And My Mind Begins to Grasp the Notion of Hell...

Yesterday, Kathy, Emelia and I spent the day visiting with our friends Gary, Sharon, and their son Andrew. We spent the day in shifts, rotating which two adults would watch the kids. When we got there, we stayed for a little while, before Kathy and I slipped out for lunch. Upon our return, Kathy and Sharon went out for a movie, and when they got back, Gary and I walked over to my new favorite beer bar, ChurchKey.

There's something wonderful about having a great beer bar in town, particularly when it's only a couple of blocks for where a friend lives (no matter how much I'd enjoy it, that it's not a couple of blocks from my own house is probably a good thing).

It's not like I hadn't been there recently; in fact, it'd just been Tuesday night. And when I woke up the following morning, I had a terrible feeling -- I had undertipped "my" bartender, a guy who always looks out for me whenever he's working. So I walked in with an extra $10 bill to hand him in case he was behind the bar. He was, but he wouldn't accept the money, and swore that we were fine. No problem -- after another afternoon of stellar service, we just added the $10 to the tip on this bill.

Even having been there just five days earlier, there were two beers on draft and one on cask that I hadn't yet tried. And the AFC Championship game was on the TVs. And it wasn't crowded, which is usually the case when I go in the evening (at least the waits to get in on a Tuesday night seem to be a thing of the past). So we were able to get a seat right at the bar.

And because it wasn't busy, we were talking with the staff a little more than usual. We could hear the music that was being piped in, and as I do pretty much every time, I exclaimed at how similar the selections were to my own choices. Not just the likes of the Shins, My Morning Jacket, Belle & Sebastian or even the New Pornographers, but even less familiar stuff like the Jayhawks, Stephen Malkmus, and Band of Horses. So Gary asked the staff that was present if it was a station, and if so, which one. And suddenly, a scowl appeared, on all of their faces. Someone explained that it was the owner's iPod, and that it was the same thousand or so selections on shuffle all the time.

The rest of the evening, my mind stretched to fathom the idea of being subjected to that, where slowly my love for great tunes would turn inside-out, and I would come to loathe the very music I once loved.

My Top New Beers of 2009

Spurred by Eric Gajdzis doing the same, here are my top beers of 2009 (I gave all of these a score of 4.1 or higher) --
1. Great Divide Espresso Oak Aged Yeti Imperial Stout (as delicious as regular Yeti is, this is even better)
2. Birrificio Italiano Tipopils (after hearing great things about it, this Pilsner actually met my expectations!)
3. Free State Owd Macs Imperial Stout (finally got to try it after many years of wondering if I would)
4. Les Vergers Lafrance Bouquet sur Glace (ok, it's an ice cider -- sue me)
5. Lagunitas A Little Sumpin’ Extra! Ale (Lagunitas makes a bunch of beers like this, but they keep showing that isn't a bad thing)
6. Laughing Dog The Dogfather Imperial Stout (I tried this and the Bourbon Barrel Aged version. I like this one quite a bit better)
7. Bockor Cuvee des Jacobins Rouge (this is a great Sour beer, and has been available on draft in DC for the past few months)
8. Amager Fru Frederiksen (RateBeer raters don't know what they're talking about -- the smaller beer to Hr. Frederiksen is the better one ;))
9. Peak Organic King Crimson (from Peak? damn that was unexpected!)
10. BFM Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien Grand Cru 2008 (Trousseau Barrel) (BFM is hit and miss -- this is definitely another hit)
11. Otter Creek Imperial India Pale Ale (Otter Creek? What's going on here?!)
12. Mikkeller USAlive! (my highest rated Mikkeller, which is saying something)
13. Lost Abbey Veritas 004 (it may not be Isabelle Proximus, but it's still great)

My Albums of the Decade

Compiling "Best of" lists is a fool's endeavor, yet I persist. Today I offer my favorite 40 albums of the Aughts (in alphabetical order). I bolded my favorite 10 of the bunch, but otherwise I don't see much point in trying to rank them -- suffice it to say that I hold these albums in very high regard. The rules I applied in making my selections -- no jazz, no live albums, no compilations, and no more than one album per artist.

