World of Beer Festival 2013 - Angel Style

Yesterday was the World of Beer festival sponsored by the Beer Barons of Milwaukee. It is a small, by choice, beer festival that boasts it is "By beer nuts, for beer nuts". The breweries in attendance were fairly standard but many brought out the rare and normally not available in this area beers. Lots of special casks and barrel aged treats to sample along with a whole section of meads.

The gathering crowd

The nice thing about the festival is that it is small and not a drunk fest like other festivals I've been to. One of the coolest things about the festival is that it had its own app. You could check off what beers you wanted to try. It then gave you a little map of where the beers were located. I would love to see this for other beer festival. It really helped me put a plan of attack in place.

 This year I went not as a participant but as an exhibitor. Barley's Angels (@BarleysAngelsMKE) is now a registered home brew club. We were invited to serve up our home brews on the patio with other local clubs.

Paula and Erin working hard. Don't you love the bright table cloth we had?

The weather was perfect. Warm and sunny. Erin and Paula arrived early to secure a prime spot on the patio. As women, we are naturally well organized and were so efficient that we were often mistaken for the check in table.

Paula is getting her taps ready

Erin is wicked with a mallet and a tap

We had seven different beers for folks to sample. A special cask of Natalie's British session ale, two versions of English Milds, a Wheat Ale, Black IPA, Hefeweizen and Paula's very popular cranberry cider called Candy Crush. Aptly named after the addicting game.

Natalie is tapping her cask of British Session Ale

The festival kicked off and our tent was always steady. There was even a crowd (three's a crowd, right?) waiting for the tapping of the cask at 2 pm. It was fun to talk with people about our beers while they sampled them.

With having four of us there, everyone had some time to go off and sample other beers. It was great to see Alex from Rustic Road, Scott from St. Francis Brewery and fellow Angels Meagan, Tallgrass and Joan, Oscar Blues. I didn't get to sample as many beers as I would have liked but made the most of the ones I did try. Some winners were Psuedo Sue from Toppling Goliath, Tounge Thai-ed from Blue Moon's Graffiti collection and the Fleur de Houblon from Ommegang

We got to meet lots of women and introduce them to Barley's Angels. I'm excited for our next meeting to see how many come out and enjoy a good beer with us.

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Over the past few weeks I have noticed some terrible driving around town. Are the drivers here just that dumb/ignorant/clueless or too self absorbed to actually drive decently??

I was coming home from the grocery store after work a couple weeks ago. Stopped at the light. Car in front of me stops. Sits there for about 10 seconds and then proceeds to drive thru the intersection. There was still traffic going the other direction. It is a miracle he didn't get hit. A couple blocks later another car did the same thing.

Brookfield is known for having a lot of speed traps set up along Capitol Dr. There will be five cop cars sitting in a spot and picking speeders off bing, bang, boom. The funny part is that they are sitting there in plain sight, in marked cars. Do people not see them sitting there??

Driving home from work seems to be the worst. Car will drive down Capitol Dr, turn their signal on and then proceed to drive past four or five driveways. Leaving people to wonder if or when they are going to turn.

Getting on the freeway is another tough task. Do drivers not know what the metered ramps mean?? Stop on red and when your light turns green, one car goes. It even says that on the signs. One car per green. People won''t stop or if they do, a couple cars will go at once. The worst part is that they were in such a hurry to go until it comes time to actually merge, then they fail to get up to speed before the end of the ramp.

Last night was another perfect example. I stopped at Subway on my way out to meet a friend for a drink. I have to do a left turn/half U turn to get in the driveway. Cars coming towards me had a red light. Do you think that any one of them would maybe stop before the driveway/median break to let me through. Nope! It was not like I was going to slow them down in any way.

Being in LA last fall, made me really realize how inconsiderate our drivers are. LA may have a lot of traffic but they were always driving smart. Using turn signals when turning or changing lanes, speeding up to merge, stopping at the crosswalk if you know you won't make it through an intersection before the light turns red. Nothing that is all that big of a deal but sure makes the other drivers around you less stabby.

So stop talking, texting, eating or whatever else you do in you car and just drive.

