1. The high point of our Saturday occurred at Carol and Paul's house. Molly, Zoe, and Cosette combined their efforts to make a most delicious birthday dinner for Paul. The dinner featured a lemon-y shrimp and clam pasta dish, supported by a tasty fresh green salad and plenty of toasted and seasoned bread. After dinner, we moved to the living room where Paul fulfilled a birthday wish by joining together with his daughters to sing and perform a Ray Charles song, "I Got a Woman", addressed to Carol. We topped off the night with a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting made from scratch. We had a houseful! Cosette, Taylor, Saphire, Zoe, and Molly were at the table along with Laurie Roberts, Christy, Debbie, Paul, Carol, and me.
2. Back home after dinner, Debbie and I did what I enjoy most: we split a couple 12 oz cans of craft beer. We started with Grand Teton of Victor, Idaho's Black Cauldron Imperial Stout, a smooth slightly coffee forward stout with subtle tastes of chocolate and dried fruit. The beer weighed in at 9.5% ABV. Its rich taste and plentiful alcohol content made me glad that I only drank 6 oz of it.
Next, Debbie popped open a can of Myopia, a Hazy IPA from Sawtooth Brewery in Hailey, ID.
My approach to beer drinking was summarized by Stephen Stills in his song, "Love the One You're With". I do all in my power not to compare beers to one another, but to love the one I'm drinking at any given time.
Now, as hard as I try to be faithful to this principle, the one style of beer that challenges me the most not to make comparisons is the Hazy (or New England) IPA and it's because of the dreamy, transformative magic carpet ride of awesome NEIPAs I have enjoyed in New York. Debbie and I got to talking about the various Hazy IPA bombs we loved at District 96 in New City, NY. We rhapsodized about the tall cans of juicy hazy splendor brewed by Industrial Arts of Garnerville, NY and that Debbie could buy in Valley Cottage at the nearby Foodtown Grocery. I had nearly hallucinatory dreams of the pleasure I've experienced drinking Softly Spoken Magic Spells from SingleCut in Queens, NY.
I succeeded.
After those memories of blissful New York Hazy IPAs washed over me, I drank from my six ounce glass of Myopia Hazy IPA from Sawtooth Brewery and I loved the one I was with. The Myopia was refreshing and pleasing. I didn't need it to be a knockout. It satisfied my enjoyment of citrus flavors, a hint of straw (or grass), and a pleasing bitterness at the finish.
Debbie also enjoyed both of these beers and they both enhanced the fun and pleasure of our living room party and wide-ranging conversation tonight.
3. At Paul's birthday party, Laurie, Paul's sister, told us that she presents her students with a weekly trivia question about herself and she awards the winner with a gift card from a coffee shop. For example, recently, she asked her students, "What two concerts did Miss Roberts attend in the last month?" (The answer: James Taylor [with Jackson Browne] and Amy Grant.)
She also asked her students to guess how many states in the USA she had been to.
This got me thinking about how many states I've been to. I'm not sure whether to count Arizona. I think I flew into Phoenix once on my way to somewhere else. I've been through Nevada and Utah on Amtrack, but I haven't actually set foot in either state. The states I know I haven't been to are easier to list: Alaska, Hawaii, Maine, Florida, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.
I do not plan on visiting all fifty states in my lifetime, but I can imagine making my first ever visit to some of the other states on this list in the upcoming years.
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