Beer and Birthdays

In 11 and one-half hours Phish tickets will go on sale. I have to admit, I'm terribly nervous about this. Tickets for Deer Creek went on sale recently and supposedly sold out in minutes. My summer plans, and consequently (maybe) this blog, will be back to the drawing boards if tomorrow doesn't go as planned. Cross your fingers, if not for me, for the blog.

In other, more interesting news, last night I discovered that I like dark beer. When I had my first taste of Guinness, I thought I would never be a dark beer lover like my Irish ancestors. They would be turning over in the graves watching me drink PBR, Keystone, Busch and the likes. Last night, however, I made them proud. Well, maybe.

I am now the proud drinker of both Smithwick's, a red Irish ale, and Bell's Porter, a medium-bodied beer. I can't really give you any more information about either, except that the Porter kind of reminded me of coffee and chocolate and Smithwick's was lighter and also served as a good chaser for a shot of SoCo Lime.

I tried both these treats at Ashley's in Ann Arbor as I celebrated a birthday with one of my oldest and closest friends. Later, after cake supplies were purchased using food stamps, an attempt was made at baking a late-night birthday cake. This might have gone well, depending on how important you think vegetable oil is to the cake-baking process.

I will tell you now that vegetable oil IS in fact important to the cake-baking process.

I will also now tell you that it is not a great idea to eat birthday cake sans oil at 2am after drinking the previously mentioned dark beers. But, I won't tell you why.

I'd also like to throw in a quick shout-out to the birthday boy, Mister F. Check out his tunes on myspace.com and wish him a happy birthday before it's too late.