First Real Post in Like 2 Flippin' Years (or) How Facebook Killed the Blogger in me

(update** fixed some formatting issues)

Seriously, WTF happened?

One day I'm going on and on about how much fun I had trying delicious brew and food at the Sierra Nevada brewery, next thing you know...poof... nuthin'.

I've come to realized that Facebook is to blame and I apologize. I fought off the urge to sign up for years, worrying about my privacy, or not wanting to plague the world with vague snippets of my life that come into my head throughout the day:

Leon is what a ho hum day *sigh*

Oh yeah? Could you please elaborate? If not, why the fuck did you post that to begin with?

After enough poking and prodding from some friends who use Facebook, I finally caved in, and for the last two years I've been lurking, liking, being vague, following, but really not saying much. It was cool with a few friends, but now I got family, coworkers and long lost high school acquaintances in my list of "friends" and FB is beginning to creep me out. I've even had weird anxiety dreams about it.

I find that I can easily offend people even more so on Facebook than here with my reactionary quips. Here I can at least explain myself and make a funny story out of it. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be won over in the end...most of the time.

Facebook does come in handy at times, for instance, the Mrs and I are planning a weekend getaway that involves visiting one of my favorite breweries in Santa Rosa. Besides drinking cold frosty brew, I wanted to see if the area had more to offer. I hadn't a clue. All I had to do was post "what is there to do in Santa Rosa?" on my status, and before I knew it, blam, I had my whole weekend planned out for me thanks to a handful of helpful individuals: some friends, some acquaintance as well as some people who I haven't talked to in person for 10 plus years who I probably wouldn't say much to if I actually did see them in person. It was great!

So anyhow, time to dust off the ol' keyboard and get back at the ol' blog. I hope all three or four of you will enjoy it...and please...send all hate mail to my actuall email account, not through Facebook. Thanks.

Anyone out there?!?!?!?!



Is anyone watching? Should I revive this blog?

Sierra Nevada Brewery



This Sunday Niki and I drove all the way up to Chico to finally check out the legendary Sierra Nevada brewery in person





We showed up way early before the tour, so we decided to taste the taps...all 16 of them!





Sierra Nevada sells around 6 different beers in stores (including seasonals), but they brew about 16 total at any given time that you can sample all at once in their taproom. The glasses were way too small, making it hard for the beer to stay cold. I found out that the flagship Pale Ale is made slightly different between the bottled and the on-tap version. Both versions are included in the sampler.





We settled on the Ruthless Weiss Beer, which was a delicious "Begian white" style ale.

One thing I found out during the tour is that all of the Sierra Nevada bottled beers are bottle-conditioned (naturally fermented)!