Tag Archives: Friday

The End Of Beer Tastings

It was nearly five years ago that I first attended a beer tasting at Jungle Jim’s in Fairfield, Ohio. That night, Samuel Adams was the brewery visiting and letting everyone enjoy the fruits of their labors. It was October 10, 2009 and I had wanted to bring my brother as it was his birthday, but he had other plans, so I brought a friend.

We had the scheduled 10 beers, plus 2 others from a Sam Adams taste test. There were 2 more from the master brewery who had made a hop extract to mix with some of their sweeter beers. They were fantastic.

Back then, Jungle Jim’s was nearly the only place in town having regular beer tastings. Every month, they were well attended and people listened with great interest to the speakers. A few months later, I started to write about the Cincinnati Craft Beer scene for examiner.com. It was just the beginning of it all.

Since then, the various beer festivals have grown greatly. Jungle’s own beer fest on Father’s Day Weekend has grown to two days. Many bars and restaurants have small beer tastings and Friday night flights are not uncommon. With the opening of the Eastgate store, Jungle Jim’s now has pint nights on Friday evenings where patrons can buy a beer and walk around the store. The enjoyment of good beer is becoming common enough that having a special event feels no longer necessary. Alas, the tastings have become a victim of success.

The truth be known, over the last year or so it has been harder to truly enjoy the beer tastings. Many of the attendees are there to socialize and it is hard to hear the speaker, even with the use of the microphone. Bit by bit, the true beer nerds stopped attending as the crowds got larger. Then the crowds started to go other places and attendance this year become worse with each passing month. Before summer started, several tastings were cancelled due to lack of sign-ups. The trend was set and now it is done.

For those of us who looked forward to each month’s chat with a brewer or someone from the brewery who was truly passionate about craft beer. It was a bit of release from the mundane and became an Untappd check-in game. Over the years, I was able to meet Larry Bell and Greg Koch. What great times those were. What great times they will remain. So long monthly beer tastings. We knew you well.

Brainmuffin’s View Of Matsuricon 2014

Keleigh as Madeline Hatter
Keleigh as Madeline Hatter (Photo credit: BrainMuffin)

It is Saturday evening of my first Matsuricon here in Columbus. The evening of Friday was spent walking about the convention floors, but not having a pass to anything. The young age of the crowd surprised me and despite my daughter’s encouragement to take pictures of other people, I felt too creepy to take many. During lunch on Saturday I decided I had to get a pass.

The line for passes midway through the second day was far longer than I would expect. Perhaps people came and then decided later to sign up, I’m not sure. On Friday evening, they closed registration down a bit early and many of those who pre-registered did not get their passes and could not attend Friday evening’s festivities.  The organization for passes seems to need some work.

Once the line was down to a manageable length, I queued, filled out the form and then had sticker shock. Here it is 1:30 on Saturday and thinking the 3-day pass at the door was $40, I was surprised that just Saturday was that price. Oh well, at least I can go to a few panels today.

Attending some panels was good experiments. Now with a pass, I felt less like “creepy old dude” while walking about. Still shy to ask for many photos, I did get a few. The newly purchased PNY 32GB SDHC cards however, continued to give fits. Friday night they kept messing up and only a scant few minutes of video was shot. Practice time with the Glidecam XR-2000 was also too limited and the video was not the best anyway.

I’m sure I’ve walked miles today. Waiting for the elevators takes too long. Good thing we are only on the eighth floor, so walking up the steps is not a bad option. No need for cardio this weekend.

Overall, the experience was not bad. It is definitely not the place to just walk about taking pictures. More than once someone told me that Ohayocon is better. There are so many kids here running around. Doing Cosplay seems to be a mid-twenties thing and down. If I come next year though, I’ll be rocking some old school Cosplay. Which character to dress as?

The Best Laid Plans

Sprint006 plan
Sprint006 plan (Photo credit: J’Roo)

The plan was simple. Yesterday I updated my exercises for chest, back and abs. Want to know what it is? Sure, here’s the link. Then today, it was time to hit the gym after work and see how good this workout was. Yeah, that was the plan.

Today, reality happened. My daughter had a very emotional reaction to her summer school. I couldn’t blame her. The Northwest Passage School isn’t the nicest place and it is all computers. She had this same class on computer at regular school this year and couldn’t pay attention long enough to pass. She nearly broke down.

After talking to her and getting her to calm, she finally agreed to try it. After all, we’ve already paid and we cannot get that back. They were also having technical issues and didn’t have a computer for her for over an hour.

Ok, enough about my struggles. The results put me to work late, which put me home late, which meant no new workout time. Ugh! Time to hit the arms with dumbbells at home. Curls and extensions to failure, then some negatives. Then a call.

The call was good, but lasted longer than I planned. Nuts. Now I’m late with supper. While I have time for a smoothie? Yeah sure. Who cares about sleep for tomorrow.

 

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Time To Move To Heavy

101122-N-7948R-111
101122-N-7948R-111 (Photo credit: U.S. Pacific Fleet)

The last few months have seen me using the exercises in Iron Man Magazine nearly exclusively. In particular, those found within the Training & Research Center’s articles, using the ideals of HIT and 4x. Steve Holman’s articles have lead to very good results and since the body needs to be confused from time to time, it is now that there will be some change.

For June and July, I am going to go with heavier workouts, though the reps will not be forced to drop much. Research is starting to show that decline chest exercises are more effective and stimulating the pectoral muscles. All the standing cable flyes will be replaced, as with the flat press. I’ve also knocked out some of the supersets and lowered the overall number of exercises. I want more bang for my time. The resulting chest, back and ab workout will now look like this:

  • Declined flyes   3×10
  • Declined dumbbell bench press   3×10
  • Super set:
    • Flat flyes   3×10
    • Wide-grip bench dips  3×10
  • Smith machine flat bench (negative)  1×9
  • Super set:
    • Pulldowns   3×10
    • Undergrip pulldowns   3×10
  • Upright barbell rows   3×12
  • Super set:
    • Dumbbell shrugs   3×12
    • Laterals   3×10
  • Knee Ups   4×12

The idea is to do this workout at least through June and then perhaps tweak it a bit for July. This is done once a week, usually on Monday, with a followup workout on Fridays that is more TORQ oriented. The latter workout will remain from the Iron Man articles and will be adjusted once the July issue of the magazine has arrived.

Changes for the leg work are still being finalized and will be posted as soon as they are ready.

Happy lifting.

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