Pining for the Fjords

As I'm sure you've noticed from reading the blog by now, Chris and I enjoy ourselves some beer.  We brew it, we look for cool spots to drink it on vacation, and we attend beer festivals, where tons of types can be sampled from a wide variety of breweries in a short period of time.  When we lived in Arizona, we were regular attendees to the AZ Strong Beer Festival each February, and over the past ten years or so, we've hit up a wide range of other beer festivals, including one that we'll be attending later today (in a cemetery!  Look for that on a future blog, if I remember to take pictures). In the world of beer fests, there are some that are considered the creme de la creme.  We were able to attend one of these, the Extreme Beer Fest created by Beer Advocate  magazine, last December when it ran for the first time in LA, and it was outstanding.  Another perpetual "wish list" event is the Firestone Walker Invitational Beer Fest (FWIBF), which runs each yea...

It's the eternal quandary - what to get the person who has everything for his/her birthday, anniversary, or holidays.  We run up against this pretty often in our family; thankfully, most of us have our basic needs met, and while there may be one or two things we have our eyes on, most of our wants are either fairly boring to others and/or hobby specific (while I'll always accept new running gadgets, for example, I generally want to buy those on my own, as I know exactly what I want, in what size, what color, yada yada yada).  We've mainly moved, then, to gifting experiences - taking each other out to dinner or to shows or on trips or something like that.  Now that one of our favorite places in downtown Bixby Knolls, Dutch's Brewhouse (hands up if you've visited us and we've taken you to Dutch's!  Yup, that's a 100% success rate!) has its Brew Your Own (BYO) system fully up and running, we figured that would be a great gift for Dad's recent birthday. ...

Because I like to be involved in our local community, I often sign up for emails from nearby organizations.  The ones I get the most are from our local Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association , which plans all sorts of great events from dinners to book clubs to happy hours and the like.  However, I also get emails from organizations further afield, and one of those is the Port of Los Angeles.  How I got on this email distribution list, I don't really know, but it comes only once a month and keeps us updated on what's going on in San Pedro, the city just to our west and only a 20 minute drive away.  A few weeks ago, the Port sent out an email blast, offering free harbor cruises to celebrate global trade day or something like that, and we jumped on the chance to see the inner workings of the busiest port in the nation (fun fact - the port of LA is the busiest in the nation and the port of Long Beach is the second busiest - they're right next to each other, so we ...