Taco – Page 23

A Change of Course

March 15, 2016 by Taco

It is Spring Break here at Château de Taco.

I’m not doing anything fancy for the break, I’m really not doing much of anything since I’m not feeling well. Tis’ been a very lackluster Spring Break thus far.

But alas, this post isn’t about me complaining about being unwell during my break, it’s about me complaining about blogging.

When I originally started this blog – under a different name, and seemingly in a different life – I had a goal. That goal was to write a blog to myself, which is a goal still reflected in Rule 1. I had no intention of generating traffic, I didn’t want to do it for money, and really, I wasn’t even writing for my small but dedicated audience (which has actually grown larger than I realized, thanks to Google noming a few of my posts – hi random people!). This worked for awhile, but what I’ve found is that over time I’ve have sort of lost my passion for writing a fair number of my posts.

It’s not that I don’t like writing, and it’s not that I don’t like blogging, but encyclopedic update after encyclopedic update has sort of worn me down.

This blog, prior to this post, had 317,915 Words, as a reference, according to Amazon’s database (and it’s Amazon, so you know their database is cray-cray), the median length of all books is approximately 64,000 words. Further, literary classic and bonafide tome “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville had only 209,117 words. So, in writing this blog, I have literally wrote more than 100,000 words beyond the length of Moby Dick. And as a reference, I am nearly 60% of the way through writing “War and Peace” by Leo Tolstoy. In other words, this blog is already longer than roughly 96% of fictional literary works in existence (and in case you were wondering, no I do not exist, this actually all just a story written by an increasingly sentient AI).

In fairness that is looking at the blog as a whole, yadda yadda. I’m not trying to say I should be nominated for a Nobel Prize in Literature. I’m just saying that I’ve written a lot on this blog, and of late I’ve kind of felt like I was on rails with it. In that I go a week, I write a post about that week. I go a week, I write a post about that week. I go a week, I write a post about that week. I go a week, I write a post about that week. I go a week, I write a post about that week. I go a week, I write a post about that week. You get the picture. There isn’t much mixing it up. You can pretty much always guess that I will have written about something I did, be it Kayaking in the North Sea, Moving to Boston, or Having Things Shoved up my Ass. It’s not that these things aren’t interesting, they are, and I do enjoy writing about most of them. But what I don’t enjoy is feeling like I have to write about them, and sometimes I feel that way. Sure, it’s all internalized. No one, at all, is saying “Hey Taco write about your life or I’ll kill kittens,” (ok maybe Tristen) there is just an element of the routine that has came to exist in this blog, and I’m not a fan of it.

So I’m going to be changing it. Here is what the change will look like:

1. Whatever I feel like

And there you have it. I’m not saying that I won’t continue to post “diary-like” posts that recount my adventures, I will. I just don’t know if they are going to pop up every single week anymore. You can also expect some posts to pop up that have nothing to do with my recent activities, a good example would be this one.

The overall point is, I am going to be tweaking (not uprooting, just tweaking) the “theme” of this blog. It’s no longer going to be something solely devoted to my recent exploits. It’s now going to include things that I want to write about, even if no one else gives the slightest of cares about them. There might also be a trend towards shorter posts from time to time.

Again, I’m not saying that anyone other than me took Dinosaur Bear into its current course, but upon reflection I’ve decided to sail for a slightly different horizon.

But yeah there will still be beer.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. – This is also the first time in.. literally years that I have posted a post at the same time I wrote it. Interesting.

P.P.S. – The Mayflower II entering New York Harbor in 1957, yes it’s a real photo, I have all the awesome photos.

Beer Blurb (3-9-16) and Cupcakes!

March 10, 2016 by Taco

If there was a bit too much poo for you last time, then have no fear, this post is a poo-free zone. Though I do still have a cold, but that isn’t topic of this post either.

Let’s get back to basics.

It’s time for a good ole’ fashioned beer blurb.

The spotlight this time around is on:

1. Escher – Portico Brewing Company

Sadly, Escher does not yet have a Beer Advocate page, so the Untappd page will have to do.

This was my first time drinking Escher, though it wasn’t my first time sampling the Portico Brewing Company (that was Fuzzy Logic). Much like Fuzzy Logic, I was drawn to this beer because of the interesting name and, let’s be real, because it has an orange cap. Since I had enjoyed Fuzzy Logic I was pretty excited to give Escher a try.

This is technically my second Escher, the first wasn’t poured.

I have to admit, I was a little underwhelmed by my first bottle – which to be fair I didn’t pour and left in the bottle. I also wasn’t feeling super well when I had the first one, so those two things combined left me a little disappointed. However, once I poured the beer into a glass, and drank it while feeling better, it definitely improved in my book – I actually think this is one of those beers where pouring it makes a noticeable difference. This is a light-bodied pale ale, which is made with four different kinds of hops. The flavors get a bit mixed up, so honestly I couldn’t tell them all apart, but there is a consistent citrus and floral theme, which would make sense for a pale ale. The bitterness comes out a bit more than one might expect, but its curtailed by the tangerine taste. Overall, like Fuzzy Logic, this is a complicated beer, but I would recommend it on the whole. Probably not the best first Pale Ale for anyone, but it has a lot going on for those willing to stop and think about all the flavors.

In addition to getting beer over the weekend, SB and I also got cupcakes!

Pigsten guards his horde.

As if Whole Foods needed anything else to pry what little cash we have away from us, they recently added a cupcake stand to their repertoire. Yes, a cupcake stand. So, being the hapless victims that we are, we were drawn in pretty quickly and decided to sample two different kinds each. From left to right in the above photo: Cookies & Cream, Mocha, Salted Caramel, Peanut Butter & Chocolate.

They were, unsurprisingly, amazing.

Both SB and I agreed that these cupcakes did a really good job of not being too rich. The one exception to that was the Peanut Butter & Chocolate one, it was just a bit much – and the mocha one was also fairly strong. However, the Cookies & Cream and Salted Caramel were a perfect balance of obesity and deliciousness. I think the Salted Caramel was my favorite of the bunch, which actually surprised me.

The good news is that since there is an entire cupcake stand, there are still many different kinds of cupcakes left for us to try in the future – and try them we shall. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

Spelunking

March 7, 2016 by Taco

Alright, time to talk about some unpleasantness.

If you read my last post, there was no shortage of foreshadowing the fact that I had a forthcoming medical procedure this past Thursday. This post is (mostly) all about that. However, in order to fully understand the story, we need to go back to the beginning, which is roughly 2009.

To make a long story short, around 2009 I started getting heartburn really badly. The first time it came on it was so bad that I couldn’t eat or drink. It felt like I was eating glass. Sure, I’d had heartburn on and off before then, but that one specific time, October 2009, it came on strong and fast. After suffering for a week, including eating at least 3 million pounds of Tums, I tried Prilosec. It took about a week for it to start working, but by the end of 14 days I was back to normal. Fast forward 6.5 years. I still have heartburn, though not nearly as bad as that original 2009 bout. I’ve taken Prilosec regimens a few times over the years, sometimes helping, sometimes not. Most recently I’ve been taking Zantac semi-regularly, since it doesn’t have the side effects (or at least as extensive of side-effects) as Prilosec does. For reference, Prilosec is a Proton Pump Inhibitor, whereas Zantac is not. Point being, I have chronic heartburn, that doesn’t seem easily linked to any one thing. For example, most people think it’s the beer. Well, sure, beer gives me heartburn occasionally, but not always. Sometimes water gives me heartburn (seriously). Sometimes I get heartburn out of the blue. Does the beer help? No, of course not. But I don’t think the beer is the primary culprit. In fact, some of the worst heartburn I’ve had has been during periods where I wasn’t drinking beer (believe it or not such periods actually do exist in my life). So I have chronic heartburn. I finally went to the doctor about it, and she was concerned enough, given my history, that she recommended I go see a Gastroenterologist.

