Weekend Roundup

I've been a mix of busy and uninspired recently, thus the lack of new blog posts. This in no way means that my life is not still completely ruled by beer. I went away for a quick trip to Anza Borrego Desert State Park this weekend with some girlfriends and returned to this in my garage.

No explanation from Reed, just a stack of cases of beer appear - like that's just a normal part of everyday life. Which it really has become at this point, and he and our beer loving friends are all quite spoiled.
On our way out to the desert we stopped in at Julian Hard Cider. I had spent some time at their booth at the Stone 15th Anniversary event last month; their cider is amazing, flavorful and dry. It's become part of the experience to stop and buy apple pie from Mom's on the trip out to Anza Borrego, and I wanted to check out the Julian Hard Cider storefront in Wynola as well and hopefully buy some Cherry Bomb. It's a cute little shop that looks straight out of the wild west (it was actually made using wood from old Julian buildings).

They'll sell you 2oz tasters for $2 (which comes close to setting off my rip-off alarm) and 22oz of their ciders, which you can also find in more and more bottle shops around San Diego. They did not, however, have the Cherry Bomb cider bottled and ready for sale yet (3 more weeks I was told), but we did have a taster which reminded me of its near-perfection. Cherry alcohol in general I find is prone to tasting either overly sweet or like cough syrup, neither of which is ok. Luckily this bucks that trend and my beer loving friends agreed that it is quite tasty and we need more of it in our lives.
Upon checking in at the cidery with Foursquare, I was presented with this summary screen.

This makes me very happy, especially when you consider that I've only been in San Diego for 3 out of the past 6 months. I think this shows a life well spent: traveling, quality drinking and the occasional movie with my husband.
I have some ideas for blog posts that require some research and that, frankly, is why they are not posted yet. I'll get to this soon, though not before next week. Sunday is my birthday. This coincides with the Great American Beer Festival and for awhile there Reed and I were talking about going out to Denver for it. Though not a difficult sacrifice on my part, this would have been further fodder for my self-imposed Beer Widow designation. I am not guaranteed to be at home or even on land for my birthday or holidays in general, I have been at work out at sea for Reed's birthday and our wedding anniversary in the past. So I decided to be selfish, and instead we're going to Las Vegas to party, relax, repeat. When I return expect to see posts about stupid laws relating to beer and a discussion on whether craft beer can be the great equalizer.