Beer Advent Day 25

Last day :-(
Thanks again Tracie!

Beer Advent Day 24

Beer Advent Day 23

Yum!

Beer Advent Day 22

Beer Advent Day 21

Beer Advent Day 20

Beer Advent Day 19

Beer Advent Day 18

Beer Advent Day 17

Bottles

Westvleteren!?

Yep. Overhyped, but still good.

Onion... Jam?

OK, I guess...

Mmmmm, cheesy

Dessert

Fruit and nut cake accompanied by La Trappe Quad

Bacon wrapped quail

So cute. Also yummy.

Rochefort 8 and Achel Extra

Rochefort is better.

Soup course

With Westmalle tripel and Flemish onion soup.

Being Belgian Beer Dinner

I'll probably post a few pics, but I'm gonna mostly just focus on enjoying this.

Beer Advent Day 16

Beer Advent Day 15

Beer Advent Day 14

So nice they included it twice?

Beer Advent Day 13

This one is gonna be good.

Beer Advent Day 12

Beer Advent Day 11

Beer Advent Day 10

Beer Advent Day 9

St. Bernardus Christmas Ale

A delicious extra not in the Advent calendar.

Sea Of Fog

It's so nice living above the dreary gray fog.

Beer Advent Day 8

This one looks promising.

Beer Advent Day 7

Bonus

Trace picked up this Southern Tier Belgian IPA at our new neighborhood beer shop. YUM!

Beer Advent Day 6

Silly Sour ale. And bonus Cards Against Humanity holiday bullshit.

Blood Orange Gose

This is surprisingly not terrible. Very crisp and sour. Anderson Valley comes through for the first time in untold eons.

Beer Advent Day 5

Anderson Valley. :-(

Monk's Blood

This has figs in it. I don't like figs.

Beer Advent Day 4

St. Bernardus Extra 4

This is the day 1 beer from the calendar.

Very light and crisp, a bit grainy, but also creamy. Nice clean and sharp finish. A good light contrast to the ultra malty winter ales abounding in the northwest this time of year.

Beer Advent Day 3

Beer Advent Day 2

Monk's Blood... Uh... Yum, I guess?

Beer Advent Day 1

It's that time of year again! Thanks for the calendar, Trace.

Movin' on Up!

"To the top. To a dee-luxe apartment big-ol-house in the sky-y-y..."

Obligatory soundtrack for this long-awaited post:

We did it! We moved! After 16 years in our little "starter" house, we got a new place (still in Corvallis).

Somebody pinch me.

I won't have the easy bicycle commute to work anymore (the house is 1000 feet up Vineyard Mountain a few miles north of town), but I can live with that, I think you'll see why:

That's the entrance side of the house, from the driveway. Here's what it looks like looking up from the "yard" (1.25 acres of forest):

The inside is nice (huge!), but we need to get rid of the brown carpet and original '80s appliances. We're getting flooring quotes today, actually. The woodstove isn't there anymore, we're getting a new modern up-to-DEQ-code one and getting rid of the giant tile pad/wall thing:

That's the main "living/dining/kitchen" area on the third floor. Not pictured are the two big bedrooms, one on each of the bottom two floors, a nice finished two car garage, a big attic, woodshed, and tool shed.

Oh, did I mention the roof deck? There's a roof deck:

There's also a smaller deck off the master bedroom (second floor) you can kind of see in some of those pictures.

It actually looks a bit different up there now, other than the trees not having leaves anymore. Believe it or not, last Friday (the day we were supposed to start moving), the largest ice storm any of the neighbors can remember hit the hill and took out a bunch of trees, blocking the driveway. Thankfully nothing hit the house, and it actually happened before we technically owned the place -- the seller covered the cost of the tree removal. That screwed up our schedule, pushed our moving day back to this past Wednesday, and we still have to clean up the trees that fell in the "yard" (forest) itself but weren't deemed dangerous. It could've been way worse, but was just kind of the crowning weirdness to top off the bizarre ordeal of selling and buying a house simultaneously, and the random crap that seemed to pop up for us at every turn.

While it's not nice and warm and sunny like it was when those shots were taken, and the place is full of boxes that need to be unpacked, it's still pretty damn nice. Here's the view from this morning while I was drinking my coffee as the sun came up over the Cascades:

Not bad, not bad at all.

Big, BIG thanks my amazing wife for going through this craziness with me, and to all the friends and family that helped in various ways, big and small, (you know who you are) during this ordeal. You'll all be invited to the housewarming, whenever we can manage to get unpacked.