Hit by a Pitch

Do you ever have one of those hangovers where you wake up at 5-something and feel it coming, so you get up and drink some water and then go back to bed? You wake up later feeling like full-on shit. You try to go back to sleep but it doesn’t work. After you’ve been failing at getting comfortable in bed for like an hour, the nausea arrives. You lie there, sweating, your head pounding, trying to convince yourself that you’re not going to throw up. Ride it out, you think, as the waves come and go and come again. Eventually you get your sorry ass out of bed and plod, hunched over, to the bathroom, where for once you’re actually thankful that the room is so tiny because you can sit on the side of the bathtub while you vomit, well, nothing, tears streaming down your face, not because you’re really crying but just because that’s how it goes.

Although I talk about drinking beer and being shitfaced all the time, I don’t actually get shitfaced very often. I generally drink beer because I like drinking beer, not because I want to get drunk. Every once in a while, though, I have a little too much.

Last night, this happened before, during, and after The Ting Tings/MNDR show at the Ogden. Two Rangers at home. One Dale’s Pale Ale at Nicolo’s, where some hooches made fun of my dress, which, to tell you the truth, I don’t blame them because their minds were probably blown by its awesomeness because they looked like, well, Broncos fans who are regulars at some hole-in-the-wall with a name involving something drifting, stumbling, or floating inn who are not familiar with the sort of high fashion I bravely (just kidding) sport while out and about in this humble cow town (said dress got rave reviews from fellow concert-goers, so that was nice). Two Lucky U IPAs at the show. A valiant half of a Titan at the Matchbox after the show, where Ben and I sat by the open window and talked about how it used to be Orange Cat, where our mysterious friend Joe mixed once; how the neighborhood has changed (I just looked up reviews of The Matchbox and am LOL for real at the people referring to the area as sketchy or terrible); and about that time we met and went to Minneapolis for our first date (part of what you do when you’re drinking and out without your kid for the first evening in a year is remember when you fell in love in the first place).

Five-and-a-half beers is a lot for me these days, but I didn’t think, stretched out over a period of, what, 7 hours, it was the kind of magnificent drinking that would result in so much hangover. Ben insisted that I eat something and made me a super-greasy breakfast sandwich (whole wheat English muffin, Morningstar Farms “spicy” breakfast “sausage,” sharp cheddar, and lots and lots and lots of butter) and poured me a glass of Coke Zero. I sat across the kitchen island from Soren and took delicate nibbles of my sandwich while he ate oatmeal and cheese (you’d think he was hungover because that’s just weird) and ignored his banana. When sitting upright became too much for me, I retired to the bedroom, where I took one bite of sandwich approximately every 15 minutes until I finally finished it and possibly felt maybe a little tiny bit better.

The stupid thing about a hangover is that it sucks up hours of a perfectly good Sunday (80 degrees! And it’s going to be like 40 tomorrow!) that you should be enjoying. And shit, I missed today’s workout, for the first time in, well, I don’t remember the last time I missed a workout (I’ll make it up later this week). Lame. And it makes you write blog posts about being hungover. Lame!

One of the downsides of living a thousand miles away from all family is that we really don’t get out without Soren very often. Friends offer to babysit, but everybody is always super busy and I hate to ask people to do stuff for us. Good babysitters are very expensive. This is probably horrifying, but since Soren was born (10/2009), Ben and I have been out without him for date-like activities maybe, like, at most, 10 times, and I think I’m overestimating.

We figured out pretty early that the easiest, most cost-effective way to do date-like activities without Soren is to take the day off work, drop Soren off at daycare, and go out during the daytime on a weekday. We did this yesterday (Ben had the day off anyway, because he has one of those jobs that hasn’t seen a holiday it didn’t like).

Yesterday’s date-like activities really brought home the fact that we’re not the exciting party people you might have thought we were. First, I brought Ben to the gym (he is not a gym person) for an exciting treadmill run. Then I had runner’s tummy for about two hours. That was great. Then we finally went to the Great Divide Tap Room for some beer. We’d been wanting to go there forever, but it seemed like the kind of place that isn’t good to bring a toddler. This turned out to be true — it gets very crowded and you might not get a place to sit, plus they don’t have food (they might have beer nuts, but I think that’s it). (Denver Beer Co. is a good option if you want a kid-friendly brewery — adults : beer :: toddlers : fresh giant pretzels.) I had two beers — a Hercules (strong!) and a Titan.

