DUDE REPORT: Beer List

In a previous blog post I discussed how lucky we feel about the neighbors we have. Ross, who lives directly behind us, and I enjoy chatting over a beer whenever possible. They have three kids who are close in age to our girls. All five of the kids get along very well. The two main questions that we typically have to sort out when we are both outside are: 1) Are the kids going to play in our yard or your? 2) What beer are we drinking? (Assuming it is past noon and neither of us have work, a public appearance, etc. later that day.)

These two questions are usually answered quickly. The kids get along so well they don’t care where they play together and Ross and I like beer so much that we don’t care what we drink.
Ross and I both look for new beers to try. It is fun to discuss what we have each tried and debate our likes and dislikes. Ross has even ventured into brewing his own beer. He has created a couple good batches recently and I have been fortunate enough to sample a few.

Earlier this month we can across the American Homebrewers Association 2011 Best Beers in America poll. Over the course of future neighborhood grill outs, poker nights, and afternoon play dates we are hoping to try as many of these beers as possible.

The picture is of Ross and I are trying #2: Bell’s Two Hearted Ale and #20: Left Hand Milk Stout. (Sorry for the blurry picture. Camera lady(Libby) was drinking some wine that night too!?!?!?)

Although we have previously had some of the other beers listed, officially the two pictured beers brings us to 2 of 50 tried. In otherwords, we are early in our mission to try all 50.

The ale was good and was something we would both consider drinking more of in the future. The stout is more of a winter beer, so an 80-plus degree summer evening wasn’t quite a fit.

The full list is linked above. I would love to hear if you have tried/enjoyed/liked/disliked any of the listed beers. We will keep you posted on our progress through the list and we welcome additional participants anytime!

Review: Baby Driver

I don't drive a Subaru and I don't watch the Emmy's, but I did blog about a Subaru commercial last November that was recently nominated for an Emmy. I don't want to hurt my arm patting myself on the back, but it can't be ruled out that Tales from the Homefront played a role in the Subaru Baby Driver commercial nomination...maybe.

The commercial shows a dad seeing his daughter as a little girl although in reality she is 16 and taking the car out for the first time. Having to young girls, the commercial really stuck with me. It was easy to imagine me being that guy in 13 short years.

A friend posted a link on Facebook today saying Subaru's Baby Driver commercial has received an Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Commercial of 2011. This nomination makes me think, maybe, just maybe the committee has been keeping tabs on the Homefront blog, saw my November post, and agreed that it is a good commercial. More likely (much, much more likely) the commercial was nominated because it resonated with thousands of other parents like it did with me.

From my perspective, Baby Driver has some stiff competition in the category. (Look at me type like I know what I am typing about.) All the nominees can be viewed here. Sorry about the aggressive right hand column in the embedded link. I say baby driver has stiff competition because I remember laughing about the Conan commercial and laughing even harder about the Old Spice commercial.

Another nominee is a McDonald's commercial. In this commercial a dad who is driving his baby to sleep orders, pays for, and picks up McDonald's drive-through food without stopping his car. I have thought about trying this a couple times when I was hungry and driving Paige to sleep.

If you drive a Subaru, watch the Emmy's, have any tips for dealing with your 16 year old backing out of the driveway or have a vote for which commercial was the best of 2011 I would love to hear from you.

Answered Questions

There are a lot unknowns in our lives (including, but certainly not limited too, how to rotate a video posted to YouTube.)

I wanted to take a moment to step back and recognize what we do know.



Transcripts of what we do know:

"What's the largest pencil in the world?"
"Pennsylvania!"

"What's the best kind of work?"
"Teamwork!"

"Who's the boss?"
"Your the boss, Apple Sauce!"

Holiday Review

Last November I was summoned to county jury duty. I deferred to early May based on the assumption that we would be less busy during that time of year. The early May date rolled around this week and our schedule wasn't exactly wide open. So far grandparents have helped with the girls and there are additional grandparents, extended family, and neighbors on call.

