ripping the shit out of my knee, and other poems, by Maya Angelou

currently, i'm sitting at Dieu Du Ciel drinking a 2 and a half year old Belgian Abbey Quadrupel (that is fuckin' spectacular) and mulling over the past week or so. to keep everyone (all 7 of you) up to date, let's start at the beginning.

monday. went to Jay Peak to snowboard on their 28 inch dump over the weekend. halfway through the day, me, Doug, and Stacy were almost to the bottom, and went to hit the tabletop jumps that are always there. my confidence on them has been increasing each time i've gone this season. as some of you know, i've been riding since 6th grade, and am seriously skilled when it comes to steeps, trees, etc. but never have been a "pipe and park junkie". i can hit jumps, but i was never one for big air. anyway, on this run, i hit the first, and got some air, and felt great about it. so, as i approached the second, i was about to slow down, but thought, "i feel good about this...i'm gonna really hit this one". so, i hit it, not realising that the fuckers who designed it made the kicker too steep and the tabletop section too long. i got some serious air, and on the way down i see the indented section of the tabletop flat where everyone had been landing. so, in a moment of "oh shit, i'm gonna land on a flat" panic, i did the complete opposite of what i should and i straightened my front knee. yep. i'm a genius. i landed. and dropped to my knees in pain. i slid down to the base, and felt this extreme pain in my knee, but couldn't pinpoint it. so, in the macho, id-driven, "i can deal with pain" mentality, i decided to let my knee cool off in the tram before we get to the top of the mountain and take on some serious terrain. well, to my surprise, it felt fine at the top. so i started riding in the "waist deep powder" that we were told existed up there (thank you jackass on skis without a jacket...there was almost no powder up there). everything seemed fine until i was riding in a trail called "Hell's Woods" near the bottom. i was surfing through some nice powder, and i kicked out my right leg to stop on my heelside and take a breather. well, as soon as i did that, i felt my left knee stretch outwards with two back-to-back "pops" in it. fuck. i lit up that glade with so much profanity that the fucking pine needles dried up and fell off all the trees in a rigor mortis-y fashion. i managed to get up after some down time and made it to the base. drank some beer at the base, then went home. i was NOT going to wait 8 hours that night to go to the hospital, especially on trivia night, so i got Dave and Jen to take a cab with me to Brutopia for the night. we just barely lost the first round, and lost the second round in the tie-breaker, but i had plenty of beer and shots, so my knee was feeling grrrr-eat! (where's Tony the Tiger when you need him??). cab home (after scoring some Boustan). get to the emergency room at 10am the next morning, with no more than 4 hours of sleep, and wait for 4 hours until i get called into a room. then 2 hours go by until they give me an x-ray (even though i knew it wasn't broken and x-rays can't see soft-tissue damage), then another 1.5 hours goes by until some med student comes in and tells me that "it's not broken" (thanks copernicus) and "we're not sure if you tore any ligaments, so here's some tylenol with codeine and a referral to mcgill sports medicine". the name of the painkiller is deceiving...it's called "Empracet"...doesn't that sound like "Percocet"? well, it's not. i learned that when i broke my elbow a year ago. they put so little codeine and so much acetaminophen in these pills that you would have to overdose on acetaminophen in order to get enough codeine to feel anything resembling pain reduction. i took two tabs (double the dose), a pill of Naproxen, and washed it down with a beer and still felt no effect whatsoever. jerks. so, to sum up, i got to sports medicine and they believe that i have partial tears in both my ACL and my meniscus. so, no more snowboarding for yours truly.

i guess that brings us to wednesday. got my second edition of Junior Mints 'n' Bosco into the carboy to dry mint it with 2 oz of spearmint leaves and a bunch more chocolate. my altbier, Falter, is ready to drink and is very tasty, though i might submit it to the National Hombrew Competition under the Strong Scotch Ale category since it resembles that more than an altbier. i met with the Dieu Du Ciel master brewer to discuss the finer points of going from homebrewing to professional brewing. it was nice to hear that he still loves it. i was also offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Boston on the first weekend of April to oversee an experiment involving live emotional expression tracking with the Boston Philharmonic. i'm pumped about that for so many reasons.

thursday. nothing happened. eh, whatever.

friday. filmed a new segment about the Formula 1 rule changes for the 2006 season with WatchMojo. that should be up this weekend. while many of you have seen the best way to pour a pint, i'm happy to say that my segment on the difference between ale and lager has finally surfaced. keep watching that site for some really cool content. for instance, all sports fans should check out the latest edition of the whip/around. this guy know sports like i know drinking. and you all know how well i know drinking.

so, now i wait until the subaru station wagon that brings my brother and our friends to montreal rolls in (later than planned) to kick off a nice, hearty, drunken bachelor party. and with the severity of the rain outside and my lack of an umbrella, i think i will probably wait here, in the bar, until that happens.

a turn of the tides?

