If you be comin’ round here to see what I have to say about the year that’s ending just because the hours have dwindled way, way down, well, my friend, I already been there, done that.
Why wait until the year is over to remark on the fact that the year is over, when you can be the first one on the block? That’s the ticket.
Besides, there was this big snow storm and I had lots of free time…
I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the past two weeks working out various ways to save money in 2010. That’s not save as in put away for a rainy day, understand; it’s more of a defensive move to curtail as much as possible the concerted effort by the forces of evil to take even more of it than usual out of my pockets during the year that will debut in less than nine hours.
Insurance was the Big Hit they had planned for me, an overall increase in the $1,000 range between a massive jump in monthly premiums, newly established co-pay restrictions and higher fees for standard stuff like office visits, physicals et al. Who knew that living in either Montgomery or Chester counties was a target on my back, with higher premiums for my HMO than in any other county around? I’ve managed to cut the cost increase in half by switching programs (same coverage, higher co-pays but only a $10 premium jump) and working with doctors and pharmacies to fill some standing prescriptions in this last week rather than waiting for them to come due.
I can’t beat the bastards, but I can slow ‘em down.
More bucks will be saved in switching my telephone service from Vonage to Comcast, a move which has additional benefits as it turned out. When the changeover is made next month, I will also upgrade my internet service and my cable service (access to every damned thing Comcast has to offer for a full year) and do it all at a reduced monthly billing from what I am now paying. The whole package, internet, cable and phone, will be almost $400 less than I paid in 2009. To make it work out, I’m using the free Google Voice service to fill in a couple of places where Comcast lacked features that Vonage offered. I had to give up my long-standing basic phone number because Comcast was unable to port it over (don’t ask), but mass emails have allowed me to alert most of my contacts well in advance.
An aside: for years now, I have have telephone service which allows me to have both my home phone and cell phone ring when the former is called. I’ve kept telling people this, that they don’t need my cell number, that, hell, I don’t even know my cell number, but some persist in using it. This new service does the same thing and I stressed in my emails and direct conversations that This. One. Number. Is. All. You. Need. Dammit! And you would not believe how many questions I have gotten back along the lines of “What about your cell phone? Should I keep that number?” What is so damned difficult to understand about all this?
I’m pretty sure nobody much cares, but I just needed to babble on about all that and so I did. It’s good to be the boss, even if it’s only a ethereal little corner of the internets.
Also, I’m using this time to take a break from transcribing a whole slew of telephone interviews for a long story I have to write next week and avoiding writing the column due this weekend, all the while pretending that another column and story I have due at the end of next week are well in hand. Meanwhile, That nice Matt Guyer just made me an offer for a very appealing Road Trip this Monday which, of course, I do not have the time to take but which I am, you know, already rearranging things a bit to accommodate…Just In Case.
Delusion is how I roll.
But you already knew that.
As we move toward that magic moment when the clock strikes 12 and the slate is wiped clean and the whole world is fresh and new again while all our mistakes and regrets fade away as if they never existed, I have spent a good portion of this last day of the Worst. Decade. Ever. being kicked around by, of all things, Canadians over at Stephen Beaumont’s temporary looks-pretty-permanent-to-me blog.
What’s made it even more painful is that the lads to the north were correct and I was….not.
You’ll have to follow the link to make any sense of the header here.
The classic original logo!
A brand new address!
The same old babble…plus!
The Internets will never be the same!
On January 1, 2010, we go back to the future.
But not here.
During a quick dash into Wegmans today for cheese and hummus and all that good stuff, I took a moment to grab a copy of Imbibe off the magazine rack and check out one of the feature stories, headlined America’s Five Coolest New Beer Scenes on the cover.
Inside they change the terminology to Emerging Beer Meccas, but you get the idea—new places where craft beer is making its mark.
Their choices: Portland, Maine; Reno, Nevada; Atlanta, Georgia; Austin, Texas and Minneapolis/St Paul, Minnesota.
Portland? New? Seriously?
Also, Austin?
…this would be a real contender for making me do so.
Ten years. It seems like a lot less time since the days we were all waiting to see what was going to emerge down there on 2nd St. And whether it would work.
A few weeks after The Tap opened, I drove down there the day after a huge snowstorm. Roads were clear until I got in the approximate area and there they were so bad that I felt entirely comfortable basically leaving my car in the street. I arrived around 4pm, an hour before they opened in those days, and spent about an hour and half talking with William Reed upstairs.
When we came down, the place was packed. Granted, as I’ve written just recently, there’s nothing like a good bar as a haven from the storm, but this, I thought at the time, an extraordinary turnout, a thought that became even more a cemented fact in my mind when I finally left and realized, since mine was the only car out there not packed in by snow, the entire crowd had arrived on foot or by public transit.
I was, in a sense, “there at the beginning” for a whole lot of the emergence of the Philly craft beer culture, but I can’t remember another one of those early moments that seemed so perfect and that I remember with such clarity.
Okay, there was the time I told Tom Peters that there was no way in hell he’d ever convince people to walk down that long dark hall to the back room of the about-to-open Monk’s, but aside from that…
*Stay inside, keep below window level and don’t answer the phone.
In the episode of TNT’s Men of a Certain Age on the tube this very minute, one of the leads (Ray Romano) and his bookie are drunkenly soaking in the pool of the hotel where Romano lives, drinking cans of beer.
Dale’s Pale Ale.
I’ve noticed in a lot of shows of late that the beers which are pulled out every now and then are clearly not mainstream brands, maybe fakes or maybe real beers. I’ve never been able to pin one down until now.
I sense a Marty Jones song coming on….
As you may have heard, Yards Brewing is reintroducing its Olde Bartholomew Barleywine, one of the early big beers released in the Philly market back in the day.
A few samples from the brewery arrived on my doorstep Saturday and I plan to make it my New Year’s Eve beer (yeah, I know I already gave that role to McKenzie’s Saison Vautour—a man needs more than one beer to toss out the old and bring in the new) and was going to hold back mentioning it until I could give you my impressions early in the New Year.
However, it seemsYards is making a city-wide event out of the Old Bart release through the first nine days of 2010 and I want to let you all know where you can be among the first to enjoy it:
Dec. 31 - Dawson St. Pub (Manayunk)
Jan. 1 -Devil’s Den (South Philly)
Jan. 2 - Varga (WashWest)
Jan. 3 - Swift Half (Northern Liberties)
Jan. 4 - Local 44 (West Philly)
Jan. 5 - Hulmeville Inn (Buxco)
Jan. 6 - Standard Tap (Northern Liberties)
Jan. 7 - Kite and Key (Franklintown)
Jan. 8 - Pub & Kitchen (Graduate Hospital)
Jan. 8 - London Grill (Fairmount)
Jan. 9 - Pub on Passyunk East (South Philly)
While my samples arrived in very nicely labeled bottles, you needs must forget the “and bottled” part of the slogan on the flyer above (which was also included): Olde Bartholomew will be available only in sixtels—in this release, at least. “And bottled” is part of the boilerplate on Yards’ promo sheets and somebody forgot to remove it.
Wait. I’m getting a vision of a large man with red hair….
Bad Mash. Bad, bad Mash.*
*Steve Mashington, who does something or other at Yards
Dan Weirback just told me that, while the addition of Zotten Belgian Pale Ale to the year-round Weyerbacher beer offerings will likely happen, it will be at the earliest sometime next summer that it does. For now, my New Beer of the Year 2009 will arrive in May on the seasonal list.
They do things slow and methodical up there in Easton. Except when they don’t.