A BeerPup Looks at 40*

*Apologies to Jimmy Buffett

Several times I was asked yesterday how my 40th birthday "was going."

Um, fine. Pretty good, in fact.

Good in that The Dave brought me a 6-pack of Leinie's Sunset Wheat (we can't get Original in Texas), a gift card, and in lieu of a cake, he got me a pepperoni and cheese plate. What a guy! (I hate cake.) (And he also got me a new printer over the weekend.)

It's much better than that year when I was in my second year in college and my friend gave us 10 days notice that she was getting married...on my birthday. And I was Maid of Honor. And Breastless was to sing and play guitar. Shelly was supposed to play piano, but begged out since she hadn't practiced in months. So the friend got married (and later pregnat, divorced, and re-married, but that's another story) and on that day in 1988, I had the Birthday Meal at three different Perkins restaurants (once at 1am early, once for breakfast, and once after the wedding). Strawberry pancakes 3 times. And I got three cakes: one from Shelly's parents, one from the bride's parents, and one from my sister. Pluse I ate wedding cake.

Let me re-state: I hate cake. And I'm no fan of strawberry pancakes either.

All with the feeling that my friend was make a huge mistake...and she was. But that was 20 years ago.

Yesterday was a non-event. A good one, but still non. With pepperoni.

But I did do some thinking. You know, the "What do I want to be when I grow up?" question. I've always had one answer to that:

I want to be and Interesting Old Lady.

But you see, I've already got that one in the bag. Now I need to know what ELSE I want to be when I grow up. I've made a couple of plans that may answer that question, but I'm not going to share them yet.

But it'll be REALLY cool. Really. Stay tuned!

PS: The shirt is says "Happy 40th Janice" and is autographed by both John and Jake Leinenkugel. Thanks DuffMan and BeerHound! (and John and Jake!)

In Brief:

I have discovered this week that if you don't drink beer in the evening, every evening (or even nearly every evening), the evenings seem really long, and you can get a lot done.

Concurrently with that, I have discovered that if you have strep throat, you don't much feel like drinking beer. Being it's pretty hard to swallow your own spit, let alone a cold, frothy beverage.

Even the knowledge that it's usually perfectly fine to drink beer while on antibiotics (contrary to the urban myth that it can kill you and/or drive you insane or rot your kidneys) does not actually inspire you to consume the beer.

This is the longest I've gone without beer since I first moved to Texas and couldn't figure out where the liquor stores were. Being from Minnesota, I assumed the beer was sold at a special store. Imagine my joy when I discovered that the beer at the store was regular, strong beer and not that 3.2% crap you get at the grocery in Minnesota. Wahoo! I think that took me a week to figure out. It was a long, lonely week.

The Daytona 500 on Sunday was...meh. Okay. Not fantabulous. Not horrible. I was entertained.

Speaking of NASCAR, the BeerHound will be here for the Samsung 500 at Texas Motor Speedway on April 6th. We have an extra ticket, and a designated driver (The Jesus of Cheese is on board for this one.) If anyone wants to come along, let me know.

And in news that pertains to friendships from my previous lifetime: Some of you may remember my former roommate Mark's wife Mary died last summer when their car was hit by a drunk driver. The woman's FINALLY been charged. I'll let you google it yourselves. I can only assume it took so long to charge the woman because they wanted ironclad prosecution. Maybe probably.

Lastly, I will be 40 years old in 5 days. I still haven't decided how I feel about that.

Front Loader

My clothes dryer died, and The Dave said YAY because he'd been wanting a new set. No problem; so had I.

We got the LG second tier set. I'm not going to give the model numbers right now.

They arrived as scheduled.

They are a huge adjustment. Not bad, not good, just different.

We regard it as a family adventure. I decided to wash the towels first, because if I'm going to fuck anything up, I'd prefer it be the towels over other items. I'd happily buy new towels, since I haven't done that in about a decade. We got some as a gift six years ago, but even those look pretty bad.

I called the whole family in to witness, because, damn, we'd all been wanting to push all those cool buttons on the doohickey. We put the towels in, "packed loosely, not quite to the top" and the door closed easily, just like the owner's manual said to do.

We opted for a pre-wash and regular wash cycle.

The Dave stood by, camera in hand. Simian Boy got to press the "On" button. I set the wash cycle; I had already put the appropriate chemicals in the dispenser. Then both Simian Boy and Stick Girl pushed the "Go" button together. And then....

Well, not much.

Some water squirting sounds. Some drum rotation. More squirting sounds, more drum rotation.