Things I've Learned today

It is barely noon and I've learned all sorts of interesting things today.

1. The St. Francis recycling center does not take old garage door openers. 
2. The St. Francis recycling center does take yard waste including grass clippings! I've lived here for 5 years now. How did I not know this? I always bag my grass clippings.
3. I took my old garage door opener to the recycling place and I got $10 for scrap metal! Win
4. Petco, where the prices on everything are crazy expensive, so I never shop there, price matches. Need a store ad or previous receipt.This will now save me the time driving over to Pet World and $18 on a bag of dog food. When you buy a 30 lb bag of dog food every month that adds up quickly. Now if they only sold the bird food in bulk.
5. There is no 5 yet. But the day is early.

Being Sick

The last few days have been rough. It started on Tuesday evening when I ate dinner before a meeting after work. My stomach was all sorts of rumbly. Sounded like some dinosaurs where fighting in my belly.

On Wed, I worked from home because I was doing a guest brewing thing at Rustic Road Brewing in the evening (blog post coming soon). I had not been feeling great most of the day. Some GI issues but felt good enough to go. I had not eaten anything but an apple during the day and we stopped at Subway for dinner on the way to Kenosha. I only at half of my sub.

The guest brewing was fun but didn't drink a lot as my tummy was still wonky.

Thursday, I woke up and felt lousy. I was sooo cold and could not get warm. GI issues were still hanging around. I knew I had some stuff that only I could do for work and of course my laptop was going thru a Notes upgrade that took FOREVER. So I sat at my desk with a long sleeve tshirt, my heaviest hoodie on. I had a blanket wrapped around me and Rufus on my lap. I was still so cold. By time 4 pm rolled around, I was toast. I took the pups outside and grabbed my comforter, two blankets and my pillow and lay down on the couch.

When I got up at 8:30, I knew I was not good. I was still so cold. I took my temp and it was 101.7. I took the pups out and went back to sleep on the couch.

When I was a little kid and I would get a fever I would have hallucinations and night terrors. One of the dreams I only have when I have a fever. I dream that I a being chased by King Kong. I am in an Oak Creek subdivision where we used to live. But when I was little that was all forest and fields. I eventually escape him by crawling into a culvert.

I also have the sensation of lightning coming from my fingertips. It is weird, I know. What is even more bizarre is that I had the tv on while I slept on the couch. I had a dream that I started a fire on a house with the lightning coming from my fingers. Now I'm pretty sure that I must have heard while sleeping the reports of a house fire in West Allis (I'm not even going there). But is was most strange.

About 4 am I woke up just sweating to death. My fever had broken and I was now drenched. My GI issues were still going on but I no longer felt like a truck had run over me.I took the dogs outside and went back to bed.

I got up about 9 am and felt pretty good compared to the last few days. Stomach wasn't rumbly. I wasn't freezing and no more lightning from my fingertips. I actually feel hungry. Something that hadn't happened since Tues.

I don;t get sick very often. I'm glad it was fairly short lived.

Now to get prepared for BEER WEEK!!

Boys of Summer Are Back

Baseball is back!

Baseball means sun, warm weather and enjoying time outside once again. 

I was going to get rid of cable until I found out mlb.TV will only show out of market games live. I wouldn't be able to see the games live. Sure, I could listen to them on the radio and love listening to Uecker but I love watching the games on TV.

The past couple of years I only made it to 3-4 games a season. This year is different. I bought a ticket package. I'm kinda excited about the package we got. We start out with seats that are in Bernie's Terrace.  If the Brewers win you move up to a better section. By the last game, if they keep winning, you could be sitting in field level diamond box seats.

How fun would that be?

Little Free Library

As most of you may know, I am a big reader. I have always liked to read. My library card gets a workout. Now I find myself with more books to read than I have time. As a result, I pay lots of overdue book fines. I was so jealous of my friend, Renee, who was on vacation for three weeks and was able to read over a dozen books. I long for that kind of free time.

Lately, I've noticed that there have been lots of Little Free Libraries popping up around my neighborhood.

