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Sometimes, I just need to remind myself of the great things in my life, and there are quite a few things recently that have given me joy (in no particular order):

1. Adorable nephew Mattie:

2. nanoBrew (our nerdy name for our nerdy Rock Band)

3. Unexpected flowers and delicious fruits from Ryan (and homemade ice cream from Dryw):

4. The new and improved Engineering Circle. I think they tore this down my freshman year of undergrad, and now, after 9 years, a seismically retrofitted Heart Mining Building and brand new Stanley Hall… it is gorgeous.

5. Rice vermicelli with Imperial Rolls from Le Petit Cheval.

( Tamales from the Tamale Lady come in a close second. )

6. Adorable doggies: Winston, a shorkie (shih tsu and yorki mix)

7. Mission Bay Community Church (MBCC): Fun, friendly, and two blocks from home… what more could I ask?

8. Happy news from friends:
Genese and Adrian on their new house!
Lucinda and Dan expecting their first baby in April!
Michelle and Will expecting their first baby in August!
Julian and Diana expecting their first baby in August/September!
Michelle and Kreg on their upcoming wedding this October!

9. My dad is a real golfer!!

10. The expectation of trying our very own brown ale beer… in another week or so!!

I just came across this wonderful plugin for Firefox called Adblock Plus.  With it, you can block all those annoying ads, of any kind, from anyone…  and it is awesome.  Yay for ad-free web browsing!

Or, How well do you know my friends?

I asked a friend of mine if they had any plans for V-day and the reply was:

“Every day is Valentine’s Day for us!”

It was said in an admittedly half joking way, but, like I said, half joking. Of course, I did my duty as a great and fantastic friend and laughed my head off…

so the question is: do you know who said it?! Comment below and win the satisfaction that you were right.

I do have to admit that I have a love/hate relationship with V-day - I hate it because it’s really just a made-up holiday just so the card, flower, and food industries can charge us exorbitant amounts to kick start their sales after the holiday slump. But inside I really love it when Ryan gets me flowers, or takes me out to dinner, or gets me a little gift. Obviously, I love that kind of stuff any day of the year, but heck, another excuse to squeeze a nice dinner outta my hubby isn’t a bad thing, right?!!

Speaking of which, we celebrated Valentine’s early this year, on Tuesday, in fact. (Ryan wanted to cheer me up after a crappy morning - see my previous post) We went to this fun restaurant in the Marina/North Beach called Albona. Total old school European kinda place, and the owner, Bruno, was a total hoot. As we were leaving he was escorting us out and giving me detailed instructions on how to reheat my risotto (he didn’t want me thinking his risotto was glue, God forbid) when the topic of V-day came up. He asked if we had any plans, and we admitted that we were celebrating early!! He lit up and started his rant about V-day… Oh, everyone on V-day, ah… they’re amateurs!! We give them this set menu, so they don’t have to think about it, and for me, it’s just hell… (he shows us his reservation screen for the 14th - completely packed, obviously) much better that you’re celebrating early~! And the men, they all have intentions, you know… ulterior motives for after dinner, eh?!!

I think we both got a huge kick out of that.

I am decidedly NOT a morning person. I love sleeping in. I love laying in bed, the sun shining into our apartment, knowing I don’t have to get out of bed. Of course, I can’t sleep in every day, and of course I need to (eventually) get out of bed. Usually though, once I get out of bed and into the shower, things start feeling a bit better and I go about my day.

Today, however, was a different story. Actually, let me give a timeline here, which adds some context to the story.

Last Wednesday:
I finally dropped off a HUGE amount of laundry off at the dry cleaners. I think Ryan and I were about 6 months behind on our dry cleaning, and it was just one of those things where there got to be so much of it, neither of us wanted to bring it out to actually get it cleaned because we knew it would cost $$$$. Plus, I had my favorite dry cleaners back in El Cerrito, and I hadn’t found a new one that was convenient. See? We haven’t done dry cleaning since we moved to SF. That’s how long it’s been. So, finally, I looked up dry cleaners in Berkeley. On yelp, of course. There happened to be one that got great reviews that was right on my way home from lab. Fantastic! I dropped off two huge bags of clothes and they told me it would be ready by Friday.

Friday:
Of course, since normal people have normal hours, they close at 6:30PM, and I didn’t get there in time to pick it up Friday, but I figured I’d just pick it up this week.
(Random aside: even if I HAD got out of work in time, I wouldn’t have been able to pick up the dry cleaning, because I forgot my wallet at home… but that’s another story)

Monday night, in bed:
Me: Hm… I need my dress pants.
Ryan: Is it still at the cleaners? Have you picked it up yet?
Me: I haven’t picked it up yet, I didn’t have time on Friday or today… I’ll pick it up later this week.
Ryan: You should pick it up immediately!!! You know they sell your clothes if you leave it at the cleaners too long.
Me: What?? Are you serious?!!
Ryan: Yup. My suit is there and I would be pretty upset about it if they sold my suit.
Me: No way… I mean come on, they said it wouldn’t be ready until Friday, and it was the weekend, it’s been less than a week!!!
Ryan: hm… true. But you need those pants anyway, right?

