SA trip post #5 (Monday)

Last SA trip post...

We ate lunch at the only no meat restaurant in SA- Green. I had a (fake) Buffalo chicken sandwich with quinoa tabouli and Kaley had nachos (and they really pushed the jalapeños on her. Three people asked her if she wanted them and the third person just brought them anyway). Great food and cool atmosphere, all the tables had a theme. I think ours was weddings, or possibly Elvis. I think there was also an airforce one and an adopted children one. And outside they were growing stuff- herbs and lettuce and cabbage (and probably way more once it gets warmer)

Then we saw the Alamo. Free but super long around the block lines so we didn't go inside.

Then a quick trip to one of the three Missions (original Spanish missions from the 1?00's).

Then we drove to Austin to look at the capital.



And finally a quick look around UT because I wanted to see campus and their music building, and because they have tons of turtles.

And then home. Yeah. Successful fun trip. Go check out San Antonio sometime. Questions? Comments?

SA trip post #4 (Sunday)

On Sunday we walked a few blocks to the art museum (SAMA) It, like the rest of our trip was suprisingly nice. They had a buttload of stuff, more than you could see in a whole weekend, let alone a single afternoon. Then we walked down the river a bit to see the giant fish that they put up over the river under a highway overpass (just a block or two from the museum- "The Riverwalk" is the touristy area and downtown, but the river has sidewalks all along it through town).

Then we ate dinner at the Freetail Brewpub. I got my growler (thanks Fitty) filled with Morning Wit, a sour Belgian wheat, and we drank black saison

and a dry hopped IPA (super delicious and hoppy).

Sunday night was tamer. We walked around Alamo plaza and around the Riverwalk and ate some ice cream sandwiches.

SA trip post #3 (Saturday)

So seeing as how I'm a little behind on posts (we went to SA two weeks ago now) I'm going to write up the rest of the trip in a bit of a wildfire fashion.

Saturday we went down to the Riverwalk all day. There were lots of St. Patrick's Day stuff going on including the dying of the river

(okay so maybe it's stolen from Chitown, but it's pretty freakin' cool to see)
Also random Irish dancers with uber-weird curly blonde wigs

And a string band.

We had missed the street parade in the morning but did get to see the boat parade and made a lot of fun of the drunk people on the Guinness float. Mostly about how they all might try to go swimming in the river, or drink the river because they thought it was green beer.

We did drink a green beer. I was hoping if I closed my eyes it would taste like mint or a jolly rancher, but this was sadly not the case. At the skeezy bar (a delightfully Jing friendly place I'm sure) there were a group of four old women who were drinking green beer and having a blast- out of place, but interesting.

Then we walked to a random square with a fountain outside this big church


And got amazingly good pizza:

Pizza=awesome. The crusty was crispy but not too thin and all the toppings were fresh and it wasn't greasy. Also the guy was cooking in front of us and was nice and talkative. We ate the whole thing.

Then we walked back to the downtown area and spent some time hanging out at the Luminaria festival, which was conveniently also on the same weekend.

We watched a glass blower and some fire poi guys, and performing arts high school ballet, and some modern Hispanic art. The lowlight of the night was this act:

Random bad operatic sopranos singing pop covers really loudly and with waaaay too much vibrato, to the point that I thought it was fake ghost noises before we actually saw them.

The rest of the night involved a lengthy search for a classy bar, sitting at a bar that turned out not to be very classy, and ending up drinking at a hotel bar with a happy talkative bartender and the wife of one of the directors of the festival. This leads to the drink of the month: Kaluha and bourbon- sounds gross but is delicious.

SA trip post #2 (Friday night)

So after Real Ale drove down to San Antonio. Quickly checked into the hotel and headed downtown for dinner. We found a nice Tex-Mex restaurant on the Riverwalk that we thought was going to be really expensive but turned out to not be- so there we went, and got to sit on the patio overlooking the river on a gorgeous night. I had oyster tacos with a nice sauce and pineapple. Their pinto beans were pretty good too (sorry no pics). Then we headed down to the river bank proper and walked around for a while- ate some ice cream, looked in lots of shops, and super expensive hotels, saw this tree.

I expected the RW to be fairly small and cheesy and touristy. And it was pretty touristy, but there were tons of people there, and a lot of them just seemed to be locals hanging out. I got a good vibe from the city there.


