After Sarah's race on Saturday, we went over to meet Maggie, Chris, Joel, and Gideon to make our way to New Ulm.  New Ulm is so German, that in World War One, the Governor and some of his cronies removed the Mayor of the town, and investigated many others in the town for not being patriotic enough and for possibly having German sympathies.  Oh no!  We figured that Oktoberfest here would be great.

Sadly, though we had fun, it wasn't the Germanofest we were hoping for.  The major part of the festival were a few different places with polka bands and food and beer in close proximity.  Watching/dancing/eating near by were masses of old people.  Now don't get me wrong, I have nothing against old people, but they don't usually make for the most fun party crowd.  At the Holiday Inn (one of the venues) one of the highlights of sitting and watching, and ocassionally dancing to, the mildly entertaining bands was a suddens stream of vaguely pagan-masked characters dancing about.  I think this means the harvest will be good, and not very many of us will die from exposure this winter.

The best part of Oktoberfest, after going to visit Hermann the German of course, was the Schell's brewery tour.  While it would have been nice to see more of the nuts and bolts of brewing there, I really enjoyed the history of that brewery.  Of course, there was the beer at the end of the tour, but what made it so great was Chris's being assertive with our beer wench server, who agreed to give us about twice as much beer as we would have normally gotten... and in short order.  In no time, we were in fine shape and ready to party.

But as I said, there wasn't much partying to be had in New Ulm.  So we went to the Pizza Ranch buffet and ate too much mediocre pizza. 

It was a fun weekend, but perhaps next time, we'll go somewhere else.

Simple pleasure - walking in the rain
Peace

Few things are as fun as going out with friends to the diviest of bars and singing kareoke with other people who are also drinking cheap beer and singing great (and not so great but very singable) songs. 

The Sportsman's Bar (pub?) was probably the first bar I've ever been to.  When I was in elementary school, my step-father was a vet student at the U of M and in intramural broomball.  I went along to a game to watch one time and afterwards some of his teammates wanted to go out for a drink.  "Sporties,"  one of his teammates said, was a family restaurant.  A family restaurant that served 3.2 beer and cheap burgers when the kitchen happened to be open.  I recognized the place immediately the first time I went in the place after I turned 21.

What a hole!

What a great hole!  cheap, not so good beer, with no ambiance, and bad kareoke.  Fantastic!  There was a sign on the wall next to our booth tonight that said, "We put the 'ive' in Dive.  Order at the bar."  Quality.

Good times.

I also gave Joe the Scotland canoeing book I bought.  There was more plotting done tonight.

Simple pleasure - singing anything by the B-52s poorly
Peace

Saturday evening was the third annual Zombie Pub Crawl.  That morning while running errands I went to a local costume shop and Goodwill to pick up some zombie supplies.  Sadly, I don't have a picture of my ultimate costume, but it was decent for something put together in a short period of time.  I had a green and black face with a nasty wound on one cheek and some worms sticking out of my face in a few places.  Then I shredded an old sport coat, dress pants, and dress shirt, and put on an awful tie.

So picture this:  hundreds of zombies (bride zombies, tennis-playing zombies, Abe Lincoln zombies, bloody zombies,  military zombies, Joe Mauer zombies) staggering along calling out for brains, and looking for drink.  It was a thing of beauty.  You would think that a zombie pub crawl would be chock full 'o hipsters, but even though it probably was the whole deal was absurd enough to hide any hipness. 

Take a few moments, look at the Zombie Pub Crawl website and watch a video or two. 

Highlights of the night included scaring teenieboppers in a car while hoping to feast upon their brains, watching zombies play soccer with young Somali boys, watching the pirate pub crawl "fight" the zombie pub crawl, playing zombie bocce with marciamarcia and other random zombies.

------------

Today Sarah ran the Twin Cities 10-miler.  It was warm for a long run, so I was glad that she only had to run ten miles instead of a whole marathon.  It was fun to see her race and watch her finish.  Congratulations, Sarah.  I'm proud of you!  We hung around and watched sonrisa_78 finish her race and then watched the first people finish the marathon too.  Pretty cool. 

Afterwards, it was brunch at the Grandview Cafe, followed by naps.  Good naps.

We finished off the day practicing being old by watching The Inspector Linley Mysteries on Myestery on PBS.  Old is ok.

Simple pleasure - our box of wedding spices
Peace

Not to self:  go buy a Pioneer Press

Sarah and I brewed a stout last fall after our wedding to give to Joe's ex-girlfriend as a thank-you gift for helping out so much on the wedding day.  Shortly after the wedding, she and Joe split up and despite trying to get in touch with her repeatedly, she has pretty much dropped off the face of the earth.  She was cool, but not without a fair amount of passive aggression and some issues.  So... whatever.

Anyway, I am finally getting around to bottling this beer.  It should have been done probably 8 months ago.  After I pull it out of the secondary fermenter I'll taste it.  If there aren't any funny flavors it should still be good.  So, with a lack of motivation, and much putting it off, Rip Van Winkle Stout is reborn.

*sip sip*

Tastes pretty good, actually.  Bottling will continue and in a few weeks we'll have a pretty decent stout on our hands.  Woo-woo.

Simple pleasure - the smell of clean laundry
Peace