Hit by a Pitch

Yesterday, Ben was in charge of coming up with something fun for us to do. Does that sound weird, that someone has to be in charge of coming up with something fun for us to do, as if our lives our filled with drudgery and sorrow? They’re not really, but take last weekend for example. One or more of us was constantly busy doing shit like helping a friend move, going for a run, going to the gym, cleaning the house, going grocery shopping, going to the beer store, etc. All of a sudden it’s Sunday night and you’re all, wait what, the weekend is over and we have to go to work tomorrow and where’s the fun?!

So this weekend, there had to be at least one fun thing. Matters were complicated by the fact that it was pretty cold out and we don’t have big wads of cash to spend.

Ben suggested that we walk to the Great Divide Tap Room to have a beer. This sounded good. We packed up a few things for Soren (including markers and paper in response to the “What the hell is Soren going to do at the Great Divide Tap Room?” question). We had a nice, scenic walk past Curtis Park and down Arapahoe and I briefly ooohed at the arepas cart outside the tap room. (I’ve had arepas exactly once in my life, and it was at a restaurant in Chicago [Wicker Park/East Village-ish area?] a friend took me to a long, long time ago. The restaurant [Colombian? I wish I could remember the name.] had no menu and the chef just made whatever he felt like making but he wasn’t snotty about it and totally hooked us up with the most awesome, vegetarian meal, like, ever, in part, I suspect, because my friend, who by the way was smokin’ hot, went there all the time and he was probably secretly in love with her. I wonder whatever happened to her. She was cool. Also here are more commas because this aside didn’t have enough already: ,,,,,,)

Unfortunately, the tap room, which is tiny, was packed and probably not really toddler friendly. By then I was getting that light-headed hungry feeling (and already forgot about arepas) and also our timing was terrible because the Rockies game (which I’d turned off innings ago because they were getting killed) wasn’t over but apparently it was so bad everybody was leaving anyway so it was like, oh crap, everything is going to be packed. We settled on Blake Street Tavern anyway, because it was close, we like it, it’s very kid friendly, and we didn’t think it would be too crowded because who in the hell is really at a Rockies/Pirates game on a crappy day, anyway.

On the way we passed Hi Rise, which wasn’t open, and I reminded Ben that we have to go there for waffles soon. They’re my Twitter pal and vegetarian friendly.

At Blake Street, we settled into a table (it wasn’t crowded) with a colorable place mat and some crayons. Ben and I had a beer (FYI they are phasing out their Flying Dog selection now that Flying Dog is no longer local) and Soren had water. We shared an order of hummus. We also chatted with some peeps who had a 20-month-old daughter and were so cool we’d love to hang out with them sometime but Ben and I are both completely incapable of closing the deal on random new friend pickups (it’s so much more complicated than dating or maybe we’re just not good at it).

The best part of the day was walking home, because Soren acquired a new word. (It’s funny how physical development, which seems to come easier to Soren, has these big milestones, like learning to crawl or learning to walk, and verbal development at first is just a gradual, little stream of new words that eventually, I suppose, becomes a babbling brook or some such if you want a tortured metaphor and then a full-on ocean of talkity talk.) The word was “tree!” and it comes complete with its own exclamation point (!) because it’s so exciting. As we walked up Blake Street, each time we passed a tree, Soren yelled, in the cutest, high-pitched babyvoice you’ve ever heard, “twee!” He also made up his own sign for “twee!” This involves throwing up his arms with the fingers on his right hand all extended and the fingers on his left hand forming an L. Every time we passed a tree: “Twee!” Arms up! Hands in proper formation! (Full disclosure: Sometimes his interpretation of “tree” was overbroad and included utility poles but I’m not gonna hate.) Ben and I said “tree!” along with him until eventually we ran out of trees for a while (but don’t fret, by that time, even though we each had only one beer, we had to “pee!”).

It was fun.

Song: Anitina by M/A/R/R/S
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At the end of every White Sox game, Hawk Harrelson says the following:

This ballgame is ovah!

