Well well, it’s Monday… again. Seems it always comes around, same time each week, and slaps me in the face. Sigh. It’s probably because I didn’t have coffee yesterday that today, I was ever so grateful for it. Anyway, let’s recap, shall we? I left work Thursday and went home to have an early dinner, then we went to Brew Club. Pretty good turnout: 17 people and 9 homebrews.

The next morning, I was around to see all the kids off and I even caught up some things such as making them food for the weekend and cleaning. Ash and I headed out around 11 to get to Gainesville for the beer festival weekend. We went to a place called Crafty Bastard for lunch, which was really good. We then took our kegs to Swamp Head, where the homebrew club who organizes this fest had set up for homebrewers to leave said kegs overnight. We then went to Cypress and Grove, one of their five breweries. It was actually really good! Then we checked into our airbnb (a cute old 1930s house that had been turned into rental units) and walked to Grand Scheme. It smelled new in there and it turns out, the brewery only opened one week prior! Their beer was nothing to write home about but was drinkable.

The organizers had a VIP event set up back at Swamp Head so we ubered there and chatted with people from other homebrew clubs and various brewers from around Florida. Pretty nice event; they even had their members out making smashburgers, which were really good. Two of our friends from the club showed up for that and after, took us back to our airbnb.

The next morning, we got out to the event venue by about 9:45/10 to get set up. Ash and I had the tent and signage but Ian and Tim needed to be there to set up their trash can kegerators. The organizers brought everyone’s kegs to them, which was a nice feature of this event. It was actually fairly well-organized, and we were keeping track of what they did well. They gave all the brewers VIP food and it was good too – pulled pork, fries, potato salad, corn nuggets, cheese curds, cookies, etc. Really good way to start a long day of drinking! The event let the VIP people in around 12:30 and they were supposed to be gone by 5 but it was a bit after.

The after party was at First Magnitude and all vendors got one free beer. So we went there for a little while, chatted with some folks from Special Hoperations down in Tampa, and then Ash and I walked home. Long day! But nice. He was very taken with Gainesville but I personally don’t see the draw. The only good thing was that it was breezy but I have no plans to move any further south in Florida. I’ve been there!

We didn’t waste any time getting home yesterday. I think it was about 11 when we got back so I started on laundry and a bit of yard work and by about 12:30, we were headed to Outback for an early birthday meal for Isaac, who turns 14 today. I can hardly believe my kids are this old! Come August, he’ll be a freshman, riding with his senior brother to high school! The rest of the day was just cleaning and other stuff but at a point, all five of us did a double feature of The Lorax and Wall-E. Nice night!

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Freebie week and in honor of my birthday boy, here’s a song he absolutely LOVED when he was four.