Oh god why am I not updating anymore

...Blame NaNoWriMo. I'm nearly 35 thousand words in and holy balls I just can't stop writing. Any time I sit at my computer I'm probably typing Rising Mind, and not these blog posts. I'll definitely return to this in December, when I have the chance to think about something other than crazy people and graduate school.

But here is a catch-up post. Let's talk about my last excursion to Max's Tap House with BeerSnob and The Irish.

BeerSnob is snobbish about beer, and has a hard on for stouts of all varieties. I like pilsners, because they are refreshing and pleasant and do all the things a beer should do, i.e., get you drunk but not make you sick. Irish will drink anything you put in front of him because he is poor.

I started out with the Reider Maerzen. Nobody pronounces the umlaut correctly, you linguistically uncultured bastards. Either way, I'd ordered the pilsner, but the bartender misunderstood me. Still, this was everything I want in a beer. It was light enough that I could drink it without feeling overfull, and it had a clean, malty flavor that consistently made me want more.

Irish got the house beer that night, which was a kind of gross Belgian blonde. It had the kind of fruity sweetness that I enjoy in wine, but is totally out of place in a beer. I don't know what was going on there. Very sad.

BeerSnob bought snobby beer: the Brewdog Zeitgeist dark lager, to be specific. It was DELICIOUS. It was sort of tart up front, the way a just-underripe cherry is, and had a very light cafe-au-lait flavor and texture at the back. It was smooth and delicious. /he also got a taste of the Thirsty Dog Stud Service Stoud, probably because it had the silliest name on the menu. It was lightly bodied, tasted of burnt coffee with a clean finish. Smooth, but not what I wanted. I blame it on the fact of it being a stout.

For our second round, TheIrish acquired a beer called the MAXIMATOR. Because when there is a beer with a name like MAXIMATOR someone has to try it. Here is what my notes say about that:
"Holy fuck spices. Holy crap let me wash out my mouth now jesus why did I drink that there can be no loving god in a universe where there is this beer." It was not very good.

I got the Reider Pilsner this time, which was the strangest thing I ever tasted. It was clean and bubbly the way I like it, but it had this strange vegetable aftertaste... like peas and asparagus. The boys didn't believe me, but when Irish drank some he immediately sputtered: "IT'S HEALTH BEER!" It was, too.

BeerSnob's second round was a glass of Hitachino Redrice, a rice beer, and he wished it hadn't been. This was all about fruit. It was apricots and cinnamon and ginger all over the place. We all agreed that this would be a FABULOUS beer to cook with, but it was not a pleasant pint.

Much later in the week I had a couple glasses of unexceptional pinot grigio. They were both clean and tart, though one had a bitter hint of lemon rind that I didn't like all that much. Pinot Grigio is wine for people who don't like wine very much, or so says the guy who orders the wine for our restaurant. But it's a fabulous wine to sip while writing, because the gentle flavor doesn't distract you!

I have also set up a bunch of infusions in a series of one and a half liter bell-jars that I bought for the purpose. The reason there are no pictures up or descriptions is that they are all to become Christmas presents and I don't want to ruin the surprise, so there.

And now I'm going to go back to writing my terrible urban fantasy. Rock on y'all.