(You can hear it on the Hawk Harrelson Soundboard.)

This post has nothing to do with baseball, the White Sox, or Hawk Harrelson, except as a very vague statement that I’m looking forward to baseball now that the football season is effectively over for me, as a Bears fan. To put it the way I want to put it right now so I can get it out of my system:

This football season is ovah!

Here are the last photos from my life as a Bears fan this year.

As I mentioned earlier, we’re not going to the Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival in Vail this weekend. I’ll be honest. As the day approaches (we usually just go to the tasting on Saturday), I’m getting more and more bummed about missing it.

My general philosophy when there’s something coming up that I’m bummed out about missing is to plan something equally awesome that will take place at the same time. That helps make it so I don’t, say, sit around on Saturday thinking about how right now we should be drinking some Green Flash Imperial IPA in a delightful hotel in Vail instead of sitting at home on our couch that’s covered in cat fur oh hey we need to vacuum for the 6th time this week and then somebody vacuums and then we’re sitting around our relatively clean (for five minutes) house not drinking Green Flash Imperial IPA with a bunch of awesome people who also like really good beer. For example, if I was supposed to spend this weekend hanging out with @mayoremanuel and @nothawk, two completely fictitious Twitter accounts, snorting cocaine off the well-toned bellies of strippers in a Costa Rican brothel, but they blew me off, you’re damn right I’d find something really awesome to do instead. It’s like that one time your boyfriend was going to spend the night at a bachelor party and instead of sitting at home alone pining away wondering if what they say about bachelor party strippers and lollipops is true you went away to a luxurious bed & breakfast and got totally shitfaced.

(What I’m not telling you here is that there is some drama in my life right now, not involving my relationship, child, family, livelihood, or anything you might consider feeling bad about, but annoying the hell out of me nonetheless, which I’m not going to discuss so you’ll just have to settle for me saying things like “snorting cocaine off the well-toned bellies of strippers in a Costa Rican brothel,” when the fact is I don’t even know whether there are brothels in Costa Rica.)

Long story short (too late!) I figured the best way to handle not being at the beer fest was to plan something awesome to do on Saturday so we won’t even miss the beer fest. Because I’m in a beer state of mind, we could do something that involves beer. Something that involves beer, isn’t too expensive, doesn’t require travel, and — wait, I know! We can go on a walking beer tour of Denver! Why didn’t I think of this before? It’s awesome.

We can strap Soren into the Ergo, which is how we carried him at the beer fest last year, and head out from our house to any of the 9,000 breweries in Denver. Okay, maybe there aren’t quite that many, but there are several. Walking with a baby in the winter isn’t ideal, but it’s the best way to travel when you’re going to be drinking and you don’t want to carry a giant carseat around (I’ve never seen a cab with a carseat. Do they exist?). We can have one really awesome beer at each brewery, and then go to another one. After a few stops (we’re not marathon drinking champions like we used to be), we can head home. We’ll get a nice walk and enjoy some great beer in our own city. There ain’t nothing wrong with that, and it sure beats vacuuming again.

Our stops might include:

• Blake Street Tavern
• Falling Rock Tap House (not a brewery but awesome nonetheless)
• Great Divide Tap Room
• Wynkoop Brewing Company
• Breckenridge Blake Street Pub
• Vine Street Pub
• Uptown Brothers Brewing Co. (this one is new and I know nothing about it)

Wish us luck!

Song: I Want Your Soul by Armand Van Helden
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Going to the Big Beers, Belgians & Barleywines Festival in Vail is kind of our thing. We haven’t missed one since, well, since we started going, at least five or six years ago (I wish I used Flickr back then, because that’s the only way I remember anything; we’ve spent hours discussing where the beer fest was held during what year — I know, it’s nonstop excitement over here). Even the whole being pregnant and having a baby thing didn’t interfere with our attendance at Big Beers, because Big Beers is held in January and I was pregnant from February to October. Here we are as seen in a hotel door in 2009, when apparently I dressed like a confused teenager from, well, a place where teenagers haven’t learned to dress (good thing it’s just a reflection because there were tube socks and a skirt involved).

