I haven't the foggiest

Foggy mountain, foggy brain.

And my mum informs me that it's actually not fog, but clouds, because we're so darn close to them up here. 

I know there's a metaphor for life there, but I just don't quite know what it is.

Happy weekend wonderful people.

I think I've done the impossible

I try to come up with at least one really good playlist per season.  This is my summer list that I've been perfecting over the last several weeks.  I've been telling myself that once I got it perfect, I could then begin playing it while I wrote.  But I had to get it perfect first.  Don't I take the art of procrastination to a whole new level?  Yes I think so.

Anyway, in case you need a few new tunes in your life, here's what I've been listening to on repeat.

(Click to zoom in and get a better view.)

Certain scenes from an uncertain life

One more rainbow...

(Photo by cute husband, since he had shoes on, and I tend to run around shoeless.)

I could actually make out the entire color spectrum (Roy G. Biv) on this one.  Breathtaking!

Think we might need to change the name of the blog to Rainbow Blog. 

And a sunset to beat the band:

These little gifts keep my motor running during uncertain times.

For the love of beer

In a world of self-proclaimed wine aficionados, sometimes us beer lovers are unfairly judged as, shall we say, low brow.  We're supposed to listen to country music and smash empty cans against our heads (not that there's anything wrong with that), while producing a hearty burp of satisfaction with our Bud Light. 

It stinks to be stereotyped.  Cute husband, who held my hand and showed me the way down Good Beer Lane, calls light American mass-produced beers, ahem, weasel piss.  He quotes one H. Allen Smith, who, upon tasting his first American beer, said, "Put it back in the horse!"  See, beer drinkers are snobs too.

Don't get me wrong I love wine (see previous long-winded posts about the heavenly glory of Louis Jadot Chardonnay), and I love tasting new wines, and can taste the difference.  Seems like wine lovers and beer lovers in this country have stepped to either side of yet another dividing line.  The wine lovers say, "I hate beer!  Ha!  Crap only has one flavor."  And the beer lovers say, "Wine!  Ha!  Bunch of stuck up fools."

(Hmmm, it's just occurring to me now that maybe I'm just an alcohol lover.)

But anyway, I've been lucky enough to have beer lovers in my life who are the real deal.  My mom taught me to love Moosehead; cute husband's parents took me to Rohrbachs in Rochester, New York for a brat and a brew when I was 22 and I've never looked back; cute husband is practically a professional beer taster, and (not so) little brother Alex has discovered so many tasty new beers, which he brings home, slaps down on the kitchen table, and says, "You've gotta try this one with me." 

And the truth is, the really great brewers out there take just as much time and pride in creating their flavors as do those grape-crushers in California, Chile, and France.  And it's time they got a little more respect.

Tonight we supped on my new favorite beer, called St. Lupulin, an extra pale ale.  Aside from its complex (but refreshing!) flavor, it was the description on the side of the bottle that really had me at hello:

It reads: A mystical legend echoes in our brewhouse-- that of St. Lupulin (loop-you-lin) the archetypal hophead.  He devoted endless summers to endless rows of hops, tending to the flowers and the beloved resin within--lupulin.

Extraordinary oils in this yellow resin provide this dry-hopped extra pale ale with an undeniably pleasing floral aroma and clean, crisp finish.  One sip of this seasonal summer ale and you, too, will believe.

Odell Brewing also has a winter seasonal brew called Isolation Ale, that I can't wait to try come that time of year.  Here's its description, via the website: Ever been in a warm, cozy cabin and had a secret desire to get snowed in? 

 (Me: Why yes Odells, all the time!  Even in summer!  How did you know?!) 

To celebrate the winter season, we offer our Isolation Ale--a traditional winter brew made with premium malts imported from England.  It's just one of the reasons Isolation Ale stands alone. 

 (I love any company that dares to pun.)


So wise up world, enjoy a pint with your loved ones.  Preferably as the sun goes down on another day, and all that awaits for the rest of the night is renewed hope for tomorrow.

Rainbows, cinammon rolls, and The Quickening

While a certain web video has corrupted my rainbow photography forever, I still thought this one was worth posting.

I don't know about you, but I'm ready for changing leaves, sweaters, and pumpkin-flavored foods.  This heat has got to stop.  And I love Colorado, but oh what I wouldn't give for a Trader Joe's run, so that I could make these.  When we drive back in a few weeks, I think I'm going to make cute husband stop in and buy the pizza dough before we even get home.

And I wanted to share with you this book:

 

(image taken from the author's website)

Please go find it--it's so wonderful.  It's about two Iowa farm wives spanning from the early 1900s through the Great Depression, and the chapters alternate in their voices as their shared story is revealed.  It absolutely brought to life for me the hardships of farming in the midwest during those desperate times, and the story itself is riveting.

I visited the author's blog where she wrote that it had taken her nearly fifteen years to get this novel published.  She finished it when when she was twenty-three, and she's now thirty-eight.  She described the excruciating and long revision process: "I cut five characters, two narrators, forty years in my timeline, and at least two hundred pages.  I had about thirty pages left.  I re-envisioned my plot, created another narrator, two more characters, and finally started in."

Sheesh.

In her acknowledgments, she thanks her literary agent, Esmond Harmsworth, who believed in her so long ago when her novel was but a dream.  Well guess what?  I interned for him at his agency in Boston, right after college.  I sat in a back corner of the office and read the slush pile all day.  Glamorous it was not.

Weekend photographs

A few things I've seen lately.

Mountain storm rolling in...

The clouds just start to eat the light.

But it always clears away to reveal a familiar view, even more beautiful than before.

I call this one, "Take a peak."

Think like a moth

Perhaps he doesn't understand the concept of a window.  Or perhaps he just keeps on believing, against all odds, that he can make it through to what he just knows awaits on the other side.

Maybe there's no difference between the two.
I've got to respect any living thing that's always choosing the light.

The Fourth (the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift)

Only a country I truly love could be capable of making me so completely crazy sometimes.
So I saluted with the rest of em...

But mostly it was just an excuse to sit out here and giggle with people I love most in the world.

Oh and we cooked from the Bible:

 And kept the levity in life:

 I hear it's 100+ degrees in good old Williamsburg, Virginia.  The NOAA web page has a picture of a cactus next to Williamsburg.  Too bad I'm in Colorado, wearing a jacket.

*Blog title lyrics by Leonard Cohen, as if you didn't know