A Lazy Labor Day Weekend

Weekend fun started a little early with a trip to Frostbites for some ice cream and a bonfire on Thursday night.  We paid the (absurd) $15 fee to park and relished in the unusually warm summer night.  C ran around playing with her friend Dean the whole night, ate some s'mores, and serenaded us with her guitar skills. 

Friday moved by at a glacial pace, naturally.  My boss let me escape about an hour early but it still felt like my work day was longer than usual.  After rushing home and touching up my makeup Billy and I were out the door for a date night.  Our first stop was for beers and food at Yard House.

I sipped on a Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar and we shared some buffalo wings and pizza.  For the more exciting part of the night we visited The Bruery in Placentia.  I. Love. Beer.  I love beer probably to an unhealthy extent.  Over the last few months I've attempted to avoid gluten and dairy for health reasons and seriously, beer is the hardest thing to give up.  I've tried to find a gluten free alternative but at best my findings have been just okay.  Needless to say every once in a while I throw the gluten free thing out the window and just really enjoy a few beers (and pizza, and ice cream, and chili cheese fries).  The Bruery serves their tastings in these adorable mini snifters.  You basically fill out a form of your five choices picked from a list of their beers on tap projected on a wall and take your little snifters in search of an area just large enough to set your beers down to enjoy.  From what I've read this place is constantly crowded and after you taste their beers it's obvious as to why.
My five choices were: Or Xata, Old Richland, Bryein, Imperial Loakal Red, and Autumn Maple.  I tried Billy's Sour in the Rye which was definitely one of the top three.  The other two I really liked were Or Xata and Autumn Maple.  Or Xata is inspired by the rice drink horchata and is so flavorful and tasty.  The Autumn Maple had hints of cinnamon and yam and tasted like a well balanced Fall brew to me.

I'll have to work on using the self timer

Saturday started out sluggish.  It has been unusually hot this past week which has made sleeping awful.  We spent pretty much all weekend sleeping in the living room since it is cooler than the back of the house.  Between it still being grossly uncomfortable and our cats stampeding up and down the hall all night long a good night's sleep just wasn't in the cards.  While Billy went to pick up Courtlyn I ran to pick up my new kettle bell and also stopped by a local liquor store that carries the best variety of craft beer.  Five beers and $40 later (the downfall of craft beer is that it's so damn expensive) I was on my way back home.  We lounged around for a while longer playing with Courtlyn then headed to a restaurant our friend works at to watch the fights then called it a night.

Sunday felt like the epitome of a lazy day.  We woke up too early due to the aforementioned heat and cats.  Billy went to one of his three fantasy football drafts pretty early.  I hung back watching Courtlyn until her mom came to pick her up.  After the necessary eating and bathing we played some Candyland, Hello Kitty Bingo, and some baseball.  Once she got picked up I cleaned the house a bit then plopped on the couch where I remained for quite some time.  Most of that time I spent reading, some of it napping.  I got through two books this weekend: The Fault in Our Stars, and Invisible Monsters.  The Fault in Our Stars was heartbreaking, but really good as long as you're not reading it in public and subsequently crying in front of strangers.  I picked a drunken boyfriend up from his draft and we stopped by Lopez and Lefty's for a mediocre taco plate and some good beers.  Billy was pretty much done after this so it was back home to read myself to sleep after that.

Monday was a day of gluttony on all accounts.  After a trip to Trader Joe's I took Billy to get his car and we decided to go to our local dive bar for lunch and to nurse his hangover.  We were severely disappointed to find out upon arrival that they don't open until 3 p.m. on Mondays.  After a quick Yelp search I drove us to an even dive-ier (yup, that't a word) bar named Tubby's.  We split some buffalo wings and chili cheese fries and each had a beer before deciding to check out the one bar within walking distance to our house.  We have been talking about going into Yesterday's since we moved in practically, but almost a year later we had still not been inside.  It's obvious from the outside that it's a dive, but sometimes you're delightfully surprised by the inside of some places.  Yesterday's is not one of those places.  The air conditioning was broken, the beer selection was terrible, and it was a shit hole inside.  The only thing this place had going for it was a friendly bartender.  A quick chug of our beers and we were out of there.  We decided to indulge in a Little Caesars pizza for dinner so we picked that up before heading home where we spent the rest of the day being lazy on the couch.  The only really productive thing I did Monday was FINALLY open an IRA account.

Overall, even though our weekend was gluttonous and unproductive it was still a really good weekend.  Too much beer was drank, too much food was consumed, not enough pictures were taken, but I got to spend time with some of my favorite people so I can't complain.  A few pounds gained and nightly stomach aches from the gluttony have convinced me that perhaps I do have some sort of gluten intolerance, or maybe when I indulge I just shouldn't go so flipping hard haha.  Oh yeah, these happened too.  More than once.