The crappy iPhone photo of a taste of Alaskan Smoked Porter is bringing a tear to my eye as I write this. That’s because we’re not going  this year.

I know, right? We went last year! We were the people who brought a baby to a beer fest! It actually was kind of awesome. Drunk people love a baby. (Truth be told, though, the “Is he having the milk stout?” jokes got old after the first 87 times.) Soren was a little mad at first, but after we got him comfortably situated facing the wrong way in our carrier (so he could see the action), it was all good. That is, it was all good until that evening. Even though I didn’t overdo it, especially considering we were at a beer fest, I’d just been, you know, not exactly a heavy-hitter in the beer department due to being pregnant and then lactating. That night, I had the worst hangover of my entire life. There was vomiting, no sleep at all not even for a minute, and many lonely hours spent in bed waiting to die. It’s funny how we don’t remember the bad stuff, though, because until I started writing this post, I had completely forgotten about the hangover. I guess it’s like how women say they forget about the pain of giving birth, although as far as I’m concerned, that’s a big fat lie they tell you when you’re pregnant because by that point, there’s no reason to freak you out even more. Right?

Anyway, we’re not going to Big Beers 2011 for the same reasons we’re probably never going to travel again for the rest of our lives (or at least several years, and this includes that possible trip to Vegas I mentioned earlier). We’ve realized that we can’t ask any one person to take care of everyone who needs to be taken care of in our absence, there probably aren’t two people who would volunteer to participate in this madness, and we can’t really afford to pay the small staff required to care for everybody. I mean, seriously, we have:

• a baby, who actually is very easy-going (he must take after his father) but might be getting too old and/or heavy to carry around a beer fest for hours
• a cat who hates you
• a cat who has to be segregated during meal time because he has to eat special food he doesn’t really like but all the other cats really want to eat and if he doesn’t eat this special food he doesn’t really like he’ll have to spend several days near death in the ICU, which, as you might imagine, sucks ass
• two fat cats who like you but also will eat you if you’re not careful
• a very conservative dog who lacks all social skills and the ability to tolerate much interaction with dogs other than the dogs who live in our house and who’d rather spend all day in his crate watching CSPAN and complaining about “kids these days”
• Sadie Angel, Mindfreak, a smaller-than-average min pin who can escape from any yard or enclosure that hasn’t been lovingly and obsessively min-pin-proofed, which pretty much limits her to our yard, places where I can wedge obstacles into possible escape routes and watch her every move, and the very expensive Animal Lodge
• a somewhat needy Rottweiler who requires daily walks and constant reminders that, yes, we love you, and who can’t be left unattended with most cats (especially the cat who hates you).
• Note: In addition to the cat who must be segregated during meal times, all dogs must be separated from all cats during meal times and dog #1 and dog #3 can’t eat together and dog #1 will try to eat dog #2′s food or your arm if you’re not careful.
• Note: If you figure this out and get all animals fed, you’ll get a 165 on your LSAT (or at least do really well on the logic games).

Obviously, by amassing this ridiculous menagerie, we kind of set ourselves up to not really go places. This is okay, because going places tends to be expensive and obviously we like to spend all our money on taking care of animals.

I do really like Big Beers, though. They have most of the awesome IPAs, which is all I ask for in a beer fest. It’s a lot smaller than the Great American Beer Festival and it attracts a very nice crowd — there are always lots of Colorado beer dorks (like us). Plus it’s nice to get to Vail once in a while and it gives you an excuse, if you’re not too hungover, to stop at the Log Cabin Cafe in Frisco for breakfast (there will probably be a wait but it’s so worth it).

Fortunately, there is a beer fest in Denver in January, which could be almost as much fun without the travel. In the alternative, we could have our own beer fest at our house. It would be called Big Beers, Babies & Too Many Animals. I’m sure there’s a market for that!

In honor of not going to the beer bloggers conference in Boulder, I thought I’d take a stab at something that on some level approximates beer blogging.