Arctic Monkeys -- Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2006)

The Avett Brothers -- Emotionalism (2007)

Belle & Sebastian -- The Life Pursuit (2006)

Blind Pilot -- 3 Rounds and a Sound (2008)

Bright Eyes -- Cassadaga (2007)

Calexico -- Carried To Dust (2008)

Neko Case -- Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006)

Clem Snide -- End of Love (2005)

Samantha Crain and the Midnight Shivers -- Songs In The Night (2009)

Death Cab for Cutie --Plans (2005)

The Decemberists -- Picaresque (2005)

Steve Earle -- Jerusalem (2002)

Kathleen Edwards -- Failer (2003)

Alejandro Escovedo -- A Man Under The Influence (2001)

Jay Farrar & Ben Gibbard -- One Fast Move or I'm Gone (2009)

The Flaming Lips -- Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (2002)

Fountains of Wayne -- Welcome Interstate Managers (2003)

Sarah Harmer -- You Were Here (2000)

John Hiatt -- Crossing Muddy Waters (2000)

The Hold Steady -- Boys and Girls In America (2006)

Interpol -- Turn on the Bright Lights (2002)

The Jayhawks -- Rainy Day Music (2003)

Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings -- 100 Days, 100 Nights (2007)

Aimee Mann -- Bachelor No. 2 (2000)

Anaïs Mitchell -- Hymns for the Exiled (2004)

My Morning Jacket -- It Still Moves (2003)

The National -- Boxer (2007)

The New Pornographers -- Twin Cinema (2005)

Radiohead -- Hail To The Thief (2003)

The Sadies -- Favorite Colors (2004)

Richard Shindell -- Somewhere Near Patterson (2000)

The Shins --Chutes Too Narrow (2003)

Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros -- Streetcore (2003)

Sufjan Stevens -- Illinoise (2005)

Vampire Weekend -- Vampire Weekend (2008)

Varnaline -- Songs in a Northern Key (2001)

M. Ward -- Transfiguration of Vincent (2003)

The Weakerthans -- Reconstruction Site (2003)

Wilco -- Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002)

Yo La Tengo -- Summer Sun (2003)

The Agonizer

I did it with a camera purchase, and now I'm making that seem like impulse by comparison. I'm talking about my thinking about whether to buy a new car given that our family is expanding.

We have a 2002 Honda Civic, and that purchase was the fallout of Kathy's post-9/11 freakout. She wanted to have a way out of the city if there was another attack, and I went along with it, even though I wasn't comforted by the possibility of being stuck in traffic with the rest of the city's residents that were trying to flee. Having no car at that time meant that it would have been a royal pain for us to do a lot of comparison shopping, so in November 2001 we went to the Honda dealer, liked the Civic, and bought it then and there.

And for 90% of the time, the Civic is all we need. It's got us covered for any around-town travel. For leaving town, however, it's rough, though with the loss of Junebug, it's at least feasible. Once #2 arrives, however, anything more than a weekend requires a bigger car.* As would camping, as we were packed to the gills with just the three of us. And the Civic isn't as comfortable as we'd like, though I think that has more to do with our aging than the car's aging. Kathy was on board with getting a new car, but the truth is, I'm the one behind this push, and she'd be ok with whatever I decide.

So I started looking in August -- I didn't see many station wagons, which would have been my first choice, and minivans get such lousy gas mileage that we didn't want one, which left us looking for the most part of SUVs. Not that SUVs get great mileage, but at least some of them are in the 20s, which is way more than what the minivans get. We started with the Toyota RAV4 and Honda CR-V, but didn't jump at them because the price wasn't good enough to justify stopping our search. I started considering the Ford Escape, even though its storage was a bit less than the Honda or Toyota, and it's a noisier car, because it's cheaper and I liked the idea of buying a vehicle that's union made in the U.S.A. The Subarus, Outback and Forrester, were interesting, but we don't need 4-Wheel Drive and didn't like the cost it added or the mileage it subtracted. Then we read about the upgrade to this year's Chevy Equinox, and would consider paying more up front to get the best mileage in the class, but it's a larger car in exterior size, even though its interior is comparable to the Escape rather than the Honda or Toyota.