But it doesn’t stop there. I also have chronic bowel issues. I’ll spare you all the lovely details, but I’ve always had bowel issues (like, as far back as I can remember, and according to Meem even further back beyond that). However, these have gotten worse in the past six years or so. Notice the commonality? So, based on the whole of the circumstances which involved problems from my upper to lower GI tract, I was off to the gastroenterologist, henceforth GI since I hate typing the word (and I can’t even pronounce it half the time).

Upon meeting with the GI, he decided that yep, sounds like I’ve got some systemic issues. So he scheduled me for both an Upper Endoscopy and Colonoscopy, both on the same day. In layman’s terms, I was going to have cameras shoved down my throat and up my ass. Score. He also ordered some blood work that same day (of the first appointment), which all came back fine.

Now the Endoscopy doesn’t involve much preparation. You just can’t eat or drink anything three hours in advance. Simple enough. The Colonoscopy is the red headed stepchild of the two. Five days before your test you have to switch over to a low-fiber diet, which coincidentally knocked out about 3/4 of what I normally eat. Instead I got to enjoy such delicacies as canned beets, cream of rice, and saltine crackers. Then, the day before the procedure you switch over to an all liquid diet, not just any liquids mind you, but clear liquids – e.g. nothing you can’t see through and NO RED anything. So basically you can drink broth and Ensure clear, of which two flavors exist. That evening, you have to start “cleansing” your bowels, which is a really nice way of saying that you descend to the 7th layer of Hell for about 18 hours. Then the day of you continue the clear liquid diet until you have to stop eating and drinking.

The low-fiber diet was fairly boring, and required me to miss some good lunches, but overall it wasn’t too bad.

However, Wednesday, the day before my procedure – and also the longest day of my week, was pretty objectively terrible. See, Wednesday not only meant I had to switch over to drinking clear liquids, I also had a client meeting in downtown Boston. Despite my strongest of protests, I had to go down to City Hall early in the morning. Oh, and because slowly starving to death and dealing with clients isn’t fun enough, it was also pouring rain.

The client meeting was normal enough. It was long, mostly boring, and the demands are so vast that they will never be met. So, as mentioned, normal enough. The fact that I had nothing but Ensure in my stomach probably didn’t help matters. It continued to rain all the way back home. I had decided to return home rather than go to the law school as my first class was still a couple of hours away. By this point I felt so tired and cranky that I actually ended up skipping Administrative Law, which was most definitely worth it. I did decide to return to campus for my second class though, and by then it was clear blue skies, albeit much colder.

Yay Squirrel.

Other than being kind of nauseous and tired, the rest of the school day wasn’t too bad. Things were about to change though, as by the time I got home around 7:20pm it was time for me to start “cleansing” my bowels. It was the start of the worst 18 hours of my life in recent memory.

Why?

This is why.

If there is death in a bottle, that doesn’t bring about medical death, but kills you in every other way imaginable – magnesium citrate is it. It looks innocent enough. Just a clear 10oz bottle of medicine. But hidden within is a suffering legendary even in Hell. See, as part of the preparation process you have to drink 1.5 of these bottles in the evening, then another 1.5 bottles in the morning. So 15oz each time. The funny thing is, according to the bottle the maximum dose in a 24 hour period is 10oz – whereas I had to consume 30oz.

It all started simply enough. I sat down on the couch, and started drinking one of the lemon ones. I had read that drinking it very chilled and through a straw was the way to go. It tasted pretty terrible. I didn’t puke, which according to my instructions packet is not super uncommon, but I wouldn’t say I was enjoying life while drinking it either. It kind of tasted like flat 7-Up mixed with saltwater and hydrogen peroxide. Mmm. The cherry flavor was pretty much the same, just without the 7-Up and instead with cherry syrup from the 1500s. All in all, drinking it wasn’t as bad as I was anticipating. I got through 1.5 bottles fairly quickly (as you are supposed to drink it quickly) and then had some more Ensure (WOO BOY) and water. Later I had some broth, life of luxury.

According to my packet, “results” were supposed to happen within 30 minutes and six hours. Within about 15 minutes I could tell something deep and dark had been awoken within my core. However, despite some rumbling and a nearly immediate feeling of bloating, nothing happened.

I was a bit concerned, because my “low fiber” and then liquid diet had pretty much put a cease to my number 2s. So I knew there was a treasure trove of poo up in there, and all the tremors and quakes from the magnesium citrate had me concerned.

But minutes turned into hours, and still nothing. I felt pretty terrible, like my guts were about to explode, but no poo. Eventually it was bedtime. So it was off to sleep.

Around 2am I woke up.

The next three hours were like the Normandy scene from Saving Private Ryan. A portal to Hell opened inside of my ass and demons unseen since the fall of Lucifer poured forth into this world. It was so bad that I couldn’t even move without a quantum explosion. Try as I might, I was unable to leave the toilet. I think I crapped 15-20 times. By the end it was like a power-washer blasting out brown acid. My ass felt like someone had mashed a Dremel up in there. And so it went. It was God-freaking-awful. For THREE SOLID HOURS, I did nothing but shit. I’ve had the flu, I’ve had food poisoning, I’ve had an array of stomach-bugs. NOTHING was like this. At one point I think my body accepted the fact that this was indeed in its final hours, and so I had flashbacks to my childhood as my brain embraced sweet death.

But obviously it wasn’t the end. Around 4:30am I crawled back into bed, my ass hovering around the core temperature of the sun. And then I managed to fall into a light, haunted sleep.

The next morning I woke up and painted the toilet some more. And then I had to drink the other 1.5 bottles.

Unlike the first time, when I still had intestines, the second time around this world-destroying tonic poured through me so quickly that I felt like I was transcending the mortal plane. To make a long story short, eventually I was just shitting stomach acid and bile. You could have used my colon as a clean room to build space shuttles. There was not a trace of anything left inside of me. I think by the time it was done, I’d expelled so much that even matter was no longer present inside of me and a black hole was slowly beginning to envelope my ass.

Around that time it was time to go get the procedures done. I was extremely tired, weak, and I was also thirsty. But fortunately I had “cleansed” myself to the point that there was no problem taking public transit down into Boston. I was originally worried I’d shit myself, but nah, I had no anus anymore, just a gaping vortex into infinite blackness.

Upon arrival I got to wait about 25 minutes past my appointment time, I think my ass consumed the chair I was sitting in. After that I got called back to the prep area.

Here you get to don the stylish hospital robe, get your IV, get hooked up to the monitoring devices (heart, oxygen, etc.) and talk to the nurse about all the magical joy that your body has shared with the world since yesterday. Then the doctor comes in and tells you about how he is going to shove things up your ass and down your throat, and then you sign a form saying that you will try not to consume too many people in your anal vortex and also that you acknowledge the risks of the procedures.

