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.