Finally, a couple of weekends ago, someone mentioned the Volkswagen Sportwagen TDI, and I was back to looking at a stationwagon. It's a fair amount more expensive than the others we were looking at, but its mileage is so much better, as in ~34 MPG. I test drove one a couple of weekends ago, and enjoyed it. Kathy liked the idea of being in a car rather than an SUV. And if the dealership had had one that had the features we wanted, it's likely we would have bought one right then.

But they didn't. And it's not an easy car to find -- they come off the lot about as quickly as they arrive, and most dealerships have back orders. No price negotiation, and the ones showing up are generally fully decked out with features I don't need and certainly don't want to pay for. So the price differential is even more than I'd originally thought.

And so here I am, back to wondering if we can live with the Civic for a little while longer, all the while considering the possibilities. One possibility is that we could get a roof carrier, even if we're not sure we could lift it onto the top of our car. All I know is that I need to agonize about this decision for a while longer, because that's what I do.
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* -- I recognize that "require" is a relative term, but you try telling Kathy that she doesn't need to pack so much stuff, or that Nora doesn't require her own seat if she comes.

Two Videos of Emelia on Halloween

Saturday morning, full of energy, and can't wait for her friends to arrive and go Trick-or-Treating.

And finally, it was time to get into costume. How exciting!

Song du Jour -- Diamonds and Rust

For the past couple of months, I've been trying to post a "song du jour" on Facebook, and while I've tried to mix it up somewhat, looking at the totality of my selections makes it pretty obvious that my tastes have mellowed over the years. Once upon a time, I was into hard rock, and even metal. These days, I like a broad swath of music, but its center is in the alt-country/Americana range.

Back in my youth, one of my favorite bands was Judas Priest, and perhaps my favorite song of theirs was "Diamonds and Rust," a song that seemed to be just a bit deeper than the average metal tune:



It wasn't until years later that I learned that Priest wasn't the original performer of that tune -- they had merely cut out a verse or two and cranked up a folk tune by Joan Baez, about Bob Dylan:



And now, I love both versions, and I can't hear one without thinking about the other.

Damn -- has it already been a month?!

Guess I need to post something, so here's a video of Emelia at her cousin Karolina's birthday celebration while we were up in Stowe.

A Man Walks Into A Brewpub

So yesterday, Kathy, Emelia and I stopped in at a brewpub in upstate New York for lunch on our way back to DC from Vermont. We get there at noon, right as the place opens. The greeter is in fact the co-owner, and after he assures us that we haven't arrived too early to be seated, he asks if we know what was special about the day.

I immediately answer, "It's Talk Like a Pirate Day!"
"Uh, it is? Well, that's not what I was thinking."
"Oh right -- it's Rosh Hashanah."
"Is that so? Well, it's also the start of Oktoberfest in Munich!"
"It is?"
"It sure is, and we're about to tap our Alt in honor of Oktoberfest."

Even though we weren't on the same page as far what made Saturday special, I did try the beer they had made in honor of Oktoberfest, and thought it was pretty decent.

RIP Junebug

Yesterday we had to put Junebug to sleep. It was something that we knew we would probably have to do before too long. She was 12 1/2, and in addition to being deaf, she had very arthritic back legs, to the point that she was having trouble standing, and climbing stairs. She had also started losing her house training. Still, the end was unexpected when it happened.*

I'm not going to remember Junebug as my favorite dog. She was a pain in the ass, plain and simple. We got her from the pound, where she had been staying with a foster parent, her second one. We were told she was house trained, and while that might have been true, the separation anxiety she felt when the foster parent left overwhelmed everything else. In addition to going to the bathroom, she destroyed carpet and anything else in her path. We tried keeping her in a crate during the day, but she was so freaked out that she broke out by overcoming the soldering, earning the nickname Houndini. And so the destruction continued. Kathy and I alternated as far as wanting to get rid of her, never both agreeing to it at the same time. Despite the burden she placed on us, we didn't feel comfortable with what it would mean to Junebug to leave her abandoned one more time.

