“As for the Republicans-how can one regard seriously a frightened, greedy, nostalgic huddle of tradesmen and lucky idlers who shut their eyes to history and science, steel their emotions against decent human sympathy, cling to sordid and provincial ideals exalting sheer acquisitiveness and condoning artificial hardship for the non-materially-shrewd ( Read more... )

Sorry if you've already read me crow on FB. This past weekend was the Eat Real Festival across the bay in Oakland, which included a homebrew contest, judged by Dave Mclean, the brewer at Magnolia gastropub, Justin Crossley from The Brewing Network and eight other local brewers, bloggers and beer enthusiasts. It wasn't an AHA event; you submitted ( Read more... )

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Sometimes it seems to me like the universe was created by a frazzled GM, trying to respond to obnoxious players who challenge his world design.

( Long but hopefully amusing )

Traditionally, I'm up way early on Christmas morning - like, 4AM. I always loved Christmas, when I was a kid for getting stuff, but later for the joy of giving things to my friends and family, the little surprises, and the sentimentality of it all. This year, I had hoped to sleep through it, but forgot that it's Friday and my alarm went off. Once ( Read more... )

One of the choices I had to consider when I moved out was, do I want to take any of our cats? When pie_queen53 and I met, I was a committed "dog person," with little but disdain for cats. But her cat, Spanky, who was about 4 at the time, was a charming little devil who won my heart, and forever changed my attitude towards cats ( Read more... )

Today would've been pie_queen53's and my fifteenth wedding anniversary. I suppose it still is, since a) we were married 15 years ago, and b) we are, technically, still married. But given that I had her served with divorce papers yesterday; that I moved out of the house almost 2 weeks ago; and I spent the evening at aikido practice and hooking up my wireless ( Read more... )

Saturday, pie_queen53 and I hosted our fifth annual Teach a Friend to Homebrew Day Party. Although we didn't take out as many designated drivers as last year, it was still a pretty rousing (and carousing) success. We had 41 guests throughout the day (since it's about a 7 hour affair, people tend to drift in and out), and went through 2 1/2 cases plus most of ( Read more... )

Astute readers will notice that I haven't posted in over 2 months. It's not that I've been particularly busy all that time; I just haven't had much to say. Today, I've finally got an "n random things make a post" post ( Read more... )

I've been intending for some time to write a post about why I support the so-called "public option" in health care reform, that is, a government-run insurance program that would be available to everyone, either directly or through their employers if the employer couldn't afford or was too small for private insurance coverage. But, this morning, the ( Read more... )