she needed another reason to dislike going up to her in-laws' cabin in the middle of nowhere, huh? It's especially enjoyable in that whenever I'm back up there, such as this past summer, the same salt shaker is still in use, I believe.

Anyone ever have almond butter? I bought a jar before realizing it was like $11. Certainly it takes a back seat to peanut butter, but it was still pretty good on Ritz crackers. The company also makes a cashew butter, but I'm not the world's biggest cashew fan.