Brain Enema of a Savage Mind

I’ve had to write this in a hundred different places for work, but I really felt it was worth mentioning here as well.  Over the weekend the 2008 TAP-NY took place.  It’s a festival that celebrates New York State craft beers.  In 2006 we took home the Silver medal for DoubleIPA, and last year we came home empty handed.  This year however we won big.

• The F.X. Matt Memorial Cup for New York State’s best Craft Brewery
• The Gold Medal for ‘TEN’, our tenth anniversary ale, a crazy strong super hopped up Red Ale that makes the Cascazilla nothing more than a whimper in comparison.  It’s part of our Excelsior! series (the 750ml bottles)
• The SIlver Medal for ‘Flower Power’, our signature IPA.  This has always been a rock solid beer for us, and its been an especially good year for this beer.  Reaching the final four in the National IPA challenge, and now this!

Right now I’m exceedingly proud to be working at the Ithaca Beer Company.  Everyone there has been working their asses off to make the beers the best they can be and it’s always good when you get a little recognition for that.

I’ve thought about it long and hard and I think the answer to my problem really is bacon!  What problem is it that can be solved by this miracle meat you ask?  Hippies.  That’s right.  Not even all of them really, just the small subset who come in here and feel that the one bath a year they are accustomed to really is optional.  If a minute after someone walks in the odor is so strong my eyes actually tear up there is something very wrong.  As much as I want to spray them down with my bottle of sanitizer I always resist temptation.  So the dilemma became how to keep them from wanting to come in here.  After all, these inevitably are the type of people who come in, ask a ton of questions, sample all the beer, and then buy a 50 cent package of yeast so they can attempt to ferment the berry/flower/beet of the week.

The answer is so simple.  Bacon.  A little bacon grease in all our beers, and make sure to let them know.  They’ll be so revolted they’ll tell all their friends and boycott us!  Okay, so maybe that isn’t a real solution.  I’ll just go back to the fantasy in my mind of renting a crop duster, filling it with soap water and making passes over the Grassroots festival.

It took awhile, but the cold weather finally rolled in a few days ago.  We even got some brief periods of snow; including snow on the ground so that it almost looked like it really could be winter.  A lot of that snow is gone, but the cold weather certainly hasn’t left us.  I do love winter, but I’m not sure how I feel about this.  I’m a big fan of having four seasons, so I’m never happy when one intrudes, or completely overshadows another.  This winter is late in coming, and because it follows a period of unnatural heat I’m honestly concerned that spring is going to be a little lackluster.  There’s going to be a lot of damage to plants that started budding early because they were under the mistaken impression that we skipped winter and went straight to spring.  Surprise!  Winter creeped up on them and smashed them in the head with its icy sledge hammer of doom.I could go on to talk about global warming and every other environmental or political hot button.  I won’t.  I’m tired of people turning everything in to some great political debate to show how right they are and how the other side is dumb, or pandering to corporate greed, or whatever else they want to say about the other side.  I’m not saying some things aren’t political issues, I’m only saying that pointing fingers and waving your version of scientific evidence in the face of those you disagree with doesn’t solve anything.  We’ve over politicized every aspect of our lives.  We’re constantly seeking someone to blame rather than fixing the problem.  Yes, it would help on a grade scale if the powers that be would stop butting heads and focus on fixing the problems at hand, but we all know that isn’t going to happen.  So instead of touting our clever bumper stickers on the back of our cars, wouldn’t it be better if we just fixed our little corner of the world?  The road to change begins at home.  All that wasted effort telling the other guy just how dumb they are could have been going in to something productive, like making our tiny corner of the world a little brighter.  Be happy.  Enjoy life.  That’ll show them all.That’s what’s going through my mind as I sit and stare out at this cold gray day. 

Another year has passed and I have realized that last year was the first year in quite awhile that I lived in the same state (and for that matter city) for an entire calendar year. Still, I couldn’t avoid all moving last year as I did move out of the apartment and in to the house with Denise. And sometime I’ll even finish up making that move… there’s still a small collection of things at the apartment.

All of 2006 was spent working at the brewery, and while like any job it has some days where you just want to be anywhere else, it has been a great place to work. It’s the first job I’ve held where my stress levels haven’t shot through the roof, and instead of just thinking about making it through day to day I actually think about what the future holds. I honestly have no idea how long I’ll be here - but if I do leave it would be because I was leaving the state all together, and not because I was pursuing another career interest. I really do feel that no matter where I end up I want to continue working with a brewery. Surprisingly working at one has reduced my alcohol consumption - though I attribute that to far less stress than I’ve had at previous places on employment. Sure, there are some things I miss about working in IT, but I don’t miss the several drinks I’d have to calm my nerves, and then the several bottles of pepto or tums I’d go through a month at work to keep my stomach from eating itself. The pros were few, the cons were many, I wish it hadn’t taken getting laid off to realize such things, or that I’d have to spend a couple years of wandering to fall in to something I enjoyed, but in the end I pulled through. Between being willing to do what it took to get by, having loving parents, and very supporting friends I was able to trudge along.

2006 was a good year. It had moments where I wanted to explode (my truck still doesn’t work), but overall it was filled with good things. Most of the things were just little things that conspired to make me smile, but there were a couple of big events that propelled this to being the best year I’ve had in quite awhile. It was a year that gave me hope, and in this world hope is a scarce thing.

I feel good about myself and where I’m at. I still have occasional moments of wanderlust where I just want to run away to someplace new. However I no longer want to run away because I just can’t take it anymore… it’s more like I want to run to something new. Yes, I still have an obsession with New Mexico and I really want to make it back out there.

So there it is, thoughts about the paths I took in 2006. Maybe next I’ll ramble on about where I see things going. Perhaps I’ll even be so bold as to make a couple of predictions. I’m excited, I’m optimistic, I’m a little scared… but it’s the good kind.

Cheers!