The problem is that at this point in my life, when I start drinking in the afternoon, I have two options: (1) I can continue drinking and be either shitfaced or on the verge of shitfacedness until well into the evening; or (2) I can stop drinking before dinner or maybe have one or two beers, very slowly, over the next few hours, and then be cranky, tired, bored, and almost completely useless for the rest of the day. Yesterday, being the responsible, not-totally-shitfaced parent I am, I went with option #2. Ugh. It was sweet relief the second I decided to crawl into bed with the latest issue of Sports Illustrated.

The good news is that when you’re that bad at drinking, you pretty much never wake up with a hangover the next day.

on the goddamn light rail

“Noooooo!” I screamed as loud as I could. I was by myself on a light rail train stopped at 30th and Downing. The other people in the car probably thought I was nuts but there wasn’t time to worry about them. I jumped from my seat and hit the “stop requested” button approximately 900 times. I tried to pry the doors open. I hit the “stop requested” button again. Then I watched the train depart the station, leaving Ben behind.

We’d meant to be on the 11:13 a.m. train but as usual were running late. We left home with what we thought was adequate time to walk to the station and get the 11:28 train.

The 30th/Downing station is the first/last stop on the RTD light rail D line, so usually the train you want to take is sitting there waiting for you. I hurried us along as we got close to the train because we only had a few minutes and I didn’t want to miss that train and have to wait 15 more minutes. When we were just a few feet from the train, the damn thing started moving. What? It wasn’t even time! But then it stopped and the doors opened and we jumped on. I guess the driver was just fucking with us. It wouldn’t be the last time.

Ben has an RTD pass from school, so he didn’t need a ticket. I did need a ticket, although, truth be told, it’s almost tempting to go without because in my years of experience taking the light rail exactly once a year to go to beer fest, we’ve never seen anybody checking tickets. We got on the train without getting a ticket because we thought the train was going to leave right away. When we realized we had a few minutes, Ben got off the train to buy me a ticket (he had $1s and is better than I am at doing most things). I checked in on Foursquare and did whatever stupid shit I do. Ben wasn’t back yet. Minutes elapsed. The doors closed. “Noooooo!” I screamed as loud as I could.

It was like some cheesy romantic movie shit right there. My true love was left behind while I was trapped on a train, hurtling toward the city against my will. In a few minutes, I’ll tell some guy who doesn’t know who I am that I quit my job, we’ll pass another train, and then both trains will blow up.

Fortunately, Ben is smart and if you miss one light rail train in this part of town, you might be able to get to the next stop before the train does. As the train left the station, I saw Ben, flip flops in hand, running like hell toward the next station. Realizing that I am woman and I do in fact possess the ability to roar, I planned to, if Ben hadn’t yet made it to the next station, block the doors from closing through the sheer power of my will and, well, by standing there so the doors couldn’t close, until he got there.

Fortunately, the next station is only two blocks away and Ben has been running a lot. He got there in plenty of time. “He saw me! That asshole!” He caught his breath. He contemplated going up to the front of the train to yell at the driver but instead we just talked about what an asshole he was for the next few minutes, which was slightly satisfying although not as satisfying as, like, giving him the finger probably would’ve been. I mean come on, man, we have beer to drink. And insult, injury, the damn machine didn’t even give Ben his change.

Although we arrived at the convention center far later than we intended, we totally cut in line with our friends who had the best place in line I’ve ever known anyone to have. We’re ridiculous, self-serving assholes but come on man, we have beer to drink. And it’s always nice to see friends!

