Briefly, I just want to say that the third season of ‘Lost’ returned this evening after something like a 12 week break. Now they plan on showing the next 16 episodes uninterrupted. I am excited to say the least.
Over the last two weeks I re-watched all of season one and two and the first six episodes of season three to get all tuned up. Well, I am tuned. You know what the worst part of having ‘Lost’ back on TV is? Not having it on disc so I can’t watch four episodes at a time or more, that’s what sucks.
On Sunday Robert and I went down to RehobothBeach to join in the Lewes Polar Bear Plunge. The Polar Bear Plunge benefits Special Olympics Delaware and this was our second year participating. Between the two of us we contributed over $200 without even trying to hard to raise donations.
The night before The Plunge I was at a Keller Williams show in Baltimore, MD and Rob�rt was playing a show in Philadelphia at Luminare. Neither of us got home until around 3AM the night before and we were up by 8AM to drive down for The Plunge, we were a little Deeter to say the least.
The Plunge actually went well. We got down late for registration yet there were no lines, so that was great. We had a little medicine and coffee before The Plunge so we were in full Drater mode. The air temperature that day was 29�F with a wind chill of 20�F and the water temperature was a steamy 44�F. Honestly it was cold, but I wasn�t cold like that � I didn�t even wear a jacket while we were standing out there waiting for like two hours before The Plunge.
The best part for me is always the fifteen minutes before The Plunge. You get to watch the energy level rise like ten fold. People start slowly undressing to become acclimated to the temperature. All of the groups seem to become more of a single unit feeding off of each other. It is actually really a great feeling. Then it counts down, two minutes, one minute, thirty seconds (at this point it is crazy!), then suddenly people just start running for the ocean and it’s on!
I love running in, seeing how far I can go out before the first wave hits, then just letting go and jumping. The initial part of going under water is literally breath taking. You can not breath, you can not see, it’s a little disorientating. BUT, it is a great exciting rush. If there were other Draters I knew, I could be convinced to go once a month for all of winter, maybe.
After The Plunge, we headed down to Dogfish Head to grab a bite to eat and some anti-freeze to drink. We both got soup and some beers. We got to try their new Summer seasonal (in February) which is Festina Peche. It was a nice light and crispy peach beer with a nice sour twang. I would love to drink it in the summer, probably by the pint, but all we got was 8oz. for five dollars. Sometimes I really don’t understand DFH’s pricing structure.
After the quick stop at DFH it was time to go home and take a hot shower then off to a Super Bowl gathering. It turned out to be a really nice day, I wish all of my days were so full with things I wanted to do.
I was able to go see Keller Williams play at Rams Head Live in Baltimore, MD on Saturday. It turned out to be a really great show. If I can find the setlist online, I’ll post it.
I went down with Mike, the second Keller show I’ve seen with him in about six months. The other show was in Atlantic City, NJ and had horrible sound quality which helped make this show sound even better. Keller’s new CD comes out tomorrow, but fortunetly for us they had it on sale at the show. It is called Dream. The concept behind the CD is that Keller wanted to play with everyone he had every dreamed of playing with including the following plus more; Béla Fleck, Bob Weir, Charlie Hunter, John Scofield, Martin Sexton, Steve Kimock, The String Cheese Incident, and Victor Wooten.
One of the cool things about Rams Head Live is they are “sponsored” for lack of a better term by Fordham Brewing Company. And because of this, the bar at RHL has all of the styles of Fordham beer available including my favorite their Tavern Ale. Fordham claims it to be an American Pale Ale. I always found it to be a cross between an APA and an English Pale Ale. Once I got to try it dry hopped and served out of a firkin, now that was a good beer!
Well, the first set wasn’t just Keller, it was Keller & the Keels, which is Keller Williams, Larry, and Jenny Keel. They recently just released a blue-grass album together called Grass. Some covers I can remember them playing were Tom Petty’s Last Dance with Mary Jane & Breakdown, Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall, and a combonation of Beck’s and The Grateful Dead’s Loser. They played some really rockin’ blue-grass that lasted almost an hour and a half, much longer than I expected. Keller than took a set break and came back and did what he does best – make you smile and dance with the grace of his musical skills. The Keels came back out for the encore too. Over all a really great time.
Last night I went to another State Line Liquors tasting. This time the featured beer style was Stout. It was $8 to try 13 different Stouts, not bad if I do say so myself.
I went up to the event with Todd & Johnny Vegas and we met up with Guy & Prague. It was a good time, not too many people, nice cheese spread and as much Stout as you could shake a stick at. I did have to put myself in check to not buy any beer while I was there for I have more than enough already at home, though I wanted to badly. Here’s a list of what they had at the tasting:
1. Wild Goose Oatmeal Stout 2. Samuel Smith Oatmeal stout 3. Anderson Valley Oatmeal Stout 4. Wye Valley Dorothy Goodbody Wholesome Stout 5. Old Dominion Oak Barrel Stout 6. Farson’s Lacto Stout 7. Rogue Shakespear Stout 8. Rogue Chocolate Stout 9. Van Den Bossch Buffalo Belgian Stout 10. Clipper City Peg Leg Stout (draft) 11. Stoudts Fat Dog Stout 12. Weyerbacher Old Heathen 13. Avery Czar Imperial Stout
I’ll briefly run down some of my favorites and least favorites. If I don’t mention it, it was probably a fine beer but nothing worth spending your money on. Anyway, it started good with the Wild Goose Oatmeal Stout and went down hill for a while until we got to the Old Dominion Oak Barrel Stout. This beer was good but weird. I kept going back and forth between yummy and ewey. The Farsonsons was a sour beast, avoid that one, but the two Rogue’s were great. The Chocolate Stout may have been the best beer of the evening. Then we got kicked in the nuts by a Belgian Stout! Bad idea, period – I was the only one who didn’t dump it. The Fat Dog and the Old Heathen were both great per usual, but I wish they had the barrel aged version of each instead to make it more intersting. The Fat Dog barrel aged is pretty rare and the Old Heathen barrel aged is re-named Heresy. And the Avery Czar was the ‘big boy’ of the night weighing in at 11.5%, but it really was just a hot thin Stout, so I was less then impressed.
Overall it was a good time, I can’t wait to go back to another one honestly.
I just wanted to say that I am really excited, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows release date has been announced. And I thought it was going to be in 2008! Sweet!
You can pre-order here at Amazon, probably going to be the best price around. Also, check out the official Harry Potter / J.K. Rowling website here.