(Note: I seriously considered attending the beer bloggers conference. What sounds better than spending a weekend with people who like things including but not limited to drinking beer and talking and/or blogging about drinking beer, while also drinking beer? Not much, right? It wouldn’t even be too expensive, because Boulder is nearby so I wouldn’t have to stay at the hotel. I got all excited about this idea until I realized a few things. I have a baby. There might be a way to manage a weekend away from the baby, but that would mean Ben would be entitled to a weekend away from the baby, too, and the thought of that happening might drive me crazy, not because the thought of spending a weekend with just the baby is terrible or anything, but because holy crap, that’s a lot to do and I’m nothing if not lazy and attention-deficit disordered, so that’s not high on the list of things I’m all yay rah rah about doing. It would be great to save money by not staying at the hotel, but that adds another layer of complexity to the situation, because presumably I’d be drinking beer and talking about drinking beer on the internet, which, in addition to boring the hell out of you guys would render me incapable of driving home from Boulder, which means that Ben and Soren would have to drive me to the beer bloggers conference each day, then probably hang around Boulder all day (which, ew, no offense, Boulder, but ew!) because it would be silly to drive home and then drive back and I’m not really willing to ask my significant other and child to spend two and a half days in Boulder. Nice sentence! Finally, in addition to having a baby, I don’t get out much these days so I’m not sure I really want to inflict myself on a bunch of nice, unassuming beer bloggers who are probably all blah blah beer yay and I’d be all BLAH BLAH BLAH BEER BEER BEER YAY BEER WOOOOOHOOOO BEER BLAH BLAH inadvertent baby poop reference BLAH BLAH BEER BEEEEEEER OMG BEER YOU GUYS BEEEEEEEER WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!! Let’s face it. Nobody should have to deal with that.)

So I decided that I was going to tell you about what I’m drinking tonight, but that was like two hours ago, after we got back from taking Soren and Peaches (the new Rottweiler) on a walk to and around Curtis Park (I’m 6 days away from becoming the Mayor of Curtis Park, which I suppose is kind of bad ass but I’m not sure whether that requires going to Curtis Park multiple times within the next 6 days, which, to be honest, is unlikely) and before I started drinking what I’m drinking tonight. The result of drinking what I’m drinking tonight now is this post, and for that, I’m sorry.

What I’m drinking tonight is Modus Hoperandi by Ska Brewing Company. I want to tell you about this beer but the problem is I’m not actually a beer blogger so I’m not sure how to do it. I can tell you that this is a kick-fucking-ass, super-hoppy IPA. (I am a huge fan of IPA; 98% of the beer I drink is IPA.) It’s more straight-ahead hoppy than anything else and not too floral. Do you know what I mean by floral? I’d describe Mojo, for example, as a more floral IPA. Anyway, Modus Hoperandi is fucking awesome. And it comes in cans. Here’s how Ska describes it, because I’m sure they’re better at this sort of thing than I am:

It’s old man bitter. A mix of citrus and pine that will remind you of the time you went on a vision quest with your Native American cousin and woke up in a pine-grove full of grapefruit trees. An American-style India pale ale with a deep golden-orange color. Bitter and hoppy, with a surprisingly smooth finish.

Sandbeach Lake with an orange (old picture)

I like this description once I get past the fact that I see “vision quest” and think of someone who goes to Burning Man and I want to punch in the face, because it kind of makes sense. It’s like going hiking and ending up at Sandbeach Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park, which, for reference, is the most amazingly beautiful place I’ve ever seen in my life, but by the time we got there and were appreciating the beauty of this lake with, as you might have guessed, a sandy beach, in the middle of a forest in the middle of the mountains, we were out of water and all we had was an orange to eat. After that, we went to Oskar Blues (makers of the best beer in the universe) and had like 12 pitchers of water and some Gordon.

I’ll be honest and admit that I must not be the most sophisticated beer drinker, but I didn’t really catch the whole pine/citrus thing until I read that just now. I notice hops and bitter, which I love. In any event, this is good shit.

Good thing I didn’t go to the conference. Those people really dodged a bullet.