beer can necklace c/o Oskar Blues

By now, you’re probably realizing that this stupid-ass post about beer fest is probably going to be more about Ben running barefoot through glass and who knows what else on Welton Street while I tried valiantly to escape from a train than about beer fest. And you’re right. But let’s talk about the 2011 Great American Beer Festival for at least a few minutes. Also, please forgive the lack of good and/or useful photos of GABF. I always go into these things with the best intentions, but honestly, when I’m doing something fun like puttering around beer fest drinking beer, I don’t want to take pictures the whole time. Sometimes I ask Ben to take a picture of me so for once there will be a picture of me I didn’t take in a bathroom and this happens. I was all, “Take a picture so the internet can see what I wore to beer fest (because I’m sure the internet gives a fuck and it’s so different from my normal uniform, which consists of a denim skirt, denim shorts, or jeans and a black tank top and you can’t even see the bad-ass Kork Ease platforms that, as comfy as they are, did kind of make me hate life by the time I was hobbling home)!” And Ben was all, um, hold my glass and there are porta potties and some random dude in what might be a Hawaiian shirt behind you. And I was all, awesome! As you’ll notice, I broke my “wear a skirt because it’s easier to pee” rule and wore jeans, which turned out to be awesome because it was cold as hell in there.

Anyway, aside from experiencing light rail issues and engaging in fashion-blog-worthy photo shoots in front of a vast array of porta potties and at least one innocent bystander, we wandered around the convention center for a few hours and drank some beer. The good news is that I actually kept track of some of the beers I really liked on the iPhone app. Here are the beers I considered worthy of starring, in the order in which they appear in the app, in this format: Beer (Brewery)

• Cream Stout (Redwood)
• Zombie Dust (Three Floyds)
• Quinannan Falls (Bell’s)
• Dugana IPA (Avery)
• Spruce Pilsner (Shorts)
• Alaskan Smoked Porter, 2008 (Alaskan)
• West Coast IPA (Green Flash) (They didn’t have Imperial! WTF, guys?)
• Nelson Imperial IPA (Widmer Brothers)
• Jai Alai IPA (Cigar City)
• Dysfunctionale (Piece)
• Carrot Cake (Shorts) (OMFG.)
• Arctic Panzer Wolf (Three Floyds)
• Bonnie’s Raggedy-Ass Imperial IPA (Big Rock)
• Rail Hopper IPA (Flossmoor Station)
• Hop Zombie (Uncle Billy’s Brew & Que – Lake Travis)
• Myrcenary (Odell)
• Grapefruit Jungle (Sun King)
• Key Lime Pie (Shorts)

Aside from West Coast IPA, this list is all stuff we don’t normally drink — I didn’t include our usual brews of choice (you can see what some of those are here, although that list is very out of date, as evidenced by the fact that I still refer to it as Gordon when it’s now called G’Knight and holy crap Gubna isn’t even on there, and needs to be updated someday when I’m not sitting around getting all distracted and telling you stupid light rail stories).

Also, you know how I told you to pick up the list of winners shortly after 1 p.m.? Dudes. This time, the awards presentations went on forever. We never even found a list while we were there. You can get a pdf of the list here. I wish we’d gotten this earlier because seriously, as much as I talk about how we’re like super-awesome IPA experts and everything and sometimes I have this existential crisis wherein we go to beer fests and sadly realize that we’ve already had all the really good, hoppy beers that exist? We’ve never even had any of the Category 51 or 52 winners. Deviant Dale’s? What’s up with that, Oskar Blues?

Anyway, here are a few more dumb pictures. Apparently pictures of Ben and me taken by me holding the camera with my left hand are the new bathroom self-portraits. Thank goodness I put this on the internet.

It’s beer week in Denver, and saying “Holy crap I’m so excited about  beer right now” would totally be an understatement.

I was going to write a list of tips for people attending the Great American Beer Festival but, as luck would have it, somebody already did. I agree with most of these tips, although I recommend eating something cheesy and greasy before the fest and I don’t think pretzel necklaces are necessary. I’m a hungry hippo much of the time but don’t need to eat during a beer fest. Also, you can use beer as a palate cleanser. Most of the time, Ben and I focus on our favorite style of beer (IPA). When I start getting hopped out, I switch to my next-favorite styles of beer, porter and stout, until I’m ready for more hoppy deliciousness. I generally limit myself to IPA, porter, stout, and anything else that seems really exciting.

