Snapshots of the Space Between

Content Note: Mental Illness, Suicidal Ideation.

Guys, 2017 was a giant garbage fire for me in a lot of ways. I have repeatedly wanted to bring this blog back up and repeatedly not been able to do so. My first 2017 post literally says that I need encouraging and have been struggling to write.

I need some encouraging these days. I have had a lot that I’ve wanted to write about, from the dogs, to the breakfast nachos I made this morning (inspired by Isis’s tendency to make amazing breakfast nachos), to why the beer industry needs to change their phrasing around nomadic brewers, to how fun it was to do a beer photo scavenger hunt with Leslie. I even have taken some great photos and started framing out posts in my head.

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Call Me? Call me!

Hi.

I haven’t been posting, I know. It’s been a weird-as-fuck year, and all the things I want to talk about feel like things I can’t write about here all publicly and shit. Or it’s the mundanities of life, like how my dearly beloved Kiki has decided that the kitchen is where she should go to the bathroom. Even if the back door is open…

Damn it, dog.

Anyway, I realized this morning, while on a three-hour call with a friend, that phone calls are a thing I need in my life more often. Specifically phone calls, though they don’t have to be that long. I need them because they are a great way to start catching up, but also (admission time) because they use enough of my brain to keep me focus, but not my hands at all.… Continue reading →

Promises Made and Kept – To Others.

I am writing this because I promised Marielle I would. I am writing this because I promised Deb I would.

I’m writing this because I promised myself I would, and then I didn’t. Repeatedly. For months. And I still wouldn’t be, but Marielle and Deb aren’t me. Committing to them is, somehow, more imperative than committing to myself.

This, honestly, is how I’ve functioned for 90% of my life. Maybe more. Maybe a lot more. Commitments to others matter(ed) more, far more, than commitments to myself.

I have been trying to get motivated to update this here MetaCookbook for months. Even before I managed to publish Shafiqah’s wonderful beer origin story, and especially after. I had so many ideas after. I wanted to ask Liz and Russ and so many others.… Continue reading →

Beer Origin Stories – Shafiqah Hudson

I’ve always been fascinated by what draws people to liking beer, I think in part because I really didn’t enjoy beer until I was well over the U.S. legal drinking age. There’s as many stories as there are beer enthusiasts, and part of me wants to document them all. Starting here. In this one, my friend Shafiqah Hudson reminds us that freshness matters. And that’s just in the first paragraph.

My entrance into the world of craft beer began, interestingly enough, with a REALLY good bottle of Heineken. Not my first Heinie, but the best, ever AND since. I mean, it was really, reeeeeeally fucking good, and maybe partly because I wasn’t expecting it to be.

Some extensive background: once upon a time ago, I didn’t drink beer.… Continue reading →

APRIL FOODS!

I couldn’t resist the play on words in the title when it came up. Sometimes, some silliness helps. Especially when you’ve FINALLY moved into April from #FuckingMarch.

Anyway, the sun is coming out in Portland and that is a huge relief. The grey and short days that make up winters are here really puts a lot of cramp in my style. It never feels like it’s going to end. But, finally, it’s starting to. Enough so that in the last two days, I’ve had two sodas. And brewed up some iced tea! I did both before I saw the following ad, which is relevant to the first link of APRIL FOODS!

The ad is from Montgomery County, Maryland, and it showcases some of the things the county has been doing for the last three years to try to curb soda usage without a sales tax increase specifically on “sugary drinks.”… Continue reading →