The main focus of this grand website update is the photo album added here.
Our mothers visited us for Thanksgiving to escape the cold weather emanating from the midwest frozen tundra. The highlights of that trip were an excellent meal cooked by the Buell side of the family, a trip to the Ginger Man pub in Uptown, and several trips to the dog park. The Ginger Man pub is an elegant bar built into an old home similar to other Uptown businesses and it has an amazing atmosphere with a good selection of beer and the only cask conditioned ale I've found in Dallas. This trip inspired me to stake out their new location in the Shops at Legacy in Plano for my birthday celebration in January (more on that later).
I had the opportunity to take 3 weeks off between jobs in December so Mackenzie and I ended up in Omaha with our family and friends. Midway through the trip we were buried by 14 inches of snowand barely made it out alive. The people in Omaha are amazing but I'm not coming back next December. In Dallas the weather is a cool 50 degrees and I can run outside!
Fortunately there was good news: The Nebraska Cornhuskers stomped on Arizona during the holiday bowl and solidified their end of season ranking. Yet again Ndomukong Suh put on a stellar performance in preparation for the NFL. The thing that impresses me most about this man is how humble he is; he's a team player and he genuinely appreciates the Nebraska fans.
Some of the pictures added in today's album comes from my 25th birthday celebration with several of Mackenzie's classmates and Dawn, the recent Council Bluffs to Oklahoma City transplant. We had dinner at Naan, a four star Korean and Sushi restaraunt in the Shops at Legacy and ended the evening at the Ginger Man pub. The dinner was probably the best meal of my life and we ended up trying nearly every obscure sashimi item on their menu. The Ginger Man depended on outdoor seating and it was a rainy evening so we didn't have an excellent experience. The highlight of the bar was my first taste of a Cask Conditioned Saint Arnold Elissa IPA. I'll spare the review for beer nerds, but cask conditioned ales are naturally carbonated by fermentation in a cask rather than having air pumped into them via a traditional tap or keg. They are very agitated on the pour so the texture is not typical of a keg poured or bottled beer.
In addition to the Saint Arnold cask conditioned IPA I've had the pleasure of tasting the following beers since my last update, with reviews pending on several of them:
- Bomber - Rogue Double IPA (steel bottle)
- Bomber - Lagunitas 2009 Correction Ale
- Bottle - Harpoon Leviathon IPA
- Bottle - Samual Adams Imperial Stout
- Bottle - Bear Republic Racer 5 IPA
- Draft - Maredsous 8
- Draft - Bridgeport IPA
- Draft - Stone Ruination IPA
- Draft - Harpoon Leviathon IPA
- Draft - Saint Arnold Winter Stout
- Draft - Saint Arnold Divine Reserve #9
The final topic of this evening is running. My Five Fingers shoes have been killing my legs below the knee in a good way. I'm able to comfortably run 10k stretches in these shoes but the blisters have been bad - its worse than breaking in a traditional pair of shoes because the callouses are not formed in the same areas. My toes went numb this evening from cold and water as well, so these are probably not recommended for all-weather running. My calf muscles have never been this worked in my life and my running form is improving by the day. When I first ran in these shoes I landed heavily on my heel but now it is a very fluid roll from heel to toe with very little impact. I've signed up for a half marathon in April and I have a tentative plan to run a Dallas marathon in December of 2010. Wish me luck!