After that you get carted back to the “operating” room, where you then get oxygen tubes put up your nose and you receive the anesthesia via IV. For these procedures they don’t put you fully out, you are supposed to go into a sort of “twilight” state while you become a hentai star with camera tentacles. The thing is, my body really doesn’t like anesthesia. Sort of like when I had my wisdom teeth removed and the anesthesia simply stopped working (that sure was fun), the anesthesia didn’t really have the full effect on me. So I never really fully went into “twilight” lands during the two procedures. That said, it was NOT as bad as the aforementioned wisdom teeth incident. I was out of it enough that I felt the cameras spelunking inside of me, but I wasn’t too concerned about it. I remember the Upper Endoscopy made it hard to breathe, but I don’t remember panicking. Then I remember the Colonoscopy (ass submarine) kind of hurt, but again, it was all good. I do remember the Doctor commenting about how lucid I was, and them asking me if I was ok, and I remember responding, but other than that it wasn’t nearly as bad as the Hell on Earth that was magnesium citrate.

After it was done I was wheeled into the recovery area, where I took about 1/5th as long as normal to recover – probably because I never really got shitfaced from the drugs. I got to have some Diet Coke, and then got dressed. I had the same nurse throughout the whole process and she was super nice. She even seemed moderately impressed that I once built catheters.

SB had arrived to get me, and we took a Lyft home because I was not feeling up to the MBTA.

The rest of the day was ok, I was groggy, tried, and sore, and I also had some short-term memory issues, but all of that is normal. I couldn’t drink any alcohol that first day, which kind of sucked, but honestly I didn’t even want beer – SHOCKER. Actually, the biggest post-procedure issue the day of was THESE DAMN THINGS.

I hate those things. Why? Hairy chest (notice the hairs). Try it sometime. It’s awesome.

But still, I’d rather pull off 100 of those things off than deal with magnesium citrate again.

The next day I was able to get out and about and go to Target to get some new jeans, since the patch I had put on my jeans had since worn a hole on the other side of my jeans.

As for my results, I will have to wait a bit for the biopsy results (they took biopsies of both my upper and lower tracts). However, from the visual side of things my colon was normal, other than a few internal hemorrhoids, which are apparently quite common. So that is good, no polyps or anything like that. My esophagus was mostly normal, save for some mild furrowing in the middle portion. We’ll have to wait for the biopsies to determine what exactly, if anything, that means – but it wasn’t anything majorly concerning for the Doctor. So, the good news is that there was nothing visibly wrong, the bad news is that I have to wait to see if the lab results say anything about potentially being celiac, or having IBS, or what.

In the days since the procedure I’ve had a sore throat and sore guts. My bowels are also pretty jacked up – however all of this has been improving each day and none of it is abnormal for the circumstances. I’m just really glad it’s over. In the grand tale of medical Taco procedures, this one is right up there with Chronic Compartment Syndrome testing and its screw-driver sized needles. To make matters worse, I’m now getting a cold. I don’t know if this is related to procedure (or removing all the good bacteria from my guts), or if it’s just bad luck. But yeah, it’s not been the best of weeks, but it’s not been the worst of weeks either.

Anyways, that was my spelunking adventure. I’ll update on the biopsies as some point after I get the results.

Until next time,
-Taco

Revving Up and Planning

March 2, 2016 by Taco

[Note: This post was actually written over the course of about a week, so if there are any time inconsistencies, then that is why. Also, this post kind of goes all over the place. I had no exact thesis when I started writing it – and it most definitely shows. However, tucked into my emo-rage are quite a few insights into what is going on in my life, in case your were curious. At the very least its a pseudo-stream of thought look into over a week of my life.]

If there was one word that I could use describe my life lately it would be “busy,” – no, not “hectic,” just busy. If there was one word that I could use describe I feel about next [this] week, then that word would most certainly be “apprehensive.” Whatever you call it, things have definitely been revving up here lately.

Part of the recent discouragement I’ve had probably falls on the fact that I had a couple of really boss weekends lately, involving everything from family and sports, to spa time and sports. Once you’ve had a good string of events, the return to normalcy is always a bit of a “bleh,” moment. However, this “bleh” has been compounded by an incredibly sharp increase in the number of things on my mind, which has included everything from 3 days straight of travel planing (and no, not like 1 hour a day, I’m talking like 5-6 hours a day) and then a proverbial deluge of law school related crap. Yes, I say crap, because it’s crap, it’s not “Oh man this is so awesome I love learning, law is fun!” it’s “no wonder lawyers hate their lives” kind of stuff. I’ll address some of it here, but like with many things, a lot of it will remain unwritten simply because I don’t care to devote web-space to it.

But hey, at least the law school has free lunches!

That is if you can get to the food before it’s gone, people are hellishly greedy here. I’ve seen people with TWO PLATES while someone else got no food. Ah my cherished classmates.

However, let’s backtrack a bit to beer. Ah yes, beloved beer. While last weekend might not have been quite as exciting as some of the prior weekends, it was a weekend, which gives it a few inherent bonuses. A regular of which is beer and our Friday night dinners. For dinner we opted for Qdoba, which foreshadowed a string of Mexican food for yours truly. After dinner at Qdoba, I opted for something from Brooklyn Brewery, since it had been a good bit since I had had any of their brews and as I’ve mentioned before, they are good stuff.

This was my first time having this particular offering in a good while (so much so that I’ve forgotten I’d ever had it), so I was excited to dive into it.

1. East India Pale Ale – Brooklyn Brewery

I’ll have to admit, I’m not sure what differentiates an “East IPA” from a “Not-East IPA” or a “West IPA” or a “Southwest IPA” or a “North by Northeast IPA” etc. That said, this was still a good IPA. It was kind of middle of the road, but not in a bad way. It has a very nice orange color to it, beer orange I mean, not orange orange. The aroma is pretty mild, but the flavor is moderately robust. Nothing exceptional, but a solid six pack beer.

With our beer, or rather, prior to our beer, Valentino and I also selected animal crackers for our Friday night treat.

Valentino liked the special edition box, for obvious reasons.

While I normally opt for something a bit more treat-like than animal crackers, I was really feeling graham crackers and milk, but such delicacies cost like 6 freaking dollars at Broadway, so I went with a box of animal crackers. And then the next day at Whole Foods got a small bag of chocolate chip animal crackers, which cumulatively satisfied my desire for graham crackers and milk

After a relatively normal, albeit wholly unproductive weekend, it was time to get back to the salt mine. My level of enthusiasm is accurately expressed in the following photo.

The weather was also decently cooperative, at least to start the week. However, the clear blue skies hid the crap weather that was on the horizon.

Notice the last stand of a valiant snow-bro.

After that it got colder, snowed some, sleeted some, iced some, and rained a lot. Oh and the wind, always the wind.

Making all of this worse for Tristen, was that his mortal enemy the neighbor’s “rat” (cat) returned.

If you look closely you can see the cat in the window. There actually used to be two cats, but we are pretty sure Tristen killed one. We actually thought he killed everyone in the apartment until just this week. Tristen despises the rats. However, since his last foray into the neighbor’s building (and the months of silence from that apartment that followed) we don’t let him wander over there anymore. So, being the industrious dinosaur he is, he started trying to train Pigsten to crawl through the pipes into the other building, fortunately Pig wasn’t having it.

Outside of the home chaos caused by the return of the rat, my law school enjoyment also degraded over the course of the week.

It all started with the first subcite for ELR. I haven’t complained about ELR enough lately, so its time to complain about that, in addition to complaining about everything else.

The most recent update I can give on ELR is that I don’t really fit into the social culture of the journal (or really the school at large). By this I don’t mean that I can’t get along with people, by and large ELR people are some of my favorite people at the law school. What I mean is that I am completely ok with being a behind-the-scenes person. I generally don’t like advancing up ranks (especially when I make no money) and I definitely don’t like advancing in rank when the benefit gained is nowhere near the extra time spent (there are exceptions to this, but none of them apply to me). Working on a journal in law school is a very mixed bag.

One the one hand, you get the “benefits” of being on a journal. I can’t quantify these, as I’m not sure what all of them are. For instance, ELR may have been hugely helpful for me behind-the-scenes on my resume, or it could have done jack squat. Then there are all the pedantic and academic benefits, which I seriously couldn’t care less about, therefore – not benefits for me. As a realist, what I’ve learned is that there are, in practicality, four “real tiers” to ELR. While ELR technically has many tiers, most of them mean nothing in the real world outside of their respective “real tier.”

I’ll describe these “real tiers” as I see them, which only makes sense.

“Shit” Tier – Staff. This includes subciters and those various people who support the journal in a variety of ways, yet aren’t actually editors. While these people are important, in reality if you are listed as “Staff” then no-one gives a shit. The only exception to this (which ironically applied to me) is if you have no background in environmental anything and you want to show an interest to some third party on your resume. But that is all it accomplished, you devote a lot of time and evenings and you display an “interest,” not an “ability.”
“Babby’s First Journal” Tier – Editors, Technical Editors, Article Editors, Online Editors, Managing Editors. This includes the bulk of the people on ELR, and whats funny is, there is a HUGE discrepancy in the amount of work for people in this tier, yet the rewards remain the same. An Editor (also known as a Line Editor, also known as a “bitch”) will put in a lot more work than a subciter, but FAR, FAR, less work than a Technical Editor or Article Editor. Then, it gets even more complicated, because one Editor may put in substantially more work than the next Editor, despite being the same “rank,” and further, a Managing Editor, which is officially “above” an Article Editor, might put in less work than their official underling. In other words, if you are like Taco, there is no damn reason to put it anything above minimal effort here. Why? Because it doesn’t freaking matter in the real world. What I find really funny, is that Managing Editors are actually only second “officially” to the Editor(s) in Chief, but because no one gives a shit about a “Managing Editor” compared to an “Executive” or “Senior” Editor, they are basically no different than any other normal tier position. Which brings me to:
“So this Person isn’t Retarded” Tier – Executive Editors, Senior Editors. These are the first positions that I would say actually “pop” out to people. In that, “Oooh, this person is a Senior Editor” or “Yo dawg, this person is an Executive Editor” sounds cool, doesn’t it? While it is true that Executive and Senior Editors do a lot of work, in actuality they aren’t doing much more (if any more at all) than say an Article Editor (below them) and are probably doing less than a Managing Editor (technically above them, but below them in my book) – yet they receive more benefits because people are stupid and these titles sound cool. Unless you are bound for prestigious clerkships or academia, I can see absolutely no reason to be an Executive or Senior Editor for any more than one semester. Which is of course your last semester, that way you can leave it on your resume forever. Guess what I plan to do.
“Sweet Baby Jesus” Tier – Editor(s) in Chief. This is, for most “penis enlargement” purposes, the only freaking position that matters on the entire journal. It’s better if you don’t share it with a co-EIC because nobody wants half a penis. But really, if there is one position that people are actually looking for on your resume, it’s the EIC. And even then, it’s only a very certain group of people who would be looking for it, most of whom will never be applicable for the majority of law students. I have no idea how much work EICs do, but in reality they are more of a politician for ELR than they are a traditional editor. My vibe is that EICs don’t do a lot of the technical journal work, but instead worrying about our image and running the show.

And keep in mind, these are my views for the best (not just my opinion, its objective) environmental law review in the world. Imagine what its like to be an some unknown school on some semi-official environmental journal, those EICs – despite doing a lot of work, I’m sure – are probably at best “Babby’s First Journal” Tier in comparison to ELR. I realize this sounds arrogant as shit, but it’s not me (I promise) its actually the legal profession as a whole that holds this view.

As a fun fact, I have turned down every position on this list except for EIC, which is an elected position. Why? Because the benefits to me of being anything above an Editor right now are simply not there. I was moving up the chain last semester, but then realized “WOOOOAH this blows” and said, “nope,” and now I’m just an editor again. This has not sat well with certain people. Why? Because of what I said earlier, I don’t fit into the normal social culture here. Most people are slowly killing themselves with a lack of sleep just to have the chance to advance. It’s kind of funny. Meanwhile I’m all like “Can I leave and play video games now?” – I think in some ways it makes people uncomfortable (and maybe even jealous) that I have no desire to “move up.” As such, they try to strong arm me into dong their bidding. This worked last semester, it did not work this semester, and while the new EICs are already attempting to get me to being their slave next Fall, it won’t happen then either. I am perfectly happy with where I am at, which is at the bottom of the top.

In fact, that has kind of been my entire approach to law school (which goes all the way back to an email I sent Meem before even started, entitled “My Law School Manifesto (1L Edition)”). I’ll discuss that Manifesto in the future, but for now, I’ll just say that I am perfectly content where I am, I have no desire to be in the spotlight.

So, really, that huge soapbox all really boils down to “I’m different in that I don’t want to progress upwards at everything.” Which has complicated all aspects of law school life, but journal life especially so. So when it came time for the first subcite, I was already sort of in a disadvantaged position simply because I’d gone against the wishes of “the powers that be.” The result was that I ended up getting dumped with about four-times the work as any other Editor. In fairness this wasn’t all because I had refused to stroke the peens of my superiors, but it also had to do with the fact (yes fact was the word used, but not my word) that I am the most overqualified Line Editor in the entirety of the journal. So, I ended up doing the work of four Editors, which isn’t anywhere near what I had to put in as a Technical Editor, but its still more than I signed on to do. However, if this was meant to be punishment, it didn’t really work, because I turned the work around in less than 24 hours.

But overall, the subcite wasn’t too bad. I’ve found that subcites have gotten increasingly easier for two major reasons. 1. I care less and 2. I am better at doing the work, pretty much exactly in that order. What was funny about the subcite was that we got Chipotle for dinner (ELR pays for dinner, one of the few perks you get as a “Babby” tier or below). What makes this funny is that SB and I had just gotten Chipotle the night before. What makes that funny is that Chipotle has pretty much poisoned 99% of America according to Fox News. Additionally, despite loving Chipotle before we moved to Boston, SB and I hadn’t went a single time since moving here (though I’d had it a few times at the law school, but not within the past year). So, on Sunday we decided to use my free meal coupon I got for Chipotle poisoning other people, which was the first time we’d been since moving here. Then the very next day I get it again. All of this after Qdoba on Friday. Bringing me to 1 Quesadilla and 2 Burritos in the course of 4 days.

Anyways, the one positive thing about the subcite, other than not getting food poisoning, is that I raised holy hell at got it shifted back so that it ended at 9pm. See, when I first started ELR subcites always ended at 9pm. However, each semester they kept creeping back, to the point where last semester I wasn’t getting home until 11:30pm and there were talks of Saturday subcites.

Uh yeah. No.

So I was a dick, and I got my way. I was home by 9:30pm – keeping in mind that I am Babby tier, by the way. Some people weren’t pleased, I did not care.

Tuesday was pretty normal, I even managed to get some stuff done and not skip Legal Profession, which is becoming increasingly difficult.