My additional tips are as follows:

• The importance of water cannot be overstated, especially if you’re from out of town.
• Women! The bathrooms at the convention center go back really, really far — there are tons of toilet stalls in there. As soon as there’s no line in front of you, start walking toward the back. No matter how many women are scrunched up in line by the sinks, there are almost always empty stalls at the back of the ladies’ room.
• There are also porta potties by the docks/smoking area. There’s not usually much of a wait for these.
• Another one for the women: consider wearing a skirt or dress, because it makes peeing much more efficient. (Of course, you should feel free to wear a skirt or a dress if you’re a guy, but I don’t think it’ll make your pee process any easier. I just said “pee process.” I need to get off my internets.)
• This is a duh, but wear reasonably comfortable shoes. There’s not a ton of seating and the seating that exists isn’t all that convenient. You’ll probably be on your feet the whole time.
• Don’t freak out when you see the line outside the convention center. I’ll be the longest, most insane line you’ve ever seen in your life. It moves very quickly.
• Get the app. Taking notes on paper is a great idea but if you’re like me, you can’t be bothered. The (free!) app lets you star beers you like, which is easy.
• If you’re attending the Saturday afternoon members’ only session, grab a list of GABF award winners. The winners are announced at 1:00 and lists will be floating around soon after. You can find the information online later, but it’s fun to check out some of the winners at the fest (although lines might be long for winning beers because just about everybody wants to do this).
• Remember that children under 2 are allowed at GABF if carried the whole time (according to GABF FAQ). We don’t bring Soren (dude is heavy), but we did bring him to a beer fest when he was 2 months old and it was awesome. If you see a baby at GABF, please refrain from asking whether he or she is having the milk stout. This is a mildly amusing question, but trust me, baby’s parents will have already heard it at least 500 times.
• Eat something like pizza or nachos soon after leaving GABF.
• Most important, be responsible and have fun!

Yay beer!

Today we went to Denver Beer Co. for the first time (they opened on 8/12). It was, as they say, the shit.

It’s reasonably roomy for a brewery. There’s a large bar and tables inside (some bar-height and some regular height — the regular height is good if you’re at the brewery with a toddler, holla), plus several long picnic tables with benches outside facing the street. There are giant garage doors on the front wall that were open today, making the transition from inside to outside almost seamless. Denver Beer Co. serves beer and pretzels. (The “tiny pretzels” for $5 as advertised on a sign above the bar are in fact gigantic and amazingly delicious, which is really saying something because I’m one of those people who always wants to like pretzels but usually finds them disappointing. They give you a huge pretzel in a little cardboard thing like you’d get when ordering a hot dog and then present you with a giant container of spicy mustard with a pump.) From what I understand, there’s usually a food truck outside. Today they had Paris on the Platte, which was serving some type of German sausage. The guy working the truck was very nice.

Ben and I both had the Gear Up IPA. It wasn’t the hoppiest IPA I’ve ever had by any means, but it was delicious and very fresh tasting. It was subtle. It’s one of those beers that tastes amazing fresh from the tap at the brewery. We also shared a taste of the graham cracker porter, and holy mother of God that beer is delicious. It’s one of the best porters I’ve ever had in my life. Porter is my second-favorite beer after IPA although, truth be told, I don’t often want to drink porter in the summer. This is the beer you want when you, I don’t know, spend the afternoon sledding on the nearby hill people use for sledding (I think it’s at Riverfront Park but don’t quote me on that) and want to stop for a beer before heading home, where you’ll try to kick the snow off your boots before walking through the house. You’re wearing the dorky hat you bought from J Crew or Banana Republic that’s made of off-white wool and has a big pom pom on top. Do you have that hat or is it just me? Porter manages to combine smoky and sweet into something that makes you think you’d be willing to camp in the mountains where it gets really cold at night as long as you have at least a couple growlers of it with you. If you don’t agree with my beer philosophy (“The hoppier the better.”), you should try porter because it’s dark, rich, complex, and quite possibly something you might enjoy.

Beers are $5 and taste-size portions are $1. The taste size is enough for two people to figure out that a beer is awesome. They also have growlers. We encountered no difficulty bringing a toddler here (we kept him busy with the aforementioned pretzel) and they are very dog friendly (there were polite dogs outside and inside). They also have fantastic goat and other farm animal artwork on the walls, which you can buy if you’re rich (the “Small Cock” painting was $500).

I’d say Denver Beer Co. is an awesome addition to Denver’s beer scene and we’ll definitely be back. Happy drinking!

*Note: I was not compensated in any way for writing this post. I’m just telling you about something I really enjoyed.