What is a Little Free Library? They are little structures that are placed in public places that house books. Their mission is to build more than 2510 libraries around the world and to promote literacy and the love off reading. They are operated on the "leave a book, take a book" principle. I love the concept that books are available for anyone to read and is never closed.

The libraries often are decorated in various themes or styles. Some look like the home where the library resides, some look like schools or churches. You can go to the website and see some them. If you go to the map page, most of the spots on the map have a picture of the library there.

Here is the library on the northwest corner of Oklahoma Ave and Lake Drive in Bay View

Lots of different books in this one

How much is that doggie in the window?

The kitten wants to keep an eye on things as well.

This one is on the southwest corner of Howard Ave and Lipton Ave in St. Francis.

Fairy tale themed

The castle and mermaid

Dragon!

Unicorns too!

I encourage you to find or even build a Little Free Library in your neighborhood. You never know what or who you may find there.

Bock This

This post is a little, ok, very late in coming. Almost two weeks ago, Laura and I went up to Stevens Point for the weekend. Why Stevens Point you ask? Well, beer, duh! And a race, of course. You know I like to take run-cations.

Back last fall, I won a package from the Stevens Point Visitors center. It included a free hotel night at the Country Inn. When I seen that registration was opening up for the Point Brewery's annual Bock Run, I asked Laura to run with me. She agreed and we both signed up for the race when it went on sale at noon on New Year's Day. As always the race sold out in like 18 hours.

We decided to make it a beer weekend since the run was sponsored by a brewery and Laura is my assistant at Fartlek Brewing.

We left bright and early Saturday morning. The race wasn't until noon but we wanted to make sure we a) got a good parking spot and b) had plenty of time to get there and not be rushed. We made it up there by a little after 10. We hit up the gift shop at the brewery and bought a few things. I had only worn some yoga pants because my tights are way to warm to spend 3 hours in so I had to change. There were no real bathrooms nearby so I changed in the car. Which was now beginning to resemble a Ragnar van, minus the stink.

After we pick up our packets we go back to the car. As we are sitting in the car keeping warm, a woman decide to park in front of us in her Prius. In front of us was a home with a wheelchair ramp and the front was all a huge snowbank where they cleared off the sidewalk. After go back and forth several times, she now has her car on the snowbank at such an angle. the right side of her car is almost a good foot higher than the left. She gets out, looks at it, gets back in, goes back  forth a few more times. Not that it did any good. She gets out again and decides that it is good enough. Laura and I are cracking up at this. Laura decides that we are too close to the corner and pulls forward a foot or so. Cuz, you know?

Laura and I pre race.

It is almost race time so we head out to the party.

We line up and away we go. I had not run much since Disney 6 weeks before so my goal was to not die.

First mile 11:11, ran the whole time. Mile 2 12:10, still ran it all but a bit slower. The course is nice and flat. Mile 3 12:35. Took a short walk break, made the halfway turn at 29:50 walked thru the water stop. Mile 4 13:13 a few more walk breaks but it seems like it is going fast.. Mile 5: 13:12. I am almost done. I kept pace with another guy for the last mile and a half. We turn the corner and know it is only a block or so left. About 100 yards left the guy says "race ya to the finish" Game on. I ran my ass off the last few feet and clocked in a super speedy 9.1 mph. Total time 1:02:14. Laura was also super speedy and finished in a little over 53 minutes. She had a beer waiting for me at the finish.

Laura and I post race. Yes, we are smiling. We have beer!

My cousin and a couple of her friends had come down to hang out with us. She missed us crossing the finish line but had some great signs that we forgot to get pictures of. We forgot to tell her this was outside and muddy and it was decided that they would meet us back at the hotel later.Laura and I hung around for a few hours enjoying the party and several barley pops.

We weer hanging out at a table where a bunch of flyers were in boxes for other local races. We found it hilarious that there was one for breast feeding. Seriously?? Do they really need a fund raiser for that? I wanted to run it with two dolls attached to my boobs.

Breastfeeding 5k??

We are now out of beer tickets and decide to head back to the hotel and shower and warm up.

Coming soon: Beer tours