Summer ‘08 Plans

Amongst my brief commentaries on current events, I decided to write about the current events in my life. Often times I'll have a grand 'ol time out of town, and when I return home I start to write about it, bore myself, never finish the post and ultimately get side tracked by the CNN tab on my Google homepage. What can I say? I have the attention span of a chipmunk.

So far this summer, I've traveled out of town about three out of every four weekends. Since the end of May, I've been to:

1. Rose-Hulman Commencement in Terre Haute


2. Magic City Brewfest '08 in Birmingham


3. Robin Schaffer's Wedding in Indiana


4. Visit Dave in Nashville


5. Thiede & Willis's Wedding in Indiana


6. Visit Family in Connecticut


7. and the Pike Bar Crawl in Indy

Hell, that's seven out of nine weekends. This weekend I'll be home, but we have Diana and Rob visiting which counts as more than the average sleeping, reading, movies, beer, and videogames (or SRMBV) weekend. The first weekend of August is Kristie Sparks's wedding outside of Louisville. The following weekend is Dave's birthday in Nashville. Then a truly, honest to God free weekend - unless Jenny's mom visits which is a possibility.

Thus brings us to the weekend of August 23rd - and my delicate conundrum. I am 75% dedicated to a camping trip up in Indiana. But recently Jenny and I were invited to a "free beer giveaway" party here in Huntsville. The Olde Towne Brewing Company, the only microbrewery in Alabama, tragically burned to the ground (along with its pet cats) the very day I pulled my U-Haul into town. Last Saturday the brewery hosted a Free the Hops meeting in their newly constructed establishment, whence they announced their "we're back" party, a sort of grand re-opening, to be held on August 23rd. For whatever reason (whether legal or logistical) they decided the best course of action is to make the event strictly 21+ and have free admissions, and FREE BEER! That's right, all their beer it completely free. It'll be like visiting a museum: an optional donation at the entrance, and past that you soak in as much beauty as you can handle. To top that, Jenny doesn't particularly want to be alone for the weekend so she offered to DD, an ingenious effort to bribe me into sticking around. I'll wait for more details to emerge regarding the camping trip (and perhaps balance my checkbook) before I make a decision, but the choice is a seven hour drive for a weekend camping with friends or a fifteen minute drive for an evening drinking unlimitedly.

I have no plans for the Labor Day weekend. Jenny is visiting a friend in Virginia, which leaves me home alone to fight off incompetent burglars for a few days. I originally had been considering going to Foam for the three day weekend, but recently I learned that Rose is starting classes after Labor Day, thus Foam Party will be the following Saturday - which is teh lame. So if anyone wants to make plans not terribly far from Huntsville let me know. Otherwise, I'll probably be doing a lot of hiking and watching a lot of cartoons.