Today I came home from work early. I'm just not feeling very well. At about 11:00 I started feeling light-headed and feverish and as I type this I'm starting to get chills. I guess this stupid flu that's been jumping around at work has finally landed on me.

I'm going to bed.

I haven't been to work for nine days but it's all over now. This is just a regular Sunday where I have to make sure that I get my laundry done in time for tomorrow.

I find myself sitting here, listening to the little ice pellets hitting my office window, and hoping against hope that we'll get a foot or so of ice accumulation so I can take an extra day off.

My sleep schedule is almost completely upside-down after the past week. If I can get through today without taking a nap I may be able to get back on track. Otherwise I'll be really suffering at work.

Last night was a special night at Rich O's. For one thing I actually got my sister Dina to come by for a while. This rare event was then surpassed by the arrival of Dan "Holy Shit" Kruer, a friend from 20 years ago, and his wife Chris, a childhood friend of Dina's.

First things first though. When I arrived I knew that I'd need to find a suitably weak beer for my sister to drink. I asked some regulars what was the wimpiest beer at Rich O's and was told it was Spaten Lager. I had one of these to field-test it for Dina and it was indeed wimpy.

I sat for a while, drinking my wimpy beer and talking to RealTrainGirl and her friend Matt-Josh-Willy-Whatever about various things like would I be able to recognize Dan and Chris when they arrived.

Dina arrived and immediately wanted to know where LaptopGirl was. I guess she's read about my fascination with her in my 'blog. Unfortunately LaptopGirl didn't arrive until after Dina had gone but she did get to meet RealTrainGirl and MisunderstoodGirl before Dan and Chris arrived.

While the girls drank their wimpy Spaten Lagers I tried to make recommendations for Dan. I think he tried the Beak's Best, then sampled the Cone Smoker and Community Dark before settling on the Dark as a beer he liked.

I ended up having a few half-pints of Cone Smoker and then a couple of Community Darks. The Cone Smoker is style#1 and the Community Dark remains unchanged.

After a while my sister and then my friends left in search of some industrial swill and I sat and talked to LaptopGirl and a couple of Rich O's professional beer drinkers until they closed the place up and kicked us out.

Being on vacation all last week, I ended up at Rich O's every night before going back to the Executive West to watch more pool.

For the most part I stuck to my regular NABC brews - Cone Smoker and Community Dark. I did, however, have a couple more of the Beak's Best beers. Knowing I'd be driving back to Louisville I definitely watched my alcohol intake even more than I normally do.

Other than that, I spent the time talking to some of the various regulars I've gotten to know. LaptopGirl and MisunderstoodGirl remain my favorite conversation partners, though TrainGirl and RealTrainGirl are also pretty fun to be around.

On Friday it was standing-room-only until quite late. I got so claustrophobic a couple of times that I went out and sat in the (empty) non-smoking section.

A rare Tuesday report - courtesy of my company and their vacation benefit - starts out like any other - with a Cone Smoker. It's back to style #1, which is very good, especially after having to endure the BBC porter I've had for the past few days.

After my Cone Smoker I tried one of NABC's Beaks Best ESB beers. For a beer with the word "bitter" in the name it wasn't bad at all. A lot darker and more complex than I expected.

One interesing thing (to me at least) was that MisunderstoodGirl plays both the guitar and the bass guitar, and speaks Arabic. She also painted the numerous new pieces of artwork adorning the walls at Rich O's. This girl has more sides to here than a D&D dice set. Sigh. If only she wasn't so far out there in weirdo land.

Next I had a Community Dark just to have something to drink. I detected some roast malt character this time that I hadn't noticed before. Still pretty good and still pretty bland.

After Rich O's closed I went to another bar with LaptopGirl and a couple of other Rich O's regulars.

For some odd reason that I cannot recall I decided to have a PBR. It, like the Falls City I had a couple of months ago, wasn't nearly as bad as I remember. Not a lot to describe about it. It was just good and mellow.

