The weeks just keep flying past, don’t they?

For instance, it hardly seems like a week ago that I was writing we’d soon be at the Bidwell market, shirts in hand. I think my writeup earlier this week does a good job of covering the event, but it does bear repeating that I had a ton of fun but we won’t be back until spring at the earliest.

Also, it was tiring! Both because I’m the shy, nerdy type and because I stood from 7:30 until 3. How do people do that every week? I took the opportunity to pop over to ETS on my way home and then promptly collapsed on the couch.

After all that fun and excitement, did we manage to do anything else interesting? Well, yes, though there’s nothing directly related to CBW (hey! The precedent has been set that I can talk about beer in general on Thirsty Thursday, and so there.) Firstly, I somehow neglected to post about Ethan’s appearance on Lifehacker, talking about proper glassware and pouring. Miss it? Read the post, and take a gander below:

Also, for the first half of this week Pete Brown, author of Hops & Glory and British Beer Writer of the Year, was in Rochester. My bachelors degree is in history, I (quite obviously) love beer and as a child I was exposed to too much Red Dwarf and Hitchhiker’s Guide, and so a history of and travelogue recreating the journey of the IPA, well, that’s about the perfect book for me. I got my copy when it first came out but due to a lack of a distributor it’s hard to come across stateside, which is a damn, damn shame. If you can find a copy of it I wholeheartedly recommend reading it.

So, despite an overwhelming abundance of reasons and logic to why I shouldn’t drive to Rochester to spend an hour or two in a bar before turning around and heading home, well, that’s what I did. And due largely to a homebrewer I e-knew but hadn’t met and his wife, an actual Anglophile (as opposed to a guy who simply likes Red Dwarf and Hitchhiker’s Guide and British accents) I had a wonderful time, got my book signed and got to hang out in a bar with Pete Brown for a few hours. It was a little loud at the time but I think he may have called me ‘mental’ when I said I would be driving back home that night. If it’s okay with everyone I’m just going to declare that canonical because it’s incredibly awesome.

It turns out that he was in the country because he’s been asked to write the biography of David Wickett, founder of the Old Toad. It was my first time at the Tap & Mallet, and I knew nothing of the Old Toad: turns out Rochester is a good place to drink. I’ll certainly be back again, perhaps next time leaving my house before 9pm. He’ll be in Toronto until Sunday, and tweets where he’ll be drinking (it’s a hard life, to be sure), if you’re around and interested. He was a very, no let me italicize that: very friendly man, and went out of his way multiple times to make conversation with me even though (in my mind, at least) I was being fairly dull.

Right, so, back to CBW! Another reminder that we have shirts in all shapes, sizes and colors, providing that the shape is ‘like a shirt’ and the color is ‘a very lovely brown.’ Sizes do very, though, from S-XXL, and we can be made to part with them for $15 each, or $20 shipped. Let us know, folks.