We hired Bryce as our dog walker to help reduce the time Junebug was left humanless. And over time Junebug grew more comfortable with us. The messes happened less frequently, though we were reminded not to leave food or hardback books within her reach. And her reach was legendary -- anything on a kitchen counter was fair game, and she learned to open cupboards and drawers. Bryce wanted to install a camera just to see how she got to some of the things she did -- once at Bryce's, she got into bread that was two shelves above counter height. Houndini indeed.

One of the reasons we kept Junebug in those early days was because she had such a sweet disposition. Truly. And when she was young and mobile, it was a joy to see her when she was running, be it on the beach, in the snow, or in a field. It was there that one really saw her at her happiest. And we grew to love her in spite of the difficulties she presented, because after all, all she really wanted was a little bit of loving. And when you get down to it, that's not so unreasonable.

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* - I don't want to dwell on the end, but for anyone who wants such details, here you go.

Aaron's Diet, Part 1*

I hit the scale a little over a week before I went to Cooperstown and showed up 1.5 pounds above the weight I have long said I never wanted to exceed. I have several reasons for why I set that weight limit, but the basic reasons are tied to my health, most significantly that my bad back doesn't need to have additional strains placed on it by having to support a large gut on the opposite side.

Given that a beerfest weekend is completely antithethical to a diet, and to give me a target start date, I didn't start dieting until I got back from there. So essentially, my diet began on Monday August 3.

Goal: Lose 20 pounds from that peak, pre-Cooperstown weight, by the end of October. In truth I'm ok with being a couple of pounds more than that, but because I expect to put a couple of pounds on once I stop dieting, I've set my target accordingly.

My diet rules:

1. Severe curtailing of alcohol consumption. In the time I've been dieting, I've had one evening when I went drinking (4 beers), and a total of 1.5 beers otherwise. I've had no other alcohol.
2. Don't impose my diet on the people around me. Kathy wasn't happy about her weight at the start of her pregnancy, but that doesn't mean she should be losing any weight now. It's not up to Kathy to change the foods that she and Emelia want to eat, it's up to me. As such, I'm the one who needs to have willpower. Essentially then, on the food side of things, I'm eating what Kathy is eating, but I'm taking significantly smaller portions than I was previously, and I'm doing my best to limit snacks. What that means, for example, is that we've still ordered pizza, and all that's different is that I try to have fewer slices than I ordinarily would. Also, we went out for Mexican and although I had a full entree of fajitas, I successfully resisted eating any chips and salsa.
   
3. Accept that I'm going to be hungry. I've read about dozens of diets (without even looking for them) and in selling themselves, each tries to say it's easy. I don't know if they're correct, but my "eating less" diet isn't easy for me -- I'm hungry most of the time. To prevent eating every time I feel hungry, I remind myself of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Most of the time, that does the trick.
   
4. It's not cheating to have limited indulgences. This is a key to me. I don't think it's constructive for me to feel like I'm failing when I give in to the hunger, indulge a sweet tooth or actually consume a beer. The bottom line is that I'm taking in far fewer calories even if I have those "lapses," so I treat the occasional treat as part of the diet, not a break from it.
5. Exercise. I don't burn many calories going on the walk-jogs I've been doing roughly every other morning since the first Wednesday of the diet (currently about 1 3/4 miles jogging, and 1 mile total of warm-up/cool-down walking), but I am improving my conditioning, and of course that's something that's important for my general health. The key question is whether my back and other aches will interfere -- currently I feel much more sore on my jogs than I did at the start of my regimen. Jogging is hard on the joints and frame, but I don't need any special equipment or to go somewhere to jog -- I can just roll out of bed and go. Hopefully, I'll be able to keep it up.
   

Status: As of August 27, I've lost seven pounds, so I'm roughly one-third of the way to my goal. I have travel and other events that may make it difficult to keep going as well as I have so far, but I accept that I may have a rough week or two (see Rule #4).

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* - Disclaimer: I'm blogging about this primarily because it's a big thing in my life at present, but also to put pressure on myself to reach my goal by making it public. It is not to brag about my limited success, to suggest to others that they need to diet, or how anyone else should diet. Ok, maybe I'm bragging a little too, though I have no idea why I should be over seven frickin' pounds.