We spent the rest of the night at this jazz bar. It was an interesting place- pretty divey, but the crowd was upscale, as were the drinks. The house band played mostly Dixieland which was nice and upbeat. They were all older gentlemen (and played everything from memory which I found amazing) except the bassist, and the drummer who was REALLY high. At times I thought he was going to fall asleep at the set. All in all a great day.

SA trip post #1 (Real Ale)

Kaley and I took a long weekend trip to San Antonio over the start of our spring break. It was a lot of fun- surprisingly SA is a pretty cool city. Ever since I've been in Dallas, everyone has plugged how great Austin is, but nobody really talks about SA. I'll put up a couple more posts about our trip over the following days, but I'll start with our first stop (not counting a crummy gas station in Waco) the Real Ale Brewery.

Real Ale is in Blanco, Texas, in the hill country. It was nice to drive through and see cherry blossoms and lavender (they grow most of the country's lavender in this area). The brewery is pretty standard looking from the outside: big ass malt silo; metal siding; etc. Their tours/tasting on Friday is free which is awesome. On tap they had their standard pale, their blonde (tastes like Bud- read "AK would like this"), their ESB (English Special Bitter- a fairly malty and inoffensive British ale. Read "AK should try this instead"), and Phoenix (the doubled or Imperial version of the ESB). Now on top of these they had the special, unreleased, never been bottled, barrel-aged Real Heavy (wee heavy, a strong scottish style), and barrel-aged Sisyphus (barleywine). It was awesome to get a chance to sample these two.

Points of note on the tour:
-As their name indicates, they heavily promote "real" or cask ale. This is a way of serving beer in a keg which is naturally carbonated from the yeast. It comes out a little warmer (cellar temp) and with more "creamy" carbonation. They have something like 150 casks at Real Ale. (Ithaca Beer also does some of this- memories of Pixel lounge).
-Their fermenters are glycol chilled, not water.
-Their bottling line is way more mechanized than at Ithaca Beer. They have a machines to fold the sixer boxes, fold the case boxes, put the sixer boxes in the case boxes, label the boxes, and put the bottles into the boxes (along with all the actual bottling of the liquids). The most annoying and labor intensive thing is making the mixed pack which they have to do by hand.
-They have a machine to clean kegs (thus rendering Fitty useless).
-Like Franconia, and a lot of craft breweries, they are rapidly expanding. They just put in a new grain silo which is three times the size of their old one.
-They're currently expanding their barrel program to include more wine barrels and some bourbon barrels (Heaven Hill I think he said?), with the ones they have, seen below. This should make for some incredible beer.



The beer:
I'll limit my thoughts to the two barrel-aged offerings.

Barrel-Aged Sisyphus



I had this one second, but I'm putting it first here because it was the lesser of the two. Don't get me wrong, it was great, and better than normal Sisyphus (which I enjoy anyway), but the barrel didn't come out as much in the taste of the beer. The smell had a nice grapiness to it. There was also a sort of smooth vanilla and oak and silky maltiness. The taste was very much like a normal Sisyphus- sweetly malty, tropical fruit hops, probably more fruitiness than normal. Overall a very delicious beer.

Barrel-Aged Real Heavy

Now this stuff was REALLY delicious. It was one of those beers that I didn't want to drink because then there wouldn't be any left to smell, and it was a real treat to smell. There was amazing complexity with the interplay of sweet malts and fruit and woodiness. Oh and I forgot to mention that this was a slightly sour beer. The barrel had clearly inoculated it with some special bugs. The smell came off with a ton of light vinegar, like white balsamic, or cider vinegar. This was present in the taste too and combined with the maltiness of the base beer was just tasty. Hats off to Real Ale for a great barrel-aged beer (or two) and a great free tour.

Mean Green

Normally I don't pay attention to, watch or in any way follow college basketball with the exception of checking up on Cornell from time to time (mostly via AK) but UNT made it into the dance Sunday night by winning the Sun Belt tourney. So I'll have to watch at least two games. Anyone interested in a friendly wager that the Mean Green outlast the Big Red (sounds like a reality show about interior decorating)?

Random thought of the Day

We were talking about Porgy and Bess in my research class today and I was randomly reminded of Ma Radebe. Anybody else have her back in the day? Remember that crazy homemade video she made w/ things being thrown at her shadow? That shit was crazy and probably was much more interesting than we gave it credit for as 7th graders.