The timer said this was going to happen for another hour and twenty minutes. So I found better things to do than watch it.

But not really. Because after all, we want to know that what we bought is worth it, right?

Well, the clothes look kinda cool spinning around in there.

And kinda...not. Really, they just look like wet clothes turning around in a barrel. Which is what they are.

You see, the front loading washer uses much less water (half as much) to wash, and takes longer to do it. It does it by putting the clothes in the soapy water, then lifting them out, then dropping them in again.

This is why regular laundry soap doesn't work. That stuff produces suds, and the bubbles, if they were present in a front loader, would hold the clothes above the water, rather than letting them soak in it.

It turns, it rests, it turns. For a LONG time. Then it spins, which is cool, because it's more than twice as fast as a top-loader, plus you can see it (because a top loader stops spinning when you open it to watch it. Take my word for it; I've done it.)

Thus far, the clothes take a lot longer to wash, and I'll admit, I've only been washing large and/or heavy loads, but they're already a lot dryer when I transfer them to the dryer.

Essentially, the washing takes longer than the drying, which is cool, because you have enough time after the dryer stops to fold and stuff, while the washer finishes.

My current assessment: this reminds me of doing laundry in Sweden and England, which makes sense, because this is exactly the same type of laundry machines they've used for decades.

It takes longer. More waiting. So I can't use the excuse of "Leave me alone! I'm doing laundry!" any more.

Bugger.

As The NASCAR Turns: 50 Years Of Drama!

I know there's very few NASCAR fans who read here, but even if you don't care about racing, it's such an entertaining soap opera!

Here's the latest, and I'll include some explanation for the non-fans.

The sport is 50 years old, and next weekend is the 50th running of the Daytona 500. The first races were run on the beach, so if you ever wonder why the race is so important--it's because Daytona had a beach. And NASCAR is a unique sport because the most important race of the season is the first one, as opposed to the last.

But before the Daytona 500, there's an exhibition race which in recent years is called the Bud Shootout. It won't be called that next year, because Bud will no longer be the official beer of NASCAR; Coors now has the sponsorship. The race is invitation-only. To get invited, the driver must have won a pole position (fastest qualifying time) in a race the previous year, plus the previous year's Bud Shootout winner, plus all champions (best overall performance in a given year). It's a rather short race. They used to go 20 laps, take a 10 minute intermission, and then go 20 laps in the opposite direction. (So NASCAR drivers do NOT always turn left!)

So the Bud Shootout is tonight. Don't look for the reverse direction racing; they don't do that any more.

On to the soap opera.

Yesterday during Shootout practice, Tony "Smoke" Stewart (#20, orange Home Depot car) got into a minor accident with Kurt "The Weasel" Busch (#2 blue Miller Lite car). Fine. That crap happens all the time.

BUT, last year during a race, these two got into an accident and as they both pulled into the pits, The Weasel pulled his car up and stopped directly next to Smoke's car (which was in its pit box) nearly hitting one of Smoke's crew. He expressed his opinion on Smoke's guilt in causing the accident.

The Weasel was fined and put on probation for the rest of the season. Smoke was already on probation for another incident, and did not retaliate--on camera anyway.

So, back to yesterday. It was a fairly minor accident and was mostly just sheet metal damage. But once again, The Weasel took issue with Smoke, caught up to him, and proceeded to sideswipe the #20 car twice, then followed him into the pits and hit him again. Then they each tried to block the other from driving back into the garage.

It was speculated that Tony was trying to get out of his car to talk to Busch, who was having none of it. Both drivers were called to the Trailer.

If you're a driver, you don't want to get called to the Trailer.

There is speculation that Tony may have thrown a punch in the trailer. However, NASCAR officials declined to comment. Both drivers were called to the trailer again early this morning (6:30!) to be given their official punishment.

Which was none. For now.

[Cue ominous music.]

Oh, and on a totally different topic, I find that the only search hits I get from either Google or Yahoo are based on the search terms TMJ and blow jobs. So if you randomly see the words in future posts, I'm just doing it to falsely boost my stats. Thanks for understanding.

Panhandled by Little Jack Melody

Someone tried to panhandle me and my friend boB yesterday.

Note to Dallas/Denton old-timers: the panhandler vaguely resembled an aged version of Little Jack Melody.

We'd gone out to dinner; boB's in town from Minnesota so I was dropping him off back at his hotel, which is in an area Northeast of Dallas where there are a lot of tech companies. It's a nice area.

The guy came up, gave us some line about his car broken down on the highway and he needed $120 for the tow, but he only had $92 on him and could we loan him the rest?