i don't know how i do it. for some reason, i have always fallen (often drunkenly) onto track for significant and serious jobs. i have never worked retail, never sold fast food (or any food for that matter), never had to learn a spiel that i would babble off over the phone to some unsuspecting consumer right in the middle of their dinner or session of crazy sex. don't get me wrong...i'm not trying to insult people who had these jobs. i have a lot of close friends that had them, and i have the utmost respect and admiration for them, if only for the fact that they stayed within a range of mild sanity throughout it all. i guess i've been lucky in that sense...the first job i had was working for McManus Design Group and Building Systems. as of now, i've worked there for over 6 years (on and off, of course, because of school). and i had possibly the greatest boss anyone could ever hope for. alongside that job, i've worked as a web designer for psu, programmer for new music synthesis methods, music system designer for abstract multimedia art installations, instructional video beer tutor, and other freelance tech projects. now, as most of you know, i hope to become a brewer after graduating with my master's degree. things have been lining up towards this plan: great reviews of my beer, multiple discussions with brewpubs in the area relating to a job, connections developing with multiple microbreweries in the states, etc. everything in its right place. well, that is, until i get a stick thrown in the spokes. not really a bad "stick" in any way, but it does upset the current momentum.

the "stick" presented itself during a meeting with my thesis advisor. lately he has been really impressed with my work (who knew?) and asked me what i'm planning on doing when the thesis is over. i've tried to avoid this question with him for a while, since he's being SO helpful with the thesis that i didn't want him to think that it's all for nothing. so, i said, as professionally as possible, "well, the thing is, i've been getting seriously into brewing beer, to the point that i want to pursue it as a career. i still want to continue with some research in this field, but right now, i'm not going towards a doctorate, and i feel that the brewing path is the best for me." well, to my surprise, he seemed pretty cool with it. i think he found it mildly amusing, but it didn't seem to throw him too much of a curveball. next, to even more of my surprise, he says, "the reason i ask is that i really want to continue research in this field and would like to offer you a job as a research assistant here, either part-time or full-time, depending on your interest when your thesis is done."

hmm? what was that?? pardon?

damn. just when i thought i was out, they pull me back in! now i have no idea what to do. at least he's offering a part-time position. maybe i can brew half-time and research half-time. and i know my parents are gonna be pushing for the research side. and i don't blame them. it's by far the smarter path to take. but, i don't think i want to do it. i'd like to tell him that i'll send him an email in 3 years and tell him whether i want the job or whether i'm opening my own brewpub. i was almost hoping that an opportunity like this didn't fall into my lap so that i could run with the brewing passion. well, i guess it's comforting that i could do it part-time, because i think that any brewing job i get up here will be of severely low hour/low pay. ok...lots to think about. and lots to do. ugh.

random other ponderings:

-i predicted it. the Two Dudes finally got internet. and as soon as the internet came, the profuseness and profundity of posts increased as greatly as Nugz' post-"cable installation" vocabulary (read the blog to figure out what i'm referencing). ok, well, "profundity" is a bit of an overstatement, but it is damn witty in a strange sort of way. in the last 1.5 days of having internet, they've posted 7 times. read it. for anyone who is unfamiliar with my psu friends, this will be a good warning of how fucked up they all are, so that you're not as surprised when you come to "The Party" and see things like: someone funnelling a family sized can of kidney beans, people shouting "hey , do your dance!" while a wasted kid of that name shuffles around like a jackass, someone smoking a cig through their nose (while racing someone else), people "powdering up them jams" (explained here by an outsider to the concept), people shotgunning 3 cans of PBR each within 3 minutes and 5 seconds at 9am to the tune of Alan Jackson's "Pop-a-Top", and, of course, disgusting bouts of binge drinking the likes of which few mortals have ever seen.

-The Locust fucking RULES. i forgot how great these guys are until ian mercifully sent me the album a week ago. bizarre, brutal, and even frightening at times. all with some of the most otherworldly rhythms and timbres i've ever heard. i remember the first time i saw them live. talk about alien...these 4 freaks dressed in green full-body suits with metal bug-eyes, twisting and contorting themselves in a way completely unknown to this planet, all whilst bringing the onslaught with a tag-team vocal effort that would send all but the most masochistic audience members running for the door. and all the while, they are perfect on their respective instruments. so mechanical in their timing that its hard to believe they are human. human or alien, i don't care...these things fucking rock.

-i've only started using the coffee machine in the music tech lab for a few hours now, and i'm already frustrated with it and its surrounding politics. i go in there, and there is a full pot sitting in the sink, still slightly warm, with no one around. what does this mean? are they done with the pot? if so, why wouldn't they dump it? do they like their coffee lukewarm? then why would they put the pot in the sink? were they kidnapped by The Locust the moment after they poured that first cup? i sure hope so. so, i dump it. i gave them 10 mins to get back to it before i did. then, i make a cup for myself (which is difficult to measure out correctly on a 20-cup machine). i walk out with it, bring it to my desk, check my email, and realize less than 5 minutes later that i left my new bag of Cafe Santropol coffee in the kitchen, only to go back and find that in that ridiculously short span of time, some assbag managed to make a 20-cup pot with my beans. what the shit? look, i'm not cheap, but that's just disrespectful. especially since there was a container of "communal coffee" on the shelf above the counter. it's like living back at patterson street again. but at least there it was your close friends stealing your food. here, it's just some weird researchers from western europe that are only here for two months at a time.

ok, enough for now. time to get back to research.