Car issues

I took my car in for an oil change today. I normally try to go a certain Midas near my house, but they're closed on the weekends and I haven't had a chance to be there during the week so I took my chances on a different place in Denton. So here's where the story starts- they drive it in, and mess with it for a bit while I'm reading (Rolling Stone- surprising selection for an auto place) the guy comes in and says he wants to show me some stuff...great, you know how often that's good news. He starts in about how the radiator is dirty and it needs a coolant flush and this and that...

Here's the thing. I don't know shit about the insides of cars. He could've told me the inner secondary cossex was fragumilated and I would've nodded just the same. Like he took off this cap and goes, "see how dirty this is" and I'm saying to myself "No shit it's dirty, this whole engine is black and greasy and the car's pushing on 200k, of course it's dirty! Why does this particular smudge of dirt matter?" And this is kinda frustrating. I always feel roped into things when I get my car maintained because I don't know what's actually important or not and what's normal or not.

And it's really hard to know to trust some random guys opinion, and think that he's not just screwing you over. Honestly the reason I like the Midas is because the first time I took my car in they DIDN'T try to sell me something else. He in fact mentioned how good shape the car was in considering the age and mileage.

The end of the story is that I did end up paying for an engine flush (whatever the hell that is...if they even did anything) and the coolant does look kinda dirty, but I'm gonna take it into Midas to see about that, since I trust them not to screw me over.

The moral is that I'm going to try to learn the basic workings of cars, maybe this summer, so at least I don't always feel like I'm being taken for a ride (pun intended) whenever they say something's wrong.

Sorry for the long rant of a post, just annoyed at the whole experience and spending way more money than I expected to.

WTF?

Found on the keyboard of the UNT library computer I'm currently using:

"WARNING: Some experts believe that use of any keyboard may cause serious injury. Consult statement on back of this keyboard"

Cell messages

I had to mass erase all the old texts on my phone the other day because it was getting too slow to function, but I made sure to read through the ones I had purposely saved before doing so. Here are some gems:

"When were you being attacked by a winged beast?"

"NYC calls in national guard to contain mobs of CP fans"

"I am now owner of Ithaca Beer"

"Fuck! I just took Nyquil"

"Start a riot!"

"You're just like Jim...just like your personality"

"Mark, give me your pants"

Pete Seeger quotes

I got a couple Pete Seeger cds from the library last week. Some quotes from the liner notes that I found compelling.

"Books, TV, tapes, pictures- All our modern aids to communication are great, but the danger is that they become a substitute for the communication which people used to carry on with each other"

"I'd be proudest if my records were thought of as 'demos'-demonstration records, just to listen to and learn the song"

"The best thing would be for people to sing along with the record. Or else to learn the songs off the record, and sing 'em yourself; THEN GIVE THE RECORD AWAY [caps added]"

"The musicality of a nation should be judged not by the presence of a few highly expert musicians, but rather by the ability of the average rank and file man or woman to sing, or dance, or play some instrument"

Amazing that a person who's source of revenue is record sales (and some concert money I'm sure) advocates the free exchange of his own information.

Mavs update3

I had the pleasure of going to the Mavs game on Sunday night against the Hornets. We got very cheap tickets up in the rafters, but still enjoyable and you could still see the action fine. As Chad said, it was as much as going to see a movie and way more fun. Some notes:

-Haywood is sooo much better than Damp, and way more fun to watch. Dude can actually catch a pass.

-The team surprisingly looked its best when they ran the floor. Obviously this worked best when Jet was playing, but I think that the best way to integrate Butler and Haywood, and to fully utilize the Karate Kidd's skill set, is to continue a fast pace. They don't need to be playing like a D'Antoni team or recklessly putting up shots, but push the ball down and see what you can get, and if there isn't an easy basket then just ease into a half court set and let the German go to work.

-Darren Collison is crazy good. Hornets could trade CP3 for some more fire power in the middle and be totally fine.

-Marcus Thorton is also crazy good. See previous point.

-The lead isn't secure even when it's 25 points and you've been putting on a clinic for an entire half.

-If the Mavericks can shore up their defense against guards, they could go all the way. So far at an 8 game streak and in 2nd place in the West they're doing pretty damn well

Cincinnati Beer Scene

Kaley and I went through Cincinnati twice this summer, and then one more short trip on the way home from Ohio between Christmas and NYE, and we were pleasantly surprised by how nice a place it is. Really great areas right next to the Ohio river with the stadiums and a giant park on the riverbank. And then just up the hill a pretty business district with a lot of old buildings and history.

Then today I read about the brewery history of the city, including extensive caves and tunnels for lagering, on a beer blog I frequent. Wish I could be there this weekend for the Bockfest.