Yeah, it was my birthday. The big present from my wife was a breadmaker machiny thingy. Nothing like waking up to the smell of fresh bread. We drove to Bismarck on the morning of my birthday, spent the night at Carjo’s mom’s, and got a lot of stuff done. Last time we were there we had tried to get out passports done and ran into nothing but trouble. This time we had all our ducks in a row and it was somewhat painless. Time-consuming but painless.
We also stocked up on EVERYTHING as is our wont when we go out of town. It had been a while so between the case of wine, the pallet of canned cat food, three hundred cases of pop, and the stash from Lowe’s, the Mercury Land Yacht was riding on its back axle all the way home. But hey, we’re stocked up again. Remember the Stark motto: Winter is Coming.
I had a couple of extraordinary ales at JL Beers. They had two of Sierra Nevada’s Beer Camp series on draft, the Imperial Red, which is a very dark Imperial IPA and the Sleight of Hand, which they bill as a Belgian IPA. Both were served at a proper temperature in tulip glasses and both had a very high ABV. So yeah, I was good with just two.
And now I’m back home, nursing a stiff back from loading and unloading everything, a sliced thumb from cutting up fresh bagels for the freezer, and a strained right hand that just means my carpal tunnel is acting up again. Who knew that being in your 50s was such a litany of small bitches? But I shall prevail.
I’ve got some new ideas for the book to be churned into words, a new supply of Diet Coke/Coke Zero to get me there, and among the presents I have, a new Goblin King action figure to watch over me as I type. I got no real complaints.
jeroljohnson 