Wednesday sucked. Why did Wednesday suck? Well, it started early when I found out that my clinical meeting didn’t even require me to be there – except my supervisor told me that fact once I was in his office, so I’d came to school 3 hours early for no reason. Oh well, at least there is a talk with Cheesecake Factory for lunch! NOPE. Go there, and no one shows up. I waited 15 minutes past the time it was supposed to start and was one of only a handful of people left (the room had been full up until about 5 minutes past the start time, then people vacated fairly quickly) and no one came. The biggest issue with that was that I had planned my 10 hour law school day around getting lunch, so I hadn’t packed enough food. As an aside the host of the event – a Vault 20 firm – can eat my ass, I hope I get to sue you someday.

However, after my initial rage, I did manage to sneak into an event about some Texas law firm, where I found scraps of BBQ and cornbread to eat out of a napkin since all the plates were gone. So yeah, uh, go Texas, keep oppressing women and minorities and all the other things you do so well, yeah.

So I did avoid spending money on lunch out, something I loathe doing since 99.99% of my meals are made at home.

No sooner than I had settled into my two hours of dementia-inducing Administrative Law than I got an email from my clinical supervisor that was all like “YO TACO, WOO MAN, U GOIN 2 DA BOSTON CITY HALL AT 9AM NEXT WED-DAY, HOPE DAT WOIKS – BUT IF IT DOESNT EAT SHIT, UR GOIN, OH AND YEAH I NO U CANT EAT DAT DAY DUE TO GOIN 2 DA HOSPITAL ON THUR-DAY, BUT LOL FUK U”

Believe it or not that is copy-pasted straight from the email.

I’m sure you’re probably wondering what the not eating and hospital stuff is about, I’ll explain that latter.

Aside from getting rained on, the rest of my Wednesday was fairly normal and Animal Law is always interesting, even though I sometimes want to sacrifice animals in front of the more extreme people in that class, and by animals I mean people, and by people I mean them.

Wednesday night brought strong storms and winds of up to 70mph to area – there was quite a bit of damage including a few crushed cars (trees) and damaged houses (also trees) but we didn’t have any issues in our immediate area, thankfully. Truth be told we slept through most of it, save for some of the periods of more intense thunder – our old brick building masks wind pretty well.

Thursday started with another email from my clinical instructor, this time at about 7am saying “HEY, I HERD U LIKE DOING WORK WITH NO PURPOSE SO I PUT NON-EXISTENT BRIEF INSIDE UR NON-EXISTENT BRIEF SO CAN WASTE UR LIFE WHILE UR WASTE UR LIFE” (also a copy-paste) which meant that I had to do yet another draft on an assignment, keeping in mind that said assignment is probably entirely pointless now and that I’ve already moved on to another client (that 9am meeting that was forthcoming). So that destroyed my plans for the day – which mostly involved dealing with Administrative Law (and its unusually irritated professor) as well as trying to get ahead for the weekend, since I was on-call at the clinic of Friday (entire half day gone), had a fellowship selection committee project for at least half the day Saturday, and now had enough work backlogged that Sunday was a lost cause too since I could not longer get ahead.

However, before I get to Friday, let me briefly discuss some planning I’ve done lately, both retrospectively and some that SB and I got done Thursday night. Basically last week (and thus far this week) was a Binge-to-end-all-Binges when it came to travel planning. I have done extensive travel planning in the past, including more than a few 4am nights – but last week probably took the cake as far as cumulative stress goes.

Basically I realized that there was just way too much outstanding stuff related to travel, so I dove in headfirst and started making (expensive, very expensive) decisions. This ranged from a forthcoming trip with Daryl 1, a forthcoming trip home, a summer in Montana, a trip way northward, and little bits of another northward trip – though far less northward. It also concerned brainstorming (though not really deciding on) post-graduation stuff, ranging from jobs, to clerkships, to fellowships, to a long trip on a Gyrfalcon. I’m being vague because I’ll talk about all these things in good time. Deal with it.

The point is that I did a lot of planning. In fact, if you created some weird “Percentage Measurement” of how much planning I needed to do, in the course of a week I did about 50% of it, keeping in mind that some of this stuff has been on my plate for months and months.

In fact, things “Revving Up” has pretty much coincided with a huge amount of “Planning” probably because life has forced my hand. In some ways I love planning, all the details, cost benefit analyses. In other ways, I hate it when I have something else to do. I’d probably be an awesome Travel Agent, but I’m not a good planner while also being a law student, for instance. Ok, maybe I’m not a bad planner, I’m a stressed planner. And… I still have a lot to do, even after this last week of planning mania. But on the whole, Thursday marked a big milestone in the HUGE planning explosion that I had experienced. There is more to come, but the biggest, or at least most time-pressed hurdles for the next several months are now behind me (I hope).

Friday-day was mostly by the clinic, for the clinic, with the clinic, and yeah the clinic. Did I mention how a clinic is an unpaid part-time job on top of law school? Yeah? Ok.

The good news is that the weather was really nice.

By nice I mean it was sunny. It was cold and very windy otherwise. By the end of the day it was very cold, but I don’t want to complain too much because at least it wasn’t bitterly cold and raining.

As mentioned, the biggest chunk of the day was spent in the clinic, which amounted to juggling both my primary assignment and on-call assignment, which was kind of stressful. The plus side was that my on-call assignment was actually pretty interesting and dealt with a local issue that could potentially be a really big deal, I can’t say much more than that unfortunately, but it was interesting to write a memo for.

After getting out of the clinic around 5:40 it was time to go down to the square to meet SB for dinner. It was her turn to pick where we ate and she had decided on one of our good ole’ standbys, Grendel’s Den. On my way down to the square the temperature was quickly dropping already.

While I generally try to avoid purchasing beer while out unless its a special occasion (due to cost), Grendel’s Den is a hard place to pass on beer because of their half-price Happy Hours on food, which requires a 3$ or more drink purchase to kick in, so basically you can pick French Press coffee, or fancy root beer, or alcohol. So this means we pretty much always get beer when we go to Grendel’s.

I went with a staple:

2. Grendel’s Ale – Boston Beer Company

This beer is made by Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams) and to my knowledge is only available at Grendel’s Den. I’ve had it many times. This time however, I wasn’t too impressed. I don’t know if it was just a bad batch, too old, or what, but I found myself only giving it a 3.25 out of 5 on Untappd. Since I’ve liked it in the past, I’m just going to have to chalk this one up as a fluke, I’ll still try it again in the future, especially since it’s cheap because its the “house” beer.

3. Tröegs Nugget Nectar – Tröegs Brewing Company

SB went with this one and she definitely had the better of the two beers. Tröegs generally doesn’t disappoint, though some of their beers are kind of weird. This Imperial Amber Ale is made with whole flower Nugget hops and added citrus, resin and pine. Definitely worth a try, though sadly Tröegs are generally expensive – maybe even more so than they should be.

For food SB went with her Grendel’s staple, the Sonoma Wrap (Turkey, bacon, sundried tomato-goat cheese, Guacamole, arugula, onion) and I decided to try something new and went with the Grilled Chicken Breast Sandwich with Honey Mustard, which was exactly what it sounded with and honestly wasn’t that special other than that it came on a baguette.

After a nice dinner (with kind of shit service – Grendel’s servers are NOTORIOUSLY slow) we headed back out and GAWD it had gotten BITTERLY cold. That didn’t stop us from heading to Broadway Market though, where we picked up some treats (a piece of orange cream cake for me, and some strawberry rhubarb crisp for SB) and of course even more beer.