Meanwhile, I find LaptopGirl to be more and more fascinating every time I talk to her. She has shown some really shallow sides to her personality but at other times, like tonight, she has shown some depth beyond her years. Her extreme intelligence, along with her dorky cuteness, makes her the official hottie of Rich O's and the woman that most makes me wish I were ten years younger. I get the impression that age is an issue with her, though I can't imagine too many guys her age being able to keep up with her mentally.

I didn't expect to have a beer report tonight. For one thing, I'm playing in a pool tournament (see the pool blog), and for another, I didn't expect the hotel bar to have anything worth drinking.

Well I finished my only match of the day before 7:00 PM, and the hotel bar had BBC Dark Star Porter.

I've had this before, a long time ago. It's not my favorite. A little too bitter for my taste, and the roasted malt was a little weird tasting.

Still, it was a lot better than anything else in the hotel bar. Just not quite as good as the Bad Elmer's I had a few weeks ago.

This entry is a day late for a simple reason. My Internet provider sucks. I was offline for about 8 hours total yesterday, and during those brief periods when I was online I had to use the time for some real work.

Saturday I was in the mood for a little experimenting. I first had a beer that's been recommended to me several times by MisunderstoodGirl, Delerium Tremens. I guess I liked it, but I can't really explain why. There was nothing remarkable about it except its smoothness.

Next I had a little Chouffe Nice. Again, this was okay, but I think a little too fruity (tasting) for me to ever have another.

Next I ended my experimenting by having a Cone Smoker and an Anchor Christmas Ale.

One particular item of interest was LaptopGirl, dressed like a homeless person as usual, is proving to have quite a hot little body under all those rags and hippie clothes she wears. CoffeeDude agreed with me on this, as did some other guy that I don't know.

The humidity in my house is 26%. That would be ridiculous under any circumstances, but it's even more ridiculous since I have a fancy humidifer doohickey as part of my heating system.

Looks like I'll need to get the guys that installed the system out here to see why it's so dry.

Last night was perhaps the most crowded that I've ever seen Rich O's. It was standing-room only for most of the night.

To start off I had an Anchor Christmas Ale. I wanted to make sure I had at least one more before they ran out.

While drinking that first pint, I overheard the owner of Rich O's tell someone that they'd just tapped a new keg of Cone Smoker. I found this very interesting as it was the first time that I was definitely aware of a change. Of course I had to have one.

It was good, style #1 I'd say. I'm very curious to see how this new keg ages over the next couple of weekends - or however long it lasts.

"Dude, if it takes that many flushes you need to see a doctor."

-- A guy on fark.com referring to a Texas man who'd gotten a water bill for $7,714,510.21.

Anyone who knows me well enough will realize that this is a no-brainer.

My December 5th Hottie of the Day is the incomparable Larissa Meek from Average Joe 2.

I was playing with DarkTree and Bryce this evening and made my first image for 2004.

I've been told that I write too much about beer - that it seems like all I do is drink. Apparently this is a problem, though I don't know why. Hic.

Let's see, non-beer stuff. Hmmmm. Oh yeah, today I went to Home Depot to buy some new flourescent lights for my pool table. I wanted 8' 60-watt lights to match the two that weren't burned out. This idiot at Home Depot started an actual argument with me about what length lights I wanted. He said that pool table lights are 48" and not 8' and he knows this because he's some kind of pool god apparently. I guess he just works at Home Depot between big-time gambling sessions. The fucker was actually snickering when I walked away with my box of 8' lights.

On a completely unrelated note, what's up with all this damn rain we're having here? It's January godamned 4th and all it's done for the past week is rain. If it was thirty degrees colder, like it's supposed to be on January goddamned 4th, we'd have a foot of snow covering the other few feet of snow we'd have already had if it had been colder last week. If I wanted rain in December and January I would have stayed in Seattle.

Apparently in my pre-Christmas cleaning I managed to lose my November bank statement. So tonight I'm sitting here with December's, all ready to balance my checking account, but I can't because November's statement is gone. I suppose I can get a copy from my bank tomorrow. This just pushes me even further into the "Bah, Humbug" camp of Christmas observers.

