Two weekends ago, I found myself stuck in St. Paul, Minnesota for a wedding my wife was in. And no, she didn't wise-up and marry someone else; she was doing a reading in her godson's wedding.
So there I was, in St. Paul with not much to do. A couple of days before, and before I was in town, Mrs.
TEH attended the rehearsal dinner which was held at a local pub and microbrewery called
Great Waters Brewing Company.
She had a great time and told me about the place. Well, it turned out the
GWBC was just two blocks from our hotel. So about noon, before the evening wedding, we decided to go over to
GWBC, have some lunch, and sample the local brews.
Like many microbreweries,
GWBC offers a beer sampler. I ordered one and this is what I got.
They had nine brews on tap that day and I soon had four ounces of each. They brew up to twelve varieties (I think) but only nine were available that day. Each beer sat on a numbered circle on the serving mat and I was provided a
descriptive list of what each beer was by number.
I soon was able to pick a few favorites including the
Cywren Saison which is described as:
A Belgian farmhouse style ale. Mediterranean spice and a pleasant pungent aroma present in this saison ale. We used dandelion honey, coriander, and sweet orange peel for a unique flavor and aroma. Very complex, dry and refreshing. Don't let its drinkability fool you, though. At 6.8 ABV This beer can sneak up on you.
Tastes great
and a great buzz.
Perhaps the best though was the Mr. Smooth Dark Mild. Yum.
Made in the style of century old dark mild’s, with wheat, oats, and barley. Gently hopped with East Kent Goldings. Sturdy blue collar session beer for refreshment after a hard day in the mill.
Man, that stuff was good.
GWBC doesn't sell bottled beer but you can take home "
growlers" of their tap beer. Basically, they fill half-gallon jugs from the tap and seal it up. You have to drink your growler beer soon because it won't keep more than a week. The
GWBC growlers look like this (when placed on my back deck):
Unfortunately, because the Mr. Smooth Dark Mild is kept at a higher temperature, you can't get it to go, I was told, because it won't keep at all. Too bad. But I did manage to get out of there with a couple of growlers of the
Cywren Saison along with two other varieties, all of which have been consumed by now. Sorry.
Have a great weekend! And you've now been told what you need to do if you have a few minutes to spare in St. Paul, MN.
Yeah, back in the (2005, 2006) day I blogged extensively about the Southern Illinois Deer Menace (see here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here and here). I blogged so much about it, I was paid a visit one night. Anyway, this bit of national coverage might expose the deer insurgency problem as it existed and take some of the heat off me.
So where did the oft-used “9 ro 5” term come from. I didn’t do any extensive research on the subject online, but a cursory look at Google results doesn’t offer much by they way of an explanation, just lots of references to 9 to 5 jobs. Wikipedia does have 
And while the arguments on the other side are also compelling (worker displacement, no cost savings, some disruption at IDOT), what is starting to bother me is that the Governor is now, in effect, pitting one part of the state against another. A bus (or busses) from Harrisburg are bringing people up here tomorrow to show support for the move at a hearing on the proposed move. Of course, Springfieldians will also be there to root for our community. Great. Maybe we can have a mock Civil War battle reenactment to decide the winner.
Oh, and there’s a video on grill safety on the right side of the front page. No mention of how close you can get your mullet to the grill.
Well, it could turn out to be the first all-white NFL team in, what, forever.
As with everything in emails, it’s hard to read into the writer’s intention since you can’t see their facial expressions and body language, and you can’t hear inflections in their voice. Therefore, it becomes necessary to fill in those “meaning” blanks. Am I wrong? Is “take care” not necessarily just a polite way of telling the person you are emailing that you expect to be done with them for a while?
So if her creative output has diminished, her true skills remain world-class. Remember when she kissed Britney at the MTV Video Music Awards? The calculated “shocker” that left you both slightly embarrassed and truly impressed? All you could do was sit back and mutter, “Well played, Madonna. Well played.” Now, in A-Rod, she’s claimed another victim with her hyperbaric cougar charms. She’s proved not to be a publicity whore so much as publicity’s madam. And there’s always another ingenue to tongue, another orphan to champion, another athlete to bed. Flash forward a thousand years, and there Madonna will be, among the rubble, immortal, and shtupping Wall-E. And whatever’s left of humanity will no doubt still be watching and thinking, Well played, Madonna. Again.
Then there are motorcycles. I have nothing against them or those who ride them but I’ve personally seen enough people badly injured riding them, I stay away. So what happens when two of my highway phobias come together literally? 
However, one Illinois city has caught on and 
I’m not talking legal issues here, just general principle. I agree that posing for Playboy should not be a firing offense, but might not the Olive Garden tune change if those same women employees appeared (clothed!) in a Denny’s ad? You know, "Hi, we work at Olive Garden but we much prefer to eat at Denny's!" And following that logic, what if I work for Penthouse and pose for Playboy?
And when they move the Cardinals to Brussels, don’t say you weren’t warned about the Belgian menace. 6/11 changed everything.
Growing up during the 1960s, my father would put up the canvas awnings in the spring and take them back down in the fall. It was desirable to take them down to allow the sun to help heat the house during the cold months, while keeping the awnings in storage and out of the weather at the to extend their life. Some houses in our neighborhood had permanent aluminum awnings that stayed up year-round.
