Jumpin' At The Woodside

Hola all, hope everyone is having a good evening! Tonight my beer selection is Pilsner Urquell or "original pilsner" and is from my ancestral homeland, the Czech Republic. While not as bold as my typical favs the IPAs, this the father of all pilsners is always a tasty brew. This week I replaced my Motorola Q with a Blackberry Curve, and today I picked up a 2 GB media card to make lots of room for photos and video. For a test run, I decided to record the pour of my Pilsner Urquell. The video below has obviously been edited on the computer, but was shot on my Blackberry. For techies out there, I found it easiest to convert the video file from 3GPP to an MP4 file that I was able to open and edit in Sony Vegas software. I downloaded a free converter program from the Web to make the conversion. There are lots out there, just do a search for "3GPP video converter." Lots of rain this week and again this weekend -- so what else is new? Can't wait for the nice, warm sun...

Spring has sprung and had a great day today! Got up to 66 degrees and got in a 4.5 mile run earlier -- 9'43"/mile pace! Yeah, I know I'm not setting any records, but not bad for me. This past week I picked up a couple "Instant Tickets" via the Dave Matthews Band Warehouse for the April 18 show in Charlottesville, Va. I'll drive up on Friday and I imagine Ol' Lazy Acres and I will be ringing in my birthday in championship form. Hopefully we'll be able to see straight enough to walk home! :~) That will be the kick off event to what I'm calling the "Halfway To Everywhere Tour 2009!" Not so much a tour as a state of mind, but rest assured there will be postings from various events and travels throughout the spring, summer and fall. Well, at least two more DMB shows in August, hopefully a U2 show and some international travel as well. In local news, could the infamous "night mower" be no more? From the looks of it, a contractor cut ...

Watched “ Bottle Shock ” tonight, based on a true story about how the California wines came into their own vs. the French in 1976. Alan Rickman co-stars in a rare “good guy’ role. Just when I thought the plot had fallen short due to an over abundance of storyline, the film seems to pull together in a “Rocky”-like capacity and actually made me applaud twice during the film. A big moment of surprise for me occurred when Alan Rickman’s character is headed back to France, but is only allowed to carry on a single bottle of wine on the flight. I won’t ruin the storyline, but will say that the lone bottle of wine he takes with him is a bottle of Clos Du Val – the wine I was drinking at the time! This film is not bad, not as good as “Sideways” and more about the wine, but certainly could have used a Paul Giamatti-caliber actor to go along with Rickman. If you’re a wine fan, open a bottle of your favorite California vintage and enjoy. BTW, for the ladies... the winemaker's son is played by ...

Watch out tonight on this the second "Friday The 13th" of the year! Rainy and cold here and supposed to continue through the weekend, ugh! At least I have a Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA to keep me warm. I think I may have posted about these before. They're new here, but a year-round offering from Sierra Nevada. I was updating artwork for some new jukebox selections and found a great resource for CD cover artwork - http://www.allcdcovers.com/ If you buy through iTunes, no problem, but if you import music from a CD this is where you can end up with no artwork or even worse the wrong artwork. Usually I just do a Google search, but many times only come up with very small images or no artwork at all. The site listed above had what I was looking for and large sizes available too. Once on the site, I found it easiest to just do a search for the CD and "bam!" When the search results come up, clicking on a title will open a drop-down display of what artwork is availa...

This was the scene yesterday afternoon when Jimmy Joe Pete suffered a horrific tragedy. While leaving the Total Wine with a case of New Belgium Fat Tire 22 oz. bottles, the box handle broke and the devastation you see here is the result of two broken Fat Tire bottles, oh the humanity! As for me, I had already picked up a bottle of Fat Tire the other day and it was safely at home in my fridge when this travesty occurred. Now I hope you don't think I would walk out of the Total Wine empty handed, of course not. I picked up some Old Stock Ale from North Coast Brewing Co., the makers of Brother Thelonious . These should be quite good, below is the description of Old Stock Ale from the web site... "Like a fine port, Old Stock Ale is intended to be laid down. With an original gravity of over 1.100 and a generous hopping rate, Old Stock Ale is well-designed to round-out and mellow with age. It's brewed with classic Maris Otter malt and Fuggles and East Kent Goldings hops, all i...

Here's how it looked this morning. Most of it's gone now. We had a two-hour delayed opening at the office, but still not many people made it in. Also had an early closing at 4pm today to get home before the roads started to ice up. Going down to 13 tonight - brrrrrrr!

Almost appropriately, Led Zep's "Fool in the Rain" came on the jukebox when I took this photo. This keeps up the Queen City will probably shut down tomorrow. I uncorked the Brother Thelonious and it is very nice! - Salud!