I just said "Sorry. No, sir." He walked away quickly, around the corner of the hotel...toward where there was very little chance of him running into any people.

So I went back to my conversation as the guy walked away but as soon as he was gone, I told boB to go to the hotel desk and report the guy.

Later, boB called and said the desk clerk said they've had a problem with the guy for about a month. I'd heard similar things from people who have been hit up for money in restaurant parking lots nearby.

Anyway, boB wondered how I knew he wasn't genuine. Hmmm. Here's a list.

1) The afore mentioned, my friend had something similar happen to her recently.

2) The guy watched us for a while before he approached us. I saw him out of the corner of my eye and made a note, simply because my car was unlocked, even though it was very close by.

3) He was wearing very thick glasses--bifocals, in fact--but he wasn't looking through them. He was looking over them. And he never met my eyes while talking, nor boB's.

4) He didn't look at all like he'd just been stranded on the freeway.

5) His clothes were very neat and clean, but very cheap.

6) When the guy walked away, he walked around the corner of the hotel, in a direction where there would be no pay phones, no people, and no open businesses.

7) No way in hell did this guy ever carry $92 in cash.

Bob argued with the last bit. "Well, I've got that much right now. Why wouldn't he?"

Because...people don't carry cash any more, unless they have no credit and no checking account, and if they don't have those two things, they either a) have a lot of cash or b) they have zero cash.

Well, I'll amend that. People do still carry cash. I've been doing it lately, but only because I returned something to a store and received cash instead of credit back on my card that I'd charged it on. I usually carry more cash when I'm "Out of town," on vacation or work or whatever. Like boB is, currently.

But this last month it felt really weird. Having cash.

So this guy just wouldn't have had it. I have no justification for that feeling, but he just reminded me of the people I knew in Cement City (tell you about that another time) when I lived there. They wouldn't be carrying that much.

So I knew the guy was a fraud. Not that I would have helped him either way because in the end:

I didn't have any cash on me.

A fish called Bob

Saw my friend Bob today. Bob, as in the original, "Bob spelled backwards is still boB."

I also used to own a fish named after him. It was a pink kissing gourami.

Bob, the fish, died in 1990 of The Ick when I was in Sweden. He was cryogenically preserved until we could give him a fitting burial: We got drunk and flushed him down the toilet at 1514 E 3rd St in Duluth, Minnesota, while singing "Louie, Louie."

Bob, the guy, wasn't there.

It was the end to a chaotic day. I did the usual morning child launch, and then of course the Copy Mom thing. I shouldn't even begin to bitch about the woman who shows up during my copy time, doing stuff that's supposed to be done Friday, and fucks up the rest of Thursday, but is really nice and I like her...but I don't want her there using the copier when I need it! When it's supposedly "reserved" for me!

Anyway. I got the copies done...in 3 hours, 15 minutes. I think that's my record. Record, on the long scale.

Then had a conversation with my sister, and oh, back after the child launch but before the copies I talked to Elly about her front-loading washer because our dryer quit so we're going to just get a new set, and we want super deluxe shoot the works stuff.

Where was I? Oh, talking to my sister about her new driver's license and license plates, and then I got an e-mail from boB about this evening's plans.

But I had to go and do some in-person research on the washer and dryer.

And then, on to the carpool line. I have no comments on that. The carpool line is really boring lately.

Then boB called while I was driving home; I had started but didn't finish answering an earlier e-mail. We agreed on a time.

Then Elly called back, to finish our conversation, which will need its own entire post entitled "At Least I'm Not In Brazil!"

Somewhere in there I was supposed to call my sister back when I got a "window." I never got one. Stick Girl wanted a haircut because she doesn't like how her hair feels brushing against her back.

She was thrilled with her haircut.

Both kids were thrilled with the dum-dum suckers, Fruit Loops, and markers I bought them at the grocery store.

Simian Boy was NOT allowed to put additional sugar on his Fruit Loops.

Then The Dave got home and I went to meet boB and his co-worker. We did Cafe Brazil, then the Fox and Hound so they could watch the end of the Dallas-Minnesota hockey game.

Which reminds me....soon I will 'splain why Minnesota is still really pissed off that the Stars are now in Dallas. Yes, still mad, 15 years later.

But not now.

Minnesota lost. I brought the guys back to their hotel. While standing at the entrance, boB and I were approached by a panhandler.

Which is also a whole other entry.

So I owe you:

1) At Least I'm Not In Brazil
2) It's the NORTH Stars, Dammit!
3) Panhandled by Little Jack Melody

Coming soon, to a blog near you! Which story to y'all want to hear first?