Karl at the kitchen sink

Karl, our 8-12 year old cat (not sure, but he looks sorta old now), decided to jump up on the counter top and go get a drink of water from the kitchen sink. So I turned on the water to a slow trickle and here he is, lapping it up :-)

Fuller's 1845

Fuller's 1845 - the best Ale in the world!
Originally uploaded by vernonwalker

This is how you drink beer. Proper glass, proper towel and most importantly, the proper temperature - 45-50F.

This is Fuller's 1845, one of the best tasting ale's on the planet, in my opinion.

Those stinkin' Bradford Pears

Ah, the sweet smell of... WHAT!?! What is that awful odor?

It's that time of year again, when the Bradford Pear's start to bud out and are now in full bloom. And boy do they smell bad. According to the Wikipedia; "They have a sickly-sweet smell, often compared to the odor of human semen." I'm not sure I agree with that, smells more like a potato or underarm :-)

At any rate, how can something so pretty smell so bad? Many people say they can't detect the aroma. I am not one of them. I smell them too good (very poor grammar, I know - the beauty of a blog).

Here are a couple photos from my yard, taken this past weekend.





Reminds me of the song about another tree that has some issues - "lemon tree, very pretty..." if only I could remember the rest of the lyrics. But that's as story for another post.

Back to work...

Hard to keep caught up

Man, work is crazy right now. I'm finding it very difficult to keep up with all the projects my team is involved in. Not to mention I can't seem to find time to post new blogs and I have several things on my mind right now. As a reminder to myself, here they are:

• Spring is here, the plants are starting to bud out (and the stinkin' Bradford Pear blooms are back!)
• My beer glass selection has grown, need to update my inventory
• The nice people from Australia brought me some very nice Aussie beers - I would like to write a review here
• Our daughter came home yesterday from her 2 week "holiday" in the UK

Hopefully, I'll find some time to write some updates soon.

Back to work... (sigh)

New beer glasses & beer clock arrived!

Ordered a Samuel Smith wall clock and numerous glasses. I'll post some pictures shortly.

I'm very excited about adding to my collection. Now I need to go buy some beer to put in these new Celebrator and Samuel Smith glasses.

Oh, and I got two Sam Smith pub towels too - ahhh, beeerrr, ahhh.

Happy Anniversary to us!

Today is our 30th wedding anniversary.

On Saturday, March 11, 1978, my darling and I were married in Ft. Hood, Texas in a small army chapel. Many of my Aunts, Uncles and cousins attended as did as many of her family as could make it to Texas. We were the furthest away from her family while most of mine lived either in Texas or Louisiana and Mississippi.

Many things have transpired since that day. We've moved six times, up and down the country and landed in the Atlanta metro area since 1993. Very different from Texas, but it's an area of the US we enjoy and our places of employment are here.

We've had a great time so far. We have a wonderful daughter who is 28 and lives at home with us while she attends college.

Life is great, comfortable and we are truly blessed to have found each other as well as the good fortune to have spent 30 years together.

I love my wife! Happy Anniversary Honey!

Collecting Beer Glasses

Did I mention I like beer? :-)

I also like to drink my beer in the proper vessel (and I don't mean boat).

Over the past year or more I've been collecting logo beer glasses. Last night I sat down and wrote up an inventory of my collection. I have over 60 glasses representing 37 different brands.

And more are in route to the house! I have many beers I enjoy on a regular basis and found I did not have the proper glass to enjoy them. So, I ordered 8 or 10 pairs of glasses, I forget exactly. They should be here this week. For now, here is a shot of my existing collection. You can see a larger version over on my Flickr page.

Back to... some beer drinking :-)

I like beer...

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but I like beer. Not thin, weak, no taste beer, but good, rich, tasty, hoppy, dark, amber, red, black, pale beer. Beer with guts and glory - in two words 'good beer'.

I can remember years ago, when I drank Miller or Bud or others like Pearl, it was okay, but not good and certainly not great. Then a co-worker from the regional Bell operating company where I worked from '93-'99, invited my wife & I over for a get together. He introduced me to Oberdorfer Weiss, a Bavarian wheat beer. My beer drinking life was never the same. It was wonderful and had body, taste and character. An excellent that I've since enjoyed on an occasional basis.

I hope to write more on the topic here when I have more time. I'm actually working on a Sunday, which sucks, but such is life.

Back to work...

Snow day!

Snow in my town is somewhat rare. Snow 3 times in one year is very rare. Snow in March - well, almost unheard of. But today we got our third snow of the year. Sure it was just flurries most of the morning until mid-afternoon, but still - snow? Here? In March? Cool (or rather, COLD).

Then the clouds cleared and the temperature warmed a bit, but it was still very neat to have our third snow and have it in March.

Very nice and appreciated too.

WTF and other TLA's

Welcome to Finland, did you think it meant something else? :-)

In my company, we are global, we have a lot of IM sessions with our co-workers rather than actually talking to them. I used some TLA's today and one of our Finnish folks said - what is that? So, I had to explain that "brb" meant be right back. He thought I had typed a burp into the IM chat window - how funny.

How many TLA's and FLA's do you know?

BTW, in case you don't know what a TLA & FLA is - three letter acronym and four letter acronym.

Okay, back to work...

Writers block today

Can't figure out what to put here today. I haven't posted an update since last week when I was in Mountain View. As with most trips, I got a little behind in my normal daily routine and have finally caught up.

Lots of conference calls, emails to read & respond to, IM chats to have. "Work" as it were.

Raining here today, much needed with our severe drought still in effect. Would be nice if it would rain all day and into the night.

Maybe I'm not blocked after all :-)

Back to work...