Sports Schedule for Google Calendar

See:

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-in-calendar-sports-schedules-and.html

You can now add sports teams schedules to your Google calendar. It's nice when you're extremely busy towards the end of the semester, or if you're an organization junkie like me.

Anyway, to add schedules:

Click on "New: Sports Calendars" the top right of your calendars:


Once you click this you need to click to the "Sports" tab:



It's pretty much self-explanatory at this point, yet still pretty cool among things Google does.

One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer

Deciding to brew your own beer is probably one of the greatest decisions anyone can make. If you're heading down this path, you're either fed up with the crap that domestic beer offers (save a few smaller breweries: Yuengling, Sam Adams...) or you're looking for a new hobby, or both.

In Virginia, we happen to be blessed with The Weekend Brewer. They have complete kits with malt extracts measured and all of the stuff you'll need to make it happen. The kit we're working with has the pail and glass carboy (pictured below) that allow for primary and secondary fermentation. The kit we went with for our first time was a Nut Brown Ale. It's going to be amazing. Moving on to all grain next... Stay tuned...

Getting ready to move to secondary fermentation.

Siphon in progress...

The finished product. 2 more weeks and then we can bottle. :) Yes.

Winter Wonderland...

It happened in Richmond. What the hell. It was supposed to be over...
8 inches of snow over night and canceled class. Joy and tears at the same time.

S-A-T-U-R-D-A-Y, Hey!

Yes, I know the Bay City Rollers suck, but the intro to that song is pretty solid. Anyway...

So at about 1:30AM Sunday morning, my roommates and I were awoken (not that we were sleeping) by 3-4 fire trucks that stormed down our street. Apparently there was a furnace fire 4 houses up from our place.

The house in question (above middle)

The hose (above) was hooked up to the hydrant in front of our house, but when another engine came up the street it got caught in the undercarriage. It was ripped from our hydrant, lodged itself under a car, and dragged the car up the street with it till the driver realized what was going on. It was actually pretty wild to watch.

Merry Christmas

From the top of the slopes at Peek 'n Peak.

More to come... Happy Holidays!

Dublin Pub Crawl Part I

Refusing to let jet lag get the best of me, I ventured out to the Temple Bar district last night with some fellow Miamians. The night started innocent enough. We wandered around the area till we found someplace to eat. What we didn't know was that we wandered into one of the best microbreweries in Dublin.

The Porterhouse Brewing Company was just about perfect as far as microbreweries go. The building had 3 stories. The first was more of the bar area and restaurant. The second and third were more centered around a local music act performing. Great food and great music...

...and then there was the beer...

They had the greatest red ale I've ever had in my entire life. The Porterhouse Red, brewed on site and one of their signature beers, was definitely the highlight of the day. I actually stumbled onto it by accident. The waitress came around to take our order, and I initially asked for a Guinness. You would think that it would be blasphemous for a bar in Dublin not to serve the black gold but...

She casually informed me that they were in fact that bar and proceeded to recommend the red ale. When it came, it had the look of a Guinness (the head and dark red color), and tasted amazing. Just the right amount of sweet/bitter combination and perfect all around taste. Highly recommended for a starter Temple Bar brew.

Day One

Looking north on O'Connell Street

Whiskey In the Jar

The Thin Lizzy version (not Metallica, nor traditional Irish folk) for the record.

Today began innocent enough. Waking up at 11 (mid hangover mind you) remembering that you're crossing the pond today, you start to outline all you need to accomplish.

First and foremost, you silence the beast that is the morning munchies. Check.

Then you pop some Aleve to quell the remnants of that last long island you had while the Angles were destroying the Red Sox. Check.

Frustration (and minor panic) sets in as you realize a few things:

1. The gradual decay of the dollar means your going to get the shaft at AAA today getting Euros.
2. You haven't started packing yet and you leave for a month in Ireland in less than 5 hours.
3. You still haven't received a check from Publisher's Clearing House despite several advance notices of your winnings...

You manage to get all of your shit straightened out, until you get to the airport. Your flight to JFK is delayed (surprise, surprise...) and you're being rerouted. Your carfully planned itinerary has just been blown from the water. Next up, you arrive at Atlanta to find that Delta over sold coach by 13 seats (joy) and you're not entirely sure you have a seat (since your ticket reads "SEAT REQUEST"). The dot matrix printer behind the Delta counter (don't worry the clerk had bell bottoms on too) is spitting out the clerk's life story as the line of people who were rerouted to Atlanta grows longer...

...and longer...

...and longer as the clerk assures you it will all be over soon (Koolaid anyone?)...

(at this point you suspect that Windows 95 strikes again since that's the only thing it could reliably do)

Then the planets momentarily align, you're assured a seat out of the US and all is right with the world (it might've helped that we were second in line).

Highlight of the trip thus far? Free Leinenkugel's with dinner (money). Thank you Delta.

Sunrise from 30,000 feet above the Atlantic on your way to Europe sounds like a winner to me.

Day Zero

Irish sunrise above the clouds on approach to Dublin