Good morning, folks. I started this post last night when I was in a bad mood, so I deleted that part and moved on because, after all, today is a new day!

But truthfully, we had a great weekend. I did some work Friday to be all caught up before leaving then we packed the car and left around 11:30. On the way, we stopped by a Mexican place in Lake City that turned out to be really good. Got into Jacksonville around 3:30 and met our friends from the homebrew club at the brewery where the festival was going to be. We dropped our kegs off and had a couple flights. Their beer used to be better, sadly. After there, we decided to go to our respective places and check in. Mike and Ash had a good experience with the folks from Grace Note brewery at a festival a couple weeks ago so we went there.

Adding our stickers to the Legacy wall:

The owner was super cool and we talked to him a good long while. He even shared his last can of one of his experimental beers with us. Plus, their other beer was excellent. We all look awful in the photo but the guy to the left who doesn’t look drunk is the owner/brewer.

Hungry, we decided to go to a place named Bruchner’s beirhall and wow, what great food! They had a 30 min wait so we walked across the street to Fishweir brewery and then back when our table was ready. It was a legit German restaurant and I’ve never had such amazing red cabbage. I’d eat that all day if I could. No lie.

I’m glad we were all tired after that because I know I was done! The place we stayed at was really close so we went home and crashed.

I slept like crap and woke up around 6:15; tried to go back to sleep, to no avail. Got up and made some coffee until Ash woke up and we walked to a little diner named the Fox restaurant. Fantastic food! We don’t eat breakfast usually so it was a treat. Weather was good so we walked the Murray hill neighborhood for a few miles and that was really nice. A great way to begin the day.

We got to Legacy ale works at 12 to set up and picked a spot inside. It was an odd festival in that it was at their taproom in a shopping center so, they had homebrewers set up in their courtyard and inside. Kind of crowded but it worked. We began pouring to ticket-holders at 2 and by then, we’d made the rounds to others’ tables. We knew quite a few other brewers there from previous events this year so it was neat to see what they brought. By the time it was winding down at 5, we were pretty tired. The guy wearing the bunny ears is a guy we met from the Jax homebrew club and he’s been super nice to us. He helped us judge our in-club competition and has helped us with other things for our club.

I’m glad our friends didn’t mention wanting to hang out more. We packed up and headed out and they said ‘ok, see y’all later!’ and that was that. I think we understood it was the end of a long day. Ash and I ran into a beer shop for individual cans; we’d been to it before but it was definitely not as well stocked. We went into Total Wine after and found a couple interesting things and just headed to the house. I was beat so I laid in the bed and just sort of existed in an in-between state of awake and asleep – just beat down!

Finally slept well that night so around 7 we woke, packed up, then drove back to the same good breakfast place. And it was good again! Left for home after that and we were back in town by 11.

I did laundry and tried to recover from the weekend but I feel like I was just in a bad mood, thinking about having to do work this week. I was happy for the weekend because as I mentioned last week, I’ve been entirely overwhelmed with things. I think I need to slow down and reassess my time management this week, so I can get back on track and stop stressing out. I’m really hoping that if I can get very ahead, I can take some time to meet a friend for lunch on Wednesday. I’ve known her since we were both pregnant with our oldest boys, both now seniors. We both worked on the college campus until I left in 2019 and then Covid shut down her business there, but we both ended up working at the capitol…until I got canned. But when I worked there she and I walked a lot and even though I am not the kind of woman who keeps a lot of good friends, she’s one I always appreciated walking and talking with, because it made me think I wasn’t the only wife and mom who is struggling! So yes, this week I hope to meet her for a burger or something and catch up.

No music Monday for me this week; have to start on lectures now!