A place in Jersey I actually like

Today was so nice, and my hangover just within range of being manageable, I decided to take the new wheels and get out of the city for a bit.

Yesterday, right after finishing up tours at the brewery, I met up with another Hartwick alum Scott (Snotty) at Justin (Little Monkey Boy)'s restaurant, the Kite and Key. The place is still sort of new I think, and pretty nice. They have a great beer selection, heavily leaning on local stuff just as most of the bars around here tend to. Justin is a french-trained chef who's used to working in fine dining environments, so he's sort of a fish out of water running a pub kitchen, but he's definitely dropping of bit of the haute into this joint. I mean, I've never had oysters with fresh roe; or escargot; or this crazy french thing wherein meat is braised, then pureed in a blender with duck fat added, then molded into little rounds which are then browned in a saute pan (I can't remember the actual term J used when describing this), in a beer bar before. This stuff was off the hook, and I don't even use that phrase. For reals. It also helped that Snottty & I didn't have to pay for any of this stuff. Score.


Then today I headed east into the Jerz and found this nice state park, which turned out to be quite beautiful. It is about halfway to the coast, and the turf there starts to look almost like Cape Cod. They even had white cedar swamps and a cranberry bog like out on the Cape...well done, Jersey. It turns out that this whole part of the State is actually some kind of National Reserve, so there is not much in the way of houses, shopping centers, or other typical crap like that which seems to be everywhere you look in the state. There are some nice hiking/biking trails which I hit up, and a few ponds for submerging yourself. I'll definitely be back here often this summer. Oh, and since I was all the way out there I continued east after this until I hit ocean.

So now I am feeling the effects of all this activity and sinking deeper and deeper into a comatose haze which I am certain will envelope me completely for the next 12 hours or so. Work tomorrow doesn't start for me until 1 so I plan on chillaxing like you read about until then.

Peace

-Wrence

Turbid Blonde Ale

So I racked my "blonde" ale to secondary this morning before work. I brewed it a couple of Sundays ago I think...so it has been in primary for just over two weeks. A little long I guess, but I have done it before.

Now, I had commented to 'wrence that i was worried about the turbidity of the wort/beer but we both agreed that it would probably be ok after some time to settle down and think about what it had done. Well, I am here to tell you that two weeks in primary has done nothing to lessen the cloudiness. I guess I should have done a protein rest or some shit like that, but hey man...I have a life to live here don't I?

The thing is, the color on this bad boy is beautiful, it's just too bad it is as cloudy as it is because it almost looks like dijon mustard...or shitty-pisswater...or potentially I guess pissy-shitwater. As tempted as I may be to bottle it even if it is still cloudy after a week or two in secondary, I will probably throw some gelatin or isinglass down the hatch to clear it up. So I harvested the yeast cake just in case I needed to repitch to condition it. Who knows...maybe I will actually get the kegerator thing done and then I can force carbonate it after clearing it out. That would be some incentive huh? Fuckin' eh.

&Ry

What did we learn?

So remember how I said that I had those two papers to do a few weeks ago? I arrived at work today to find two interoffice envelopes with my exams being returned to me. Now, I didn't know this was possible, but I actually got an A+ on one of them. I mean, I don't even remember getting an A+ as an undergrad...I don't even think they gave that grade out at all...let alone grad school. Quite funny, in my opinion.

What lessons have been learned? None actually. In fact, this experience has done nothing but reinforce my bad habits of procrastination, last-minute action, and a propensity to go drinking when there is clearly work to be done. But what's a bad habit unless it actually causes a bad result I guess right?

Saratoga Trip/I Still Buy CDs (for now)

So I am one of the only people I know who still insist on physical CDs versus downloads, at least some of the time.

There's something satisfying to me about going to the store, flipping through stacks in search of your prize, finally finding it and actually holding the thing in your hand, and then getting it home & unwrapping the plastic. Inhale the new CD smell. Press PLAY. Ahhh...

But it is getting more and more annoying to do this, considering all of it is virtually free to pick from the tree via my laptop. I am in Saratoga NY today (had to come up to get some important documents out of my storage stuff) and needed tunes for my trip back to Philly tomorrow. I went to the local Borders in search of the following:

M. Ward Hold Time
Camera Obscura My Maudlin Career

I located the first, but the latter was nowhere to be found. In general, the CD selection at Borders plain sucks these days. I know record sales are down in the wake of downloads, but is it the appropriate response to slash your music section, making it MORE DIFFICULT for people like me to obtain the music they seek? Borders now seems to have thrown all their eggs in the DVD/Blue Ray basket as I guess that's what people are buying more of now. Fair enough. But I'll end up downloading the Camera Obscura album with zero guilt.