Started out simple tonight by having one of NABC's Community Dark pints. In the recent past this beer has been treated unfairly because I've been drinking it after much stronger beers - it always pales in comparison.

Well tonight it got in the first shots at my taste buds and I remembered why I liked it in the first place. It's full of malty sweetness (or sweet maltiness) and not much else. It has a low enough alcohol content to make it a very good session beer.

Next I had an Anchor Brewing 2003 Christmas Ale. I spent the entire pint trying to decide (a) if I liked it or not, and (b) what the hell I was drinking. Apparently Anchor changes the recipe for their Christmas Ale each year, and they keep that recipe pretty secret. If I had to guess I'd say the best way to describe this year's version would be "smoky nutmeg" but I could be way off base about the nutmeg part. There was definitely some smoky something in there. At the end I decided I did like it, but more than one in a given session would probably be too much.

Lastly I had a Cone Smoker, partly to verify that it was indeed smoke I'd been tasting in the Anchor Ale. It was, though it was more like the smoke in Schlenkerla Urbock Smokebeer than the smoke in Cone Smoker. Grapier.

About halfway through the Cone Smoker MisunderstoodGirl and TrumpetDude started talking about jazz. Every damn third word for over an hour was jazz. Blah blah jazz? Blah blah jazz. Blah blah jazz! If I ever hear the word jazz again in my life I may kill myself. Or maybe I'll just kill whoever says the word jazz instead.

Today, after over a week's worth of phone calls, I finally got in touch with two people at Sony that are not stupid.

I managed to convince them that my DVD burner is broken, and that it's not my fault. Now I actually get to have the thing fixed.

I was really starting to wonder if I'd be able to send the drive in for repairs before the warranty ran out in April.

As the Kentuckiana Death Flu is still trying to drag me down I wasn't even sure if I'd make it out last night, but after a long nap I started feeling better and went to Rich O's.

I'd been hoping to get another pint of Great Lakes Christmas Ale but alas, they had run out. I had a Cone Smoker and I'm still happy to report (knock on wood) that style #2 is still on tap.

My second "beer" was something called "Bad Elf" that I'm not going to even bother looking up because it's not worth the effort. Tasted like fermented Mazola Corn Oil, and not in a good way. Blech.

In a rare show of non-competiveness, Rich O's was also offering BBC Alt on tap so I had a couple of those followed by another Cone Smoker. The Alt, nestled as it was between Cone Smokers, was not as good as it's been in the past. It's also still the only beer I know of that tastes better in bottled form than draft form. That still didn't stop me from having two of them.

In attendance at Rich O's were several people from the New Year's party. I think I got most of their names right - though I continued to use nicknames in my head. MisunderstoodGirl showed up later and I was mysteriously glad to see her. She gave me an excuse to stop mingling with all the other regulars that were looking down at my BBC Alt.

For the first time in a long time I actually went out for New Year's Eve.

I got hopelessly lost on the way there, and hopelessly lost when I left, but the time in-between was quite enjoyable.

Also enjoyable was finding MysteryLady at home and ringing in the new year again.

First off, I'm a dumbass.

For those readers that may doubt that statement and require more proof I submit the following:

I've known for a month that I'd be going to a New Year's party. I've known for a month that I wanted to take a couple of growlers of beer from Rich O's to the party. I've known for a month that Rich O's would be closed all day on December 31st.

So what did I do with all this knowledge? I forgot to get beer from Rich O's on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.

Like I said, I'm a dumbass.

Anyway, what I ended up taking to the party was a six-pack each of BBC Alt and Great Lakes Porter. They're both good beers, and the porter especially was well-received, but compared to the Cone Smoker and Great Lakes Christmas Ale that I'd been planning to take, they were a little dull.

The porter was, however, the best porter I can remember having. The Great Lakes Brewery is now one of my favorites.