Even though I actually didn’t have any more beer that night, I’ll go ahead and talk about it here.

4. Hibernation Ale – Great Divide Brewing Company

This was one of those “hey, that looks cool!” beers, especially since we’d toured Great Divide in Denver. I decided to go with a single rather than a six pack, and I’m now glad I did. This beer is STRONG. In addition to being 8.7% ABV, its also deceptively dark and intense for an ale. Its one of those beers that does not taste so good on the first drink, but halfway down the bottle it actually gets pretty good. It’s still not something I’d recommend as a six-pack, but as a solo beer it’s a good choice.

5. Radeberger Pilsner – Radeberger Exportbierbrauerei

This is another one of those times where I disagree with Beer Advocate. I hold German beers to a high standard, and Radeberger did not meet that standard. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t a bad beer, by holistic beer standards, but it was a completely non-exceptional German beer. It was like all the standard tropes of a German pilsner rolled into one bottle with no real “pop” to it. That said, because it is kind of “middle ground” for a German pilsner, it makes for a good six-pack beer, especially at only 4.8% ABV – which is quite weak for a German beer.

Another funny thing about this beer was that I got a very “mixed” pack from Broadway. While it was all the same beer, my six-pack was clearly the victim of a bunch of singles over the course of God knows how long. The result was that I ended up with three different bottle styles of the exact same beer.

I actually kind of enjoyed that, and fortunately none of them were so old that they had skunked. Or maybe the entire pack was skunked and thus my lukewarm reaction to it. Nah, I can taste skunked beer, and this wasn’t it, this was just mediocre beer.

But all in all, it was a good, albeit extremely cold, Friday evening – we even made it home in time to catch the end of Jeopardy, which is always a plus.

Saturday was eventful, at least as far as my regular Saturdays go. It contained all the normal stuff, running my weekly 5K, grocery shopping, etc. We even got Starbucks (big surprise!) including two things we had never had before, their smoked butterscotch and cinnamon dolce lattes.

But the big event of the day was going to the law school for about four hours. Yes, generally speaking Saturday and “going to the law school” are two things which do not compute for me. In fact I have a pretty good track record of not going to the law school on weekends, regardless of consequences. However, this was a bit different, namely because it was something I actually signed up to do.

I was part of a public service award selection committee. Now, mind you, I did not get the award, I was just on the committee to select three finalists for the student body at large to vote on. Of course even just being on the committee is a fairly competitive process, spots are limited and you have to apply for it with a series of essays. Looking back, I have no idea what drove me to actually take the time to apply, other than that I thought it sounded like it might be a cool experience. I think I applied for it back in January.

Anyways, that took up the bulk of my Saturday. It was fairly informal, but still structured. While it was interesting and they did provide dinner (sadly pizza), by the end of it I was totally ready to be done. We got down to that point where a few people just kept dragging it on and on. However, in the end I actually got 2 of “my” people nominated, though sadly I couldn’t carry the third. At the very least it was a nice way to meet some new people, learn about some interesting public service students and alumni, and help be a part of the public interest community here. The ultimate winner of the award gets recognition (duh), the chance to do a real TED Talk (actual TED Talk, not a fake one), a weeny financial award for some PI project, and yeah really recognition for e-peen leveling up. After we were done with the process we went over to one of the committee chair’s apartment where we had some AMAZING basil margaritas. It was the first time this year I’d gone over to someone’s house, and the first time in law school I’d gone over to someone’s house and drank liquor. Which is kind of insane when you think about the prevalence of alcoholism in law school (but at the risk of being too pompous – its mainly because I just want beer and I don’t like talking to people, so I don’t go out drinking).

Sunday was much more mundane, which is just how I like it. I had to finish up a portion of a clinical assignment, but that didn’t take as long as I had anticipated, so I also finished a game I’d been working on a for a couple of weeks. The big story of Sunday was that I had to start a special diet for an upcoming medical procedure, but I’ll talk about that more next post. I watched a bit of the Academy Awards (Tristen was pleased with Mad Max getting 6 Oscars) but those go really late, so I didn’t catch the end of them – at least not on TV, I ended up having a lot of trouble falling asleep on Sunday, so I found out the end results via my phone anyways.

While it was a decent weekend on the whole, it was a bit too consumed by law school stuff (Friday + Saturday) and so I’m kind of hoping that next weekend will be a bit less law school focused, though I have this rising suspicion that my clinic work is going to ramp up this week due to meeting a new client – which always kind of sucks from the “amount of work I have to do” standpoint, even if the work is interesting.

Monday started normal enough, aside from being Leap Day that is. As mentioned, I hadn’t slept well so I was pretty groggy. I decided to do some Yoga (in addition to my M, W, F run) rather than one of my usual exercise routines, namely because I’ve been trying to incorporate more Yoga into my schedule since I have plenty of cardio and lifting heavy things. After that I took in some Nitro Brew Coffee from Stumptown, which jived me up, but in the wrong ways. Rather than becoming productive I went into full-on procrastination mode and descended into internet hell where I read about everything from fictional “creepypasta” stories about nuclear fallout, to insurance claims. It was a glorious waste of time. Soon enough my first class of the day rolled around. There was actually a few cool lunch events on campus, but I didn’t go because I can’t eat normal people food at the moment. While I am generally not too stressed about my State AG class, it took a real turn for the homosex recently, in that they modified the syllabus for the fifth f*cking time (which is actually a running theme this semester, because in law school there is no such thing as a professor who actually cares about you), and added in a HUGE group project. We were getting our assigned roles on Monday and we had to meet as a group before next week’s class, something which was not going to be easy given my schedule for the rest of the week (and my aforementioned fury at going to the law school on weekends). However, in fairness, we ended up almost collectively deciding to just meet before class next week to discuss what we needed do. We of course had that person who was convinced that an hour wasn’t enough time, but in the end they got trumped by everyone and lost – rightfully so, it’s not even a freaking graded assignment.

After the State AG class it was on to Legal Profession, which is just a god awful class. I am so glad I’m getting it out of the way now, but holy hell, it’s just horrible. Our professor is a douche who goes into juvenile temper tantrums when people enter the room late, but more than that, its just a horribly boring class and he has made sure that it’s even more hellish because we can’t use laptops. So you have to sit there for 90 minutes each day and try to come up with reasons as to why you chose this life for yourself. On a more personal level, I can’t stand the damn class because half the time its just stupid opinions, and on that note, there is a group of girls in front of me who really just need to cease to exist – I’ll leave the level of violence for that cessation unwritten. It’s like they are stuck in Jr. High, they constantly talk in class (yet somehow never draw the professor’s ire – despite him going ballistic over a people coming in 20 seconds past the start of class) and not only do they talk, they go full on “Mean Girls” and just talk shit about people. It’s so bad, that even if they can’t talk for whatever reason, they write notes to each other and pass them around (not even lying, though I wish I was). Due to where I sit I can easily read these notes, and 99.9% of the time, it’s just making fun of people. Then when the time comes for them to answer questions, Jesus H. Christ, I think getting ran over my a locomotive would be a more pleasurable way to spend my afternoon, especially because they all have that (real or fake, I dunno) Vallay-gurl vocal fry and generally make comments that at best have no relationship to the topic, and at worst just have to have been stolen from some canned 90s movie about teen angst. And if it wasn’t obvious, they are all totally BFFs and are inseparable. I kind of wonder if you cut one’s head off if the others will die. They serve as proof that money can indeed still buy entry to the Ivy League.

