SPRING BREAK!!

It's spring break here and well I've had too work A LOT. That's just an understatement. We've done nearly 50% better than we did the year before during this time. It gets so busy that we have people still coming in after the time we are suppose to be closed by. But hey who am I to turn away money. CHA CHING!

I have to say one of my biggest pet peeves is when these kids come into my store and they abuse the take a penny leave a penny jar. It's not the take a penny leave a penny then come back later and take the whole fucking jar.

I mean, I'm fine with them taking a penny or 2 here and there. But when they start to take 5 cents, 10 cents, 15 cents that's just wrong.

So I just met a pretty cool girl. But the only prob is that she's in Tucson which is just about a 1 hr 30 mins drive away. Hmmm we'll see what happens. I'll keep you all updated.

Oh by the way I've been drinking a bunch of different ones lately. But haven't written them down or remembered what each on looked like. I'll have to get back to you guys on that. Until then, happy drinking!

What did ya expect?

I think I will again start with the beer of the day. Today's beer is from Ska Brewery. It is their True Blonde Ale. This beer pours a nice golden color with a little head. The aroma is dominated by the wheat then followed by the hops. But given the dominance of the hops I was expecting it to be stronger to the taste than it was. The taste was smooth, the wheat is clearly noticeable but definitely not overpowering. The after taste is very smooth, it's as smooth as a baby's butt. Yes it is that smooth. From some of the reviews that I have seen about this beer, it is a highly underrated beer. Though, I believe it is underrated I think it is too smooth for me. It is still a good beer in my opinion and I wouldn't mind drinking it again. Very good beer to drink for those who just started drinking craft beers. Grade: B

So on to today, I worked the morning then had to come back in at night to close up for 4 hours. This is actually the first time that I have worked with...I will name her "desperate", for reasons I will explain a little later. In the morning I got some bad news. It's not a good idea to put an ad in the local paper that we are offering a dirt ass cheap 30 pack of beer. My sales rep was freaking out about it. But it was already circulated and too late to take it off. So we had to make up a cover story. Not a very good cover story but it was the best that we could make on such a short notice. If you want to know what the cover was just ask, but I'd rather just move on to the more interesting part of the day.

I would have the say that I have not worked the night shift on a Friday night in a long ass time. Not that I actually use my Friday nights off to actually go out and do something. Anyways, today I was working with Desperate. Now here's why she is now named Desperate. For about the first 2 hours all I heard from her was this guy's cute and I want to be with him, for nearly the entire male student body at ASU. But I will attest to one very big fact, gotta keep up my vocabulary, most of those guys were not the nice guys. The nice guys in her life all fell into the friend category. mmmmMMMMMmmmm the dreaded friend category, once in you will NEVER get out! MUAHAHAHA!

This pretty much lead to telling her the simple facts of college life. Girls go for the jerks and assholes, as previously mentioned in my earlier posts. She, of course protested that I was wrong. I then asked her to prove to me a scenario that she has experienced that I was wrong. She started to explain how each one of the guys that she mentioned that she likes were all nice guys. This is of course a praise to the Love Is Blind God. All praise him! AMEN! She sees what she wants to see.

Don't get me wrong she is a really nice girl. All I am doing is educating her on how to sniff out the asscracks. It was at this point when I started to feel my old confident/borderline cocky self coming back from a long ass vacation. So for the next 2 hours she was being as stubborn as you can be, just wouldn't listen to the true facts of the world. Oh well, can't say I didn't try.

That's about it for today, make sure to start reading from the beginning of my journey.

Long Time No See

Today I'm going to start off a little different. I'm going to start off by telling you what today's beers are. Today I'll be tasting a Breckenridge Vanilla Porter eaten with a steak. From my new found knowledge of the wild world of beer and food, I've recently learned that red meat and porters go really well together. This porter was poured into a small neck glass. It pours a dark brown color, the aroma has a slight sense of vanilla but nothing prevalent. The taste is a smooth vanilla with little bitterness. Some people will say that this porter is very harsh, but the key to my opinion is that I ate a steak with the porter. The steak made the porter a much smoother beer to drink and in my opinion a overall decent beer to session at any time....that i'm having red meat. Grade: B

The second beer is an Odells Isolation. This beer pours out a reddish amber, with the aroma presents an earthly aroma. The carbonation is prevalent. I would have to say that I didn't like having too much carbonation in a beer. But now that I started on this journey in craft beers I have learned that there are good times for a lot of carbonation. This would be one of those times. The taste of this beer shows a good bitterness to it with a very good opposition of malt. I would definitely suggest this beer. This beer would be probably one of my most favorite beers. I give this *drum roll* Grade: A+

I think I'll finally bring up the topic of relationships, since well I haven't really mentioned it since I started the blog.

SO MUCH BEER!!!! @_@

I know, I missed yesterday. I'll try to make up for it today.

So today I started off by going off to the gym for 4 hours. It wasn't like I was forcing myself to be there for 4 hours I just felt like I could keep going. It goes to say that I got a pretty good workout.

After the gym it was back off to work. For those of you remember, Monday's are the days that I work the night shift. Today my goal was to figure out some videos to put together for our microbeer section. I can't tell you how many videos I've been through. But I would have to say that the thing I remember from all of them is that there are 12,000 + different beers in the world. That's insane! I guess I better get drinking. 

Today we have 2 different beers!! =O

The first beer is the Alaskan Amber Ale. This beer presents a clear through deep red color. The aroma is very difficult to explain. I have heard that it smells like caramel, but I can only sense a slight hint of caramel. In my best description the aroma has that hint of caramel but is highly overpowered by the grain. This beer doesn't surprise, it smells like grain and it tastes like grain. There are hints of caramel and a very small amount of hops, but it's all overpowered by grain. This beer I would say is a very good beer to sit down and relax with. There are no surprises and for some, nothing that you may have to muscle through. ;-) Grade: B

The second beer is a beer from Big Sky Brewery. It is their famous Moose Drool. This one I would have to say I was a little hