Last Sunday morning (AKA Eric's Red brew day), started off with me feeling like I had come down with a minor cold. A few sniffles. Slightly sore throat. Nothing to be concerned about. Didn't keep me home from church. Didn't prevent me from brewing. No big deal.
The brew day went great (see Eric's Red brew day if you have not already). After clean-up and the AFC Championship game, I felt a little worse, but I was totally able to chalk that up to finding out that New England was going to another Superbowl (makes us all feel a bit sick, I'm sure).
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| Eric's Red is fermenting nicely, BTW |
I am the kind of person who just does not call in sick to work. I've done it maybe twice in all my working life. I was seriously considering doing it Monday morning, though. Eventually, I decided that based on things going on, not coming in would end up being more painful catching up Tuesday than getting up and dragging myself out the door Monday.
By the end of the day Monday, it was hard to believe that I had ever felt bad enough that I was even considering wasting a PTO day. I felt that much better. Not 100%, but not bad. I even made my regular work-out-night at the health club. It was a short one (an hour on the elliptical machine and then back home), and I only got through one of my Colorado Craft Beer Radio podcasts.
Tuesday, I felt 100% better, and pretty much since then have felt completely over the Beetle Flu.
But ... a few weird, possibly-Beetle-related things have popped up during the week. There is nothing overtly bad about any of this stuff. It is just weird and when a bunch of weird things happen to me like this, I always suspect the Tweedle Beetles are up to no good.
I got a piece of paper that announced a pay raise with a new salary. My official documented annual salary is a dollar amount followed by 36 cents. Seriously? Really? This new big corporation that I am part of cannot round off that 36 cents? I guess I don't really care. It is just very odd to me. Maybe this is just how big corporations do things. Poison Rationality? Now how the Tweedle Beetles could influence my salary ... I don't know. Why? I am even more clueless. But, it makes more sense that this would be Tweedle Beetle related than a large corporation wouldn't just round off that 36 cents.
Sometime during the week, I took a look at this blogs Page View stats. A couple of old posts have just been "blowing up" on the weekly and monthly page views. Both have been so popular recently that they both broke into the top 10 all-time list. One of them is "Female vs. Male Brain" posted Oct 28, 2011. The fact that this post is getting attention is sort of weird, but at least this post is somewhat amusing and was fairly popular when posted.
The other one makes no sense at all. It is "Sheppy Brew Web Stats" posted Dec 8, 2010. "Sheppy Brew Web Stats" has no redeeming entertainment value whatsoever. There is only one person in the world who might want to refer to this post and that person (me) would never look at it enough to launch it into the top 10 viewed blog posts of all time. My page views don't count towards the total anyway. Again, Why? There is no logical reason that actual people would be hitting this page so much, so it must be Tweedle Beetles in some complicated passive-aggressive plot to attack me. If there is one thing Tweedle Beetles excel at, it is doing illogical things.
Another weird thing that happened this week (Wednesday) is that I became Foursquare "mayor" of my church. Foursquare posted to my facebook wall that I "ousted [name deleted] as the mayor of Abiding Hope Lutheran Church!" My sister was nice enough to point out that it "Doesn't seem very Christian-like to oust someone". She is, of course, right. I feel horrible about my hostile takeover of the mayor-ship. I actually had no idea that I was even close to being the church mayor, and the announcement took me as much by surprise as anyone. But, truth be told, bumping out [name deleted] and obtaining new minions does make me feel powerful.
Bow before me minions! I'm sure it is the Tweedle Beetles making me say that.
Speaking of facebook ... my Untappd account is not posting my check-ins to facebook. Not sure how or why, but I'm sure the Tweedle Beetles are behind this one too.
So the last weird thing that I'm going to share started Wednesday night while I was working out. For those of you who don't know, my wife and I have an agreement that I get to work out at the health club on Monday and Wednesday nights while she takes care of dishes and puts the kids to bed etc ... she gets Tuesday and Thursday while I do the dishes and put the kids etc ... I already shared that Monday was a short workout because of the Beetle flu. Wednesday was to be a short one too because of the church meeting (where I displaced [name deleted] as mayor ... bow before me minions).
While working out, I usually listen to various beer-related pod-casts. There is a local Saturday noon-time show called Colorado Craft Beer Radio . I never listen to it on Saturday. Instead I download the podcast Monday morning and try to listen to it the following Monday. Sometimes it ends up being Wednesday because they are late posting the pod-cast or because I just don't get to it. It is the only one of my pod-casts that I try to actually keep up with on a week to week basic. The rest pod-casts I listen to a month or more after the actual "brew-cast" date.
This week was unusual in that I had 2 Colorado Craft Beer Radio (CCBR) pod-casts to listen to at the beginning of the week (they had technical issues and did not get it out the week before). As I mentioned, I listened to the first one on Monday. Wednesday night all of a sudden at the end of the podcast it was announced that Gary V (one of the two hosts) was leaving the show. There was no explanation other than that he had a new business opportunity and the more information was forth-coming. And then the show ended.
Thursday morning, I discovered through CCBR's facebook page that Gary was starting a new craft beer radio show on another local radio station. Turk (the other host) was promoting Gary, so it certainly appears that there are no hard feelings. It may be hard to determine from reading this blog, and I know I do a great job of keeping it secret, but the subject of Craft Beer interests me quite a bit. Knowing that there were going to be 2 craft-beer-related radio shows in my local market was great news. More beer talk radio is a good thing.
However, I discovered by following the facebook trail that Gary's new show is going on at the same time as Turk's "old" show. Really? Seriously? There are exactly two craft beer shows on in all of the Denver Metro Area and the new station picked to put it on at the exact same time as the only other one? Again, I am not sure how or why, but I am quite certain the Tweedle Beetles are to blame for this.
Of course, as I have always listened to CCBR on podcast and will do the same for Gary's new show, this is not something that affects my listening habits in any way. However, there are only so many craft beer-geeks out there. Even in a fantastic craft beer area as Denver, I am not sure there are enough of us to support two shows on at the same time. I'm afraid that dividing the craft-beer enthusiasts between two shows will eventually kill both shows. I'm sure this is what the Tweedle Beetles are counting on.
AND ... the old show has a new show name, logo, facebook page, twitter feed, and web site in the works. This also seemed weird to me. It has been explained to me since then. The explanation seems almost plausible, so at this point I'm not 100% sure this is a Tweedle Beetle attack as well. It is just illogical enough for me to wonder, though.
There are other little weird things that happened during the week that I am sure are symptoms of Tweedle Beetle activity. I have probably already completely lost your attention, so I won't share more of the minutia.
Hope everyone has a great week. Happy Ground Hogs day on the 2nd everyone!
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| Just a weird picture of a strange kid. |
Sometimes there is no Why. We simply just have to accept what IS and try to adapt. I had heard from Gary V directly that he was not trying to get his show on at the same time because he didn't want to take away listeners from Turk and the Gubna's show. Well, perhaps that is why there is the recorded podcasts. It's hard enough to listen to the shows live these days. I prefer to listen to their podcast at a time I can sit down to listen with a beer!
ReplyDeleteActually, Dave, I am not blaming Gary at all. I actually got to talk to him late last week, and he explained to me the "why". You're right, it is just one of those things. I do sort of wish the ESPN station would see gap in logic, but I do see they have other shows they have to make sure the accommodate.
ReplyDeleteMy only worry is that CCBR was already sort of a niche show. I'm not sure the market can support two shows on at the same time. Not everyone is like you and me who both tend to listen on Podcast anyway. There is not really anything anyone can do about it right now, so I guess I need to RDWHAHB.