Jumpin' At The Woodside

Evening sky at The Woodside and a glass of Dynamite Vineyards Cabernet. Salud!

To say it's humid today would be an understatement. Might even say it's "swofty" up in this bee-atch! Yes, I said "swofty," a word of my own creation. Kind of a combination of sultry and... OK it's a made up word, but this does not degrade from the fact that you could melt a chili pepper today! Ran earlier, around 11am down at the park. I've been running a lot there lately. No traffic, no hills just nice gravel pathways for running, biking and walking through the wooded greenery. Last night's storms knocked a couple trees down in the park so had a bit of a steeplechase going on my run, hurdling the downed trees. Also saw a black snake stretched out on the trail. I know the black ones are the ones you want around, but I wasn't going to hurdle this fella. I gave him a wide berth and continued on my way. Yesterday, I set up the Bowflex in what now could be called the Exercise room here at the Woodside. I put in my first full workout yesterday, s...

A big thunderstorm rolled in and knocked out the power about 15 minutes ago. Cats and I watching it rain. Good thing I can still post from my cell. UPDATE: Power was back on about an hour later. While it was out, listened to my iPod through battery-powered laptop and made salad by candlelight.

To begin, listened to the Dave Matthews Band show from St. Louis and followed it up with the Lazy Acres Summer Mix for 2008, paired nicely with my Terrapin Rye Squared - reminds me of the Double-Wide I.P.A. I had upon arrival to the Lazy Acres estate. The Terrapin Rye Squared is "Double the malt, double the hops, and double the flavor of the original Rye Pale Ale recipe" -- not to mention the 8.5% ABV. Lookout, may not want to operate any heavy machinery, could be why they only come in 4-packs! **** Content Edited **** While I'm on the subject of the summer mix, hoping to get some voting results from the judges soon. Summer is now officially here and was welcomed in this afternoon with a good thunderstorm that brought a soaking rain. On a serious note, as much as I want the rain to continue to roll into the south as we're still in drought conditions, I hope that the rain subsides in the Midwest to help stop their flooding. Here's to high ground and high levees m...

Happy Friday The 13th! First off, let me say I had a great trip last weekend. Between my gracious hosts and the rockin' concert, I couldn't have asked for a better trip! Lazy Acres North may be in the Midwest, but there's no mistaking true southern hospitality. I can't say "thank you" enough to The Fearys! After the special tour we received at Anheuser-Busch, I imagine it wouldn't be long before the "rub off" occurred. That's me drinking a Budweiser Select and listening to the DMB concert from Busch Stadium that I just downloaded and burned to CD this evening. I already posted photos as they happened in earlier posts, but thought I'd post some photos here that I didn't have a chance to get on the blog. I arrived in St. Louis on Thursday afternoon and we went over to Senor Pique for dinner. The photo below was taken by our waiter after we had a few margaritas. Next up, we tailgated in the Busch Stadium parking lot before the show. Thi...

Travelled to the Lazy Acres North HQ yesterday located in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri, or The Lou as it's referred to 'round here. Today was a visit to the Anheuser-Busch Brewery , and thanks to a classmate of Ol' Lazy Acres got a behind-the-scenes tour of the research brewery where they come up with new beers. Also got to taste a couple samples of test batches that have not been released to the public. One was an amber-colored beauty and the other was golden euro-style ale, both were excellent. After the private tour, we went on the regular public tour and got to see the Clydesdales. The dalmatian was sleeping while we were there. After lunch, we tried to make it over to the arch, but a bad batch of storms kept us away. Drove by Busch Stadium and saw that the stage was all ready to go for tomorrow night's Dave Matthews Band and The Black Crowes concert. Can't Wait!

Our web servers were down at work, since yesterday actually. After getting no response from our IT peops, I decided to drive into work, see if it was as simple as flipping on the power buttons to get them to boot up. I thought, well if I get an early start, I'll go right to McAlpine Creek Park from the office and get a run in. I arrived at the office and made my way to the server room. Seemed like all servers had power except for our web servers, which sat there in the racks lifeless. I tried the power strip reset, but these servers just weren't getting any juice. This was now beyond my realm of comprehension and needed IT support. With nothing more I could do, I headed to McAlpine park to run. I picked up a bottle of water on the way and got to the park around 11am. Our forecast was for the high 80s and even at this time could tell the temp was climbing. I cut my run short, only 3.5 miles, due to the heat and headed back to the car. I took a moment to catch my breath and had ...