PS: I DID check out the indie record store in Toga as well, but they focus more on used stuff. And Vinyl (but that's a different post...)

I did end up picking up a totally unexpected purchase. The Fleet Foxes album was on display at the store, and after the good things I've heard about this band I ended up listening to it on the headphones and was totally swept away by this album and am listening the shit out of it as we type/read this. So I guess they "won" after all.

(shaking fist to the heavens) BORDERRRRRS!!!!!!!!!!!

-Wrence

Mid-May update from Pennsy

Last night I was hooked up with some free tickets to the Phillies/Dodgers game through work. It was a great night to be out at a ball park; hadn't been to a baseball game in about a year. The seats were tight as all get out, too.


Philly lost, and I didn't get my chance to eat the legendary Schmitter sandwich I have heard so much about. Major bummer. People really freak out about this culinary marvel, and I cannot blame them. Unfortunately last night, I waited until the 6th inning to go get one, and alas: they had run out of rolls. Unreal. Next time I am definitely going to try getting one earlier.
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Today at the brewery the same gentleman I linked to above (the NPR host) was in the brewery recording some interviews and taking pictures. I believe the piece will focus on the series special one-off beers we're doing now. Speaking of which, we just brewed the first batch of the 2nd installment, basically a wheat beer with a pant-load of finishing hops. It should be interesting, keep an eye out for it.
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I bought a car. Rather, I'm waiting to just hand over the check & drive the sonmbitch home, but I am currently dealing with PA red tape, trying to get it registered and to get myself licensed in this state. A real pain in the rump. But I'll keep you posted.

Peace,

-Wrence

Comps Shmomps

As I have mentioned before, I am at this point in my life a student again. Before I complete the masters program a year from now, I will have to pass an exam known as the Comps...short for comprehensive exam. The way they work is that you get an e-mail with five questions on Friday morning at 9 am. You have until Monday morning to write two ten page essays out of the five questions. The questions themselves are drawn from some of the core courses that most people have to take.

Now, if you are a person you know that sometimes people can get themselves all worked up into hysterics over shit like this...and they do. People in my program love telling horror stories about how bad the comps are and shit. I just figured that it was legit and that it was probably purely reasonable to get so nervous about something.

Now, what does this have to do with me at this point in time? You see, tonight I finished my last final for this semester. I had two take home finals which were required to be 8-10 pages in length apiece. Despite the fact that I received both exams last Tuesday, I didn't look at either until Friday morning and managed to bang both of them out over the weekend. And that's not all, I actually managed to get sufficiently drunk both nights this weekend while writing 20 pages and not acting like a little bitch about it. Friday night went a-like this: wrote a ten page paper during the day, went out and drank a pitcher, came home and passed out at 10, woke up at 12:30 and couldn't fall back asleep because my hangover was already kicking in, watched the new Real World/Road Rules challenge, watched Gaylord Perry's 300th win on the MLB Network, climbed back into bed at 5:30 and finally got another 4 hours of sleep. Saturday was 6 more pages, beers with 'wrence and Bones at CBC, going home only to get dragged back out to a bar until closing time...woke up with another hangy today, watched the mets, went tyo mothers day dinner at Fugakyu, came home and banged out four more pages.

Now, if I can manage that in a weekend now....when all the chips are on the line and I will be a lot less tempted to drink in between, I really don't see the comps as being that big of a problem.

Awesome dinner party

I am trying to work on a couple of take home finals right now and am having a real hard time concentration...which explains this post I guess. But what really has me laughing is what I just did on facebook. Now, i hate those quizzes. I mean I do them sometimes, but I never let the results get published because i know that that automatically makes me a douchebag. But....I just did one. And the results were so funny I had to publish them.

Topic: Top 5 dead people you would invite to dinner.
My answer: Please envision us all sitting around eating ribs and drinking beers...that really makes it for me.

1. Freddie Mercury - Rock icon and my favorite person of all time
2. G.W.F. Hegel - 19th C. Philosopher who was all about weird philosophical analysis of the movement of history. I sweated him in college.
3. Rick Danko - guitarist and vocalist from The Band. This is solely so that I can cry when he sings It Makes No Difference after dinner.
4. Abe Lincoln - He was just the tits.
5. Hemingway - Just so that there would be somewhere there to goad everyone else into getting blasted in case Hegel started to get soft or to restore order if Freddie started trying to get busy with Lincoln or something late night.

I just thought I'd share that.

&Ry