Welcome to NovemBeer

"Winter" days in the mid to high 70s/low 80s?  Yes please.  A few Saturdays back we hopped on the cruisers and made our way to midtown to check out the Mexican Cultural event taking place at the Herd Museum. This was the second time I'd attended, and a first for Jonathan. We perused various artist booths, bought two small pieces of art and enjoyed the live performance of a fantastic mariachi band. The music and singing of this mariachi band apparently calls to my soul, and quickly lulled me to a happy, strangely at home daze. However, after a few songs the grumbling of my stomach interrupted my zen moment providing the impetus to head off to our second event of the day.

 Back on our cruisers we continued South down Central Ave towards downtown Phoenix.  We were now headed to The Vig Downtown for lunch as well as an event named NovemBeer.  Can you guess the theme?  The Phoenix New Times was presenting 4 weekends dedicated to craft beer enjoyment, and the weekend we opted to attend was focused on stouts and porters.  After we ate lunch we sat outside for a moment and discussed our tasting approach, mine being undoubtedly brief since these heavier beers really are not my preference.

While I enjoyed some dark and stormys Jonathan kept up his end of the beer event and we enjoyed some high quality people watching.  As the afternoon and drinking continued people's apparent disbelief in the properties of sun screen became evident.  My favorite lobster was the guy sporting a stylistically saggy gray beanie on an 80 degree sunny day.  That was going to be a tan line he'd regret.  Also entertaining was the noticeably drunk beer server at one of the stations close to where we were sitting.  One pour for you, one chug for me.  Yeah, that sounds about right.

Feeling a little less excited for the entire ride home we lugged our over sized bikes onto the light-rail for a little more than half of our total trip, then hopped back on our bikes to finish the journey.

As much as I enjoyed our outdoor adventures on Saturday, Sunday was football day. A few boisterous heckles into the first game I noticed Sydney appeared slightly concerned with my fan aggression and felt the need to intervene.

Her discontent with my continued heckling was visible and she eventually managed to bring Jackson by as an additional plea for increased coach/heckling discretion. While the effort may have been genuine, my need to let players know that they ought to "run" and "catch the ball" is far too important to be left unsaid.
                                                                      


                                                                                       

As a fun finish to great weekend I made cookies Sunday evening and got to test out my new cookie cutter.  I truly wasn't too concerned with the detailed frosting, but was happy with how silly they turned out.  They were arrrrrrrguably the best lookin cookies I've made in a while!  And not to mention, they're mighty tasty.
                         

PS. We are hoping our smiley mugs made it to the NovemBeer site, but so far they only have pictures from last year...