Side note: Ok, so the completely rational part of me *knows* that the cleaners hasn’t sold all our clothes in the last week. But I’m still kinda nervous about it so I say:

Me: Yeah… Sigh. I’ll pick them up tomorrow morning before I head into work.

Tueday morning (today):
It all started out like a normal morning. I got up, took a shower, got ready for work. Got into my car, it’s a beautiful day, sun is shining, I’m listening to NPR, life is good.

Then I pull up to the dry cleaners. I get out of my car, walk to the parking ticket dispenser, like a good citizen that I am, to pay for my parking (plus, the yelp reviews all said the meter maids were nazis around here) and deposit a quarter. Shouldn’t take more than 15 minutes to pick up my laundry right?! No problem. Machine takes my quarter. I push the button for the ticket. Nothing happens. In fact, I feel like there’s something weird about that button, because I think it usually depresses when you push it, but this one isn’t. Argh! Someone superglued the ticket-dispensing-button on the machine!!!

I evaluate the situation. Seriously, how long could it take to pick up the clothes?! Forget the parking! I walk over to the cleaners. They’re CLOSED!!!! I read the sign: Hours: Tu-Fri 10-6:30. I can see the clock inside the cleaners. It reads 9:55. Hm… okay maybe I’ll wait. As I wait I see two meter maids in their little annoying carpods zip by… making me doubly nervous. I stare at the cleaner and check the sign again… Sat 10-6, Sun-Mon Closed. Gee, I couldn’t have picked it up yesterday anyway since they were closed!! Ryan was freaking me out for no reason… grrrrr!! I finally get into my car, start the engine and am about to pull away when I see a guy opening the cleaners. Oh! Well I can still get the clothes! Great!

I rush into the store, and hand him my ticket. As I wait for him to find our clothes, I read the sign: “Cash only. No credit cards or ATM.” Sh*t!!!!!! I check my wallet. I have less than $15 in cash.
Me: uh, no credit cards huh?
Dry cleaner dude: nope.
Me: How much is it?
Dry cleaner dude: $85.
Me: $85?!!! $#&%$(#)$~!!!

So I get back in my car. I reevaluate the situation for the second time. I’m already late for work. There’s no way I’m going to get out of work by 6:30. I’ll just go find some cash, and come back and pick it up. Alright. Where can I get cash? Hm… downtown Berkeley isn’t too far. I’ll go there.

I go to downtown Berkeley. Parking is impossible. Then I remember that Bank of America has a parking lot. Our joint account is at Wells Fargo, which is across the street, but I feel like a traitor parking at BOA and actually going to WF, plus there are all kinds of scary signs in the BOA lot saying it’s for BOA customers only. That’s alright, I’ll just withdraw some cash from my BOA account. No problem. I go to the ATM. I punch in my PIN. I tell the machine I want $200. It tells me my pin is wrong. Sh*t. What’s my pin?! I haven’t used my BOA ATM in so long… I punch in another PIN. Cr*p. Still wrong. Wait, did I just punch in the same one as before? I can’t remember…. ARGH!!! I punch in another PIN for the 3rd time. Finally it goes through. Thank God!! I get my cash and run…

I get back to the dry cleaners, park, don’t pay for parking since I can’t, and run into the store and pay the guy his freaking $85 and pick up our huge amount of clothes and stuff it all in my trunk. Okay, finally I am done and I can get to work.

I drive about half a block from the dry cleaners when I get a phone call. It’s from BOA Fraud Protection Services. There’s been some unusual activity on my ATM card, and I need to call them back to verify the transactions…

Need I say more? I had a sucky morning.

Soooo…. we finally made the beer last night. Last time we got sidetracked by, well, actually drinking beer instead.  Anyhow, we got lots of pictures of the process I’ll post later. But the upshot of it is, we will have (hopefully, pending all of it leaking out of our carboy, or contamination or some other horrible thing that I shouldn’t be worrying about but still am) about 50 bottles worth of beer that we will need bottles for in about two weeks, and only about a dozen bottles so far.

So drink beer (in brown or green or any dark color glass, with a regular cap, no twist off) and give us the empty bottle. We’ll give you back a bottle of homebrew in about a month or so. (After we bottle you have to wait 2 weeks for the beer to carbonate itself…)

How awesome of a deal is that? Come on. You get TWO beers for the price of ONE!!! Score! (No guarantees on the quality of the second beer. Should be akin to a pal ale but like I said, no guarantees.) Plus you get to feel good about recycling. Double score!!

And, just for the hell of it, to get everyone in the spirit of drinking beer, I leave you with a fabulous AOII drinking song (Actual performance of this song by me not included with your bottle donation, sorry!) :

We drink beer,
We drink beer,
We drink lots and lots of beer
On the sundeck of old AOII…

(repeat above verse)

And we’ll drink, drink, drink
Till we vomit in the sink (blech!)
Then we’ll shout it out, loud and clear:
More Beer!

And if Mom should appear,
We’ll say “Mom, have a beer!”
On the sundeck of old AOII…

Apologies to any AOIIs out there, if I got the lyrics off a bit, it’s been a while…

So to recap (haha, get it? oh… nevermind):
-brown or green or dark colored beer bottles, with regular caps, no twist off.
-get them to us within two weeks.

Thank you!!