Anyways, my clear disdain for Legal Profession aside, my Monday was pretty normal otherwise. It was also 63 degrees at one point today, so I can’t complain too much. Also, I did have a check from a class action settlement waiting for me at home, so that was nice. And before you start calling me for money, it was for $4.25.

Tuesday, which is now the present day (see the note at the top of this post, some 6 million words ago) was split between being decently productive and procrastinating for hours on end. My morning had been set aside for a lot of clinic work, of which I did zero. No real excuse, other than that I didn’t want to do it. I did turn things around eventually though, and got through what I needed to – it just so happened that I did almost all of it while in Legal Profession, but hey, at least I didn’t skip it. Of course I did leave early to go meet SB. However, in my defense I was exercising my Nineteenth Amendment right.

Thinking back, I think this was the first time I have ever voted in a Primary in my life. It’s not the first time I’ve voted by any means, but I’m pretty sure I never voted in a Primary before. I was also the Boys’ first time voting as well.

After getting back home (it was getting chilly again!) SB realized that it was National Pig Day! So, we decided to get some coffee in celebration of both fulfilling our civic duty and also being a Pig.

And that pretty much brings us up to this very moment. I do believe that this was, chronologically, the longest I’ve ever taken to write a blog post. Anyways, it will be dinner time soon, yay! And then after that it’s going to be getting some stuff ready for my super early morning and client meeting tomorrow, as well as not being able to eat. If its not obvious from the recurrent theme in this post, I am not looking forward to tomorrow (or Thursday). But, for now, time to enjoy the rest of the evening and also a beer. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

Valentine’s Day Weekend 2016

February 19, 2016 by Taco

Valentine’s Day weekend has always been an exciting time around the Taco household. Not only is it Valentine’s Day, it’s close to SB’s birthday, and it’s also Valentino’s birthday. As such, we always try to do some exciting stuff when Valentine’s Day rolls around.

This year the weather wasn’t especially loving. Was there snow? Well, a little.

But it was really about the wind and cold.

1 degree was actually pretty good, at some points it was down around -6 with a wind chill of -25. Good outdoor weather.

This was pretty much how Pig felt about it.

Of course, we are not a group to let something as silly as deadly cold get in our way, especially with birthdays coming up, so earlier in the week the boys and I ventured out to a new store and got some mixins’ for a Valentine’s/Birthday cake.

Finding cake stuff is not easy here. The stores that are most convenient to us are either small (expensive) markets with limited selections, or Whole Foods – none of which are good when you want a chemically-laden trans-fat loaded, high-fructose corn syrup mass of gooey cakey obesity. So the boys and I tramped over to a “Star Market” which is the closest thing to a “normal” grocery store we have within walking distance of us.

On Friday morning we actually baked the cake itself so that it would be cool by the time we got home that night. See, we had a big Friday planned since it was the start of the weekend. The problem was that a full on-call shift at the clinic stood between me and freedom.

The good news was that before I went to the clinic I was able to snag a free lunch, and listen to a person who went on a three year silence and meditation retreat in Tibet talk about mindfulness. So that was cool.

After that, it was off to the clinic to work. This is my office, well, my space – well, the area where I work. It isn’t really mine, though I do like one of the desks more than others.

The student attorneys have no windows in their office, it’s fun.

I actually had the place to myself for most of the afternoon though, being the Friday before a holiday weekend meant that the place was pretty dead. When I got out of the clinic to leave for the evening the upper floors of the building I was in were entirely empty.

REDЯUM

After leaving the law school I headed down to Boston proper to meet up with SB for her birthday dinner.

It was very cold. Very cold indeed.

The destination was a place called Jacob Wirth, which despite looking like an Irish Pub on the outside, is actually modeled after a German beer hall on the inside.

Of course in Germany it would all be communal seating.

We’d actually been here before, way back when we first moved to Boston and after we’d spent 10 years in the RMV, however I didn’t even remember that this was the same place until SB told me so. Jacob Wirth is one of those places that – in addition to being out of our way – is generally too expensive for us. However, SB being the coupon-hawk that she is, we were able to get a Groupon that, with an additional discount, allowed us to get 35$ worth of food for 17$, not too bad. Of course it didn’t cover alcohol, but still.

However, before I talk about the food, I have to talk about the men’s bathroom. It is one of those “divey” bathrooms that sticks with you. In fact, as soon as I walked in there I immediately remembered it. Well, it was before I even walked in there actually – you have to go back into this tiny hallway and then through a little door. Then you enter the palace of kings.

Notice the rustic nuances of the broken heater.

This imperial lounge even features (mostly) functional urinals so close to each other than you can pee all over your companions at a moment’s notice.

Bathroom aside, Jacob Wirth is actually really good – not only because of their food, but because they have a big draft beer selection (kind of necessary if you feature German food). I was actually really excited, because I was finally able to try one of Sam Adams’ nitro beers, which had already denied me on a previous Friday outing.

1. Left: Samuel Adams Nitro Belgian White – Boston Beer Company [Me]
2. Right: Mosaic Session IPA – Blue Point Brewing Company [SB]

The Sam Adams was AWESOME. I love nitro beers (for an explanation of what that is, see this post) and Sam Adams did not disappoint. You really just have to try a nitro beer to fully understand it. SB’s beer was good too, though it had a kind of funky flavor palate for a session IPA – not bad, just different.

[As an aside, I am now on Untappd – a smartphone app that is literally a social media platform for beer, so hopefully I won’t forget which beers I’ve had anymore! I can now track what beers I drink, where I drink them, and when I drink them! Technically you can too, if you are also on Untappd. Of course this all relies on me actually remembering to “Check In” on the app in the first place 😛 .]

For dinner I had: Boursin Mushroom Burger (Angus Burger Patty Grilled and Topped with Creamy Boursin and Sautéed Mushrooms) and SB had: German Burger (Angus Burger Grilled and Topped with Swiss Cheese and Served between Red Cabbage and Sauerkraut), both of which were AMAZING.

As a side note, I did get a laugh out of the water being served in a Coors Light pitcher.

Of course something was missing. We’d actually ordered some fried pickles as an appetizer, but they never came. SB had been told their fried pickles were good and I had read the same thing online, so when our burgers came out before our pickles we were a bit baffled. However, our server owned up to his mistake and gave us the pickles on the house.

They were good, I’m not sure they were exceptional – they were fried pickles – but I’d certainly get them again. Of course the funny thing about getting them for free, is that it actually didn’t help us that much since we had a 35$ Groupon (which are a one-use deal, in case you weren’t aware). So by losing the price of the pickles, we’d actually devalued our Groupon. Not to be discouraged, we took advantage of a special Valentine’s Day menu and ordered a couple of chocolate covered strawberries to share!

They were yummy-licious, and totally worth it, even with a (half-made) cake waiting at home. After our strawberries we decided to head home considering how cold it was, but no Friday trip home is complete without stopping in and getting some beer first.

And in case you were wondering, yes I stole the can.

Upon arriving home, we also found a few packages waiting for us! The first was huge and was my new suitcase.

It’s actually a little larger than our old suitcase was, and considering that our old suitcase was irreparably damaged, this one is nicer too.

The boys also had a package from Grandma Meem, but it couldn’t be opened until Sunday (Valentine’s Day/Valentino’s Birthday).

They were surprisingly ok with waiting, I’m sure it had nothing to do with the cake in the kitchen. And, speaking of that cake, Valentino was very pleased with the final product.

The story of our Valentine’s Day cake is always an interesting one, namely because both SB and Valentino have a say in the matter (and Tristen and I – and now Pig – make the cake, with Valentino usually helping with the icing). This year there was a bit of a difference in opinion because SB wanted a super chocolaty cake, while Valentino was feeling something more strawberry-lemon. Taco to the rescue.

The end result was a two layer, triple-chocolate-fudge cake with strawberry-lemon icing and red sprinkles on top. It was a universal success, and we ate on it for four days.

The next day our fun times continued. As SB is a member of the Starbucks Cool-Kids Club she gets a free drink around her birthday. We used this as an opportunity to try one of Starbucks limited-time Valentine’s Day drinks (which has kind of become a tradition for us). Unfortunately this time around their drinks weren’t too special, they were basically all variations of hot chocolate or lattes which were basically hot chocolate, additionally, the only real change to the cups was a switch from check-boxes to check-hearts.

Still, it’s more about the conversation than it is the coffee, so we still enjoyed it.

After coffee and grocery shopping we headed out in the arctic again to walk up to Inman Square. Why would we do such a thing when it was so freaking cold? Because Meem had gotten us a gift-certificate for Inman Oasis (spa) for Christmas! So, when coupled with our Bruins tickets, Meem had continued to provide Christmas bounties long after December had passed.

Our package included a 45 minute massage followed by a 30 minute private soak in a Japanese style wooden tub made of Jarrah wood. They also have a communal, much larger tub, but if you have two or more people you can get a private tub. So we had 75 minutes of Saturday awesomeness to experience.

In a rare twist I didn’t have the masseuse work on my legs very much, I’ve kind of lost hope there until I can afford to try acupuncture (which is really the only “mainstream” treatment I haven’t tried – at least not more than once). So I got a “Sports” massage as well, which even though I don’t play sports I guess it makes sense since I work out 7 days a week. It was very nice. The masseuse ending up working on my permanently numb spot on my upper right back/neck area, and according to her it’s actually my rhomboid muscle that is pretty much trashed. While this numb spot predates law school, law school has definitely made it worse (but as a good aside, the numb spot I used to have on the right side of my waist hasn’t returned in several years). So yeah, it was a good massage, and as usual 45 minutes felt like about 5 – massages always go by so quickly.

After the massage it was time to robe up and reunite with SB for the soak.

SB and her masseuse had actually beaten us to the tub, probably because I spent a solid 5 minutes trying to explain my problems to my masseuse – she had never heard of the diagnoses I wrote down before, which honestly didn’t surprise me since they are all basically ways of saying “We have no idea what is wrong with you, have a nice life 😀 .”

The tub was awesome, and to her credit SB had paid attention to the instructions. Of course operating everything required pressing one button.

After a massage, shower, a 30 minute soak, and another rinse-off shower both SB and I were pretty much gelatin. So we got dressed (which was difficult in the relatively cramped quarters of the bath room) and then headed back out into Siberia and made our way home.

That night we followed up our relaxing day with beer – the only way to end a relaxing day (or a normal day, or a bad day, or really any day).

3. Steal This Can – Lord Hobo Brewing Company

Ok, I didn’t actually steal the can.

I’ll be honest, I only noticed this can because the name of the beer is “Steal this Can” (similar to a System of a Down album simply titled “Steal this Album!“). I had never had this brewery (Lord Hobo) before and I wavered on getting it – because we already had a 12-pack from Sierra Nevada (pictured above) – but ultimately decided to buy it as a reward for getting an “H” for my placement in New Mexico (Yay me!), something I had just learned that same day.

Turns out, this American IPA had a better can than it did taste. It wasn’t bad, it just was really malty for an IPA, which I felt like cheapened the flavor profile of the beer, of course with a brewery name like “Lord Hobo” then maybe that is intentional.

4. Ruthless Rye IPA – Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

I have a mixed history with rye beers, let alone rye IPAs. Its a hard flavor to balance and sometimes its just to bitter, or the hops aren’t contrasted against the rye properly. In the trail of rye beers I’ve had, Ruthless from Sierra Nevada falls flat in the middle, it’s neither bad nor especially good. That said, the bottle label is pretty awesome.

5. Torpedo Extra IPA – Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

An old classic, this was probably one of my first “strong” IPAs (though not my first IPA, that was Upland’s Dragonfly IPA, and I absolutely hated it at the time, though I’m ok with it now). Torpedo is an extra IPA, so it’s strong, but its not super strong – which makes it a nice stepping stone to stronger IPAs. As such, I continue to recommend it.

6. Hop Hunter IPA – Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

This was probably the most “straight-forward” IPA of the bunch in this Sierra Nevada sampler. This means that I don’t have a whole lot to say about it because it wasn’t super memorable – however, being super memorable isn’t always a good thing for beer. So this one also gets my recommendation, despite being nothing super special. This would be a good 6-pack kind of beer.

7. Five Hop Experimental IPA – Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

This was the beer in the sampler back that I was most interested in. Of course SB ~~drank~~ stole the first one, so it was a couple days before I actually had it. The wait was mostly worth it. I say mostly because this “experimental” IPA definitely feels like it’s still in the processing stage. While the 5 hops all have unique flavors, I feel like things are still a bit too “mixed up” for a final brew. Of course it’s no small feat to brew a good beer with 5 hops, and this one is good, but I think it could be better and I have a feeling that Sierra Nevada will improve this one over time.

In addition to our beer we also watched Inside Out, which was absolutely amazing and you really should watch it – like seriously.

On Sunday morning, we got more coffee! Also, the boys finally got to open their Grandma Meem present, turns out it was Valentine’s Day Peeps shaped like Hearts – perfect for Valentino, which was fitting since Sunday was his actual birthday (and Valentine’s Day)!

While my love of Peeps has faded over the years, they are still fresh and new to the boys (especially Pig, who was happy to eat them stale in New Mexico) and as such they were pretty excited to dig into them.

And dig into them we did. Not only did we have Peeps and coffee, we even had Peeps and cake later on – because sugar on top of sugar is twice the health benefits.

Most of Sunday was spent working on clinic stuff for yours truly, it actually got a bit hectic later on, but I finished things eventually and made everyone some BBQ chicken pizza for our Sunday night dinner. We had pizza and cakes while watching Adventure Time, which is once again our go-to show now that football is over.

So, all-in-all, it was a great Valentine’s Day Weekend! SB is now 30, Valentino is 3, and everyone had lots of good food, good relaxing, and good beers. Can’t ask for much more than that!

Sadly, after all the fun last weekend and then this weekend, we’ve used up most of our special plans in the short term. Of course even though things are getting back to normal, I’m sure we’ll find ways to keep ourselves out of too much trouble 😛 .

Until next time,
-Taco

[P.S. – After an unknown amount of lost hours, we (and by we I mostly mean Meem) have figured out the majority of the image problems on the blog, it’s still not perfect – images still have to be rotated prior to upload, but things should be a bit easier from now on. As for the end-user experience, pictures should load faster since they have smaller file sizes on average thanks to an extra “compression” step I am taking.]

A Change of Course

Beer Blurb (3-9-16) and Cupcakes!

Spelunking

Revving Up and Planning

Valentine’s Day Weekend 2016

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