To date I have served two days. Serving has meant sitting in a room from 8AM to 4PM simply waiting in a room with 175ish strangers and being available if a court room needs a jury. In addition to talking to a guy I recognized from church, making some new friends, and playing cribbage I have had the chance to go through most of the 600 pictures on my phone. Without back to back days with an eight hour period of absolutely nothing going on the phone picture project would have never been attempted. I plan to use many of the "would have been lost, but due to jury duty are organized" photos on the blog.

Today's post is to catch up on a couple holidays that slipped by.

St. Patrick's Day
Growing up with a 100% Irish mother St. Patrick's Day was a big holiday in our house. We decorated the house, baked Irish Soda Bread, sent cards to family, and always went out for corned beef and cabbage.

While the girls are a bit too young to grasp all the details of St. Patty's Day I made some good inroads with Lucy this past March 17th. Lucy will not soon forget the Shamrock Shake that she got on that special Thursday morning after swimming lessons. Nothing says be proud of your Irish heritage to a three year old like green ice cream! We will work on saying "Erin Go Bragh" over shakes next year.

Valentine's Day
We had a lot of fun making Valentine's for various friends and family. Always lots of glue stick and colored pencil time around this holiday. This year Lucy really enjoyed cutting the doilies in to a million pieces! Glue, glitter, and a thousands one centimeter red doily pieces makes for some extra special clean up time.

The actually day of February 14th was low key. Of course we couldn't let the day go by completely unrecognized. In addition to getting Mom some flowers I made heart shaped pancakes. I was proud of my work, but like any other pancake the girls have ever seen them liked them more once the syrup arrived.

Power of Genetics: Top Ten Lists

As I mentioned when I started the "Power of Genetics" section, I wanted to discuss some of the non-traditional ways we show up in our children.

I was reminded of one of my crowning academic achievements a couple weeks ago while Lucy was watch a YouTube video about the movie Tangled. Says a lot about my academic career doesn't it!?!?! The "achievement" I am referring to is a research paper I completed in high school on...The Ten Greatest Teams in NBA History.

On the off chance that anyone is interested, I concluded that the 1986-87 Los Angeles Lakers were the best team ever. They edges out the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls, who won 72 games. Although I grew up loving Micheal Jordan, ultimately, Magic, Kareem, Coach Riley, Michael Cooper, AC Green, James Worthy and company got the top honor in a paper that was review and acclaimed by no one.

Lucy really enjoyed watch Tangled, a Disney movie based on the fairy tale Rapunzel. Truth be told, Lib and I enjoyed the movie too. Lucy's favorite line from the movie is when Rapunzel says, "BEST DAY EVER!" I love when Lucy repeats the line with the same excitement that Mandy Moore used while doing Rapunzel's voice.

To learn more about the movie we searched YouTube for Tangled trailers and other videos. Lucy really enjoyed watch the below listed clip. It discussed a top ten list of the best Disney Princesses. Her interest in viewing this clip repeatedly and analysis of each of the princesses took me back to my high school research paper.



Through the video and other research Lucy has really gotten to know most of the princesses. We haven't viewed all of the movies, but have read about most of them. Lucy remains non-committal on which princess she likes best. Paige tends to gravite to the Tiana (Princess and the Frog) and Snow White dolls.

While the debates over which NBA team is the greatest ever and which Disney Princess is the best continue here, we would love to know your thoughts on either of the topics.

Review: Facial Hair

Since starting this blog I have discussed the topic of facial hair more frequently then I expected and far more then my readers would prefer. With an advanced apology to you, I continue to carry on about the topic. My excuse this time is that Paige didn't want to be left out.

To make this an official "review" post I wanted to list the three additional times that I have discussed facial hair on this blog. Lucy has earned two facial hair posts: The circus was in town and Beard Update. I blogged about my "No Shave November" and Movember in this post: Different ways to raise awareness.

While Lucy used black paint for her first beard and bubbles from the bath for her second, Paige used Nutella and a cracker to create her beard. Unlike Lucy, Paige's creation was unintentional. The relationship between Nutella and Paige was love at first sight. In her excitement to quickly eat as much as possible she missed her mouth...a lot.

Another difference from older sister's two beards, Paige went with the mustache and goatee versus the full beard. Being the person that had to remove the thick layer of Nutella in the bath, I appreciated that it wasn't a "full beard".

Dude Report: Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!

Yelling Mayday three times as the title of this blog isn't to show my excitement for the calendar reading May 1st today. Rather it is to let out a distress signal in reference to the Minnesota Twins. My favorite baseball team is currently 9-18 (worst record in the majors) and they just got swept by the Kansas City Royals!?!?!?!?

The distress signal Mayday is derived from the French words venez m'aider, meaning 'come help me'. (I read all the way to the second sentence of Wikipedia's definition of Mayday to learn that.) Fellow Twins fans...I am here to help.

With my 5'9" frame, slow bat speed, and weak arm, unfortunately there isn't much I can do on the field. Rather, my attempt to help is by boosting the morale of us fans. Below I have laid out why despite the ugly start all will be right in Twins Territory by September.

• Still Early: It sure has been painful watching the Twins lose 2 out of every 3 games. We are only 15% of the way into the season. 154 games is a lot left to be played.
  



• Win Rate: I love the line "If the Twins just win the rest of the games this year they will be the best team in baseball" as much as anyone. Of course no team will win 154 in a row to finish the season. More realistically, if the Twins win 55% of their remaining games (roughly 85-69) they will finish with 94 wins. It is quite a jump to assume the team with the worst record in baseball can finish 16 games over 500 the rest of the way. The point is if they can just start playing some slightly over 500 ball they will work their way back into contention.
  




• Weak division: Currently the Indians are leading the division with a 19-8 record. Despite being very jealous of their current record, they don't seem like a division champ to me. The White Sox, Royals, and Tigers don't scare me much either. In a weak Central division their is room for a 9-18 start.
  




• Favorable September schedule: From the department of "Getting way too far ahead of myself"...during the final month of the season the Twins play the Royal 5 times, White Sox 3, Detroit 3, Cleveland 6, Seattle 3, and the LA Angels 3. Other then the Angels in LA these are all very winnable series. If they are in contention when the calendar turns to September they could realistically win 16 of their last 23.
  




• Get healthy: Justin Morneau has missed 5 games, Mauer 16, Young 10, and Nishioka 20. Morneau is back, Young is close, Mauer is a mystery, and Nichioka is starting to plays some baseball in Florida. Getting Mauer back is a big question, but he will provide a large boost when he does return to the lineup.
  




• Return to average: Cuddy is hitting 40 points below his career average. Morneau is 60 points below is career batting average and has 1 HR and 9 RBIs. Young is 60 points off his career average and has only 6 RBIs after driving in over 100 last year. These three and Mauer represent the heart of the order. If they simply return to their career averages the Twins will start scoring enough runs to win.





• Keep doing what you are doing: Kubel, Span, Duensing, Baker, and for the most part Capps are proof that it isn't all bad for the Twins. If those 5 can keep playing at their current level it would be greatly appreciated. Kubel, I understand batting 354 for the rest of the year might be a bit too much to expect, so we can live with 325!?!?!
  




• Give them time: I am not sure if I am reassuring myself or trying to convince myself, but I believe that if Thome, Pavano, and Blackburn are given more time they will figure things out. Thome needs to start putting the ball over the fence and Pavano and Blackburn need to start having consistent quality starts.

Winning and losing can both become habits. I hope the Twins quickly change their habits and give us some more to cheer about soon. I also hope that this post gives you a couple reasons for optimism. WIN TWINS!

My final prediction is that the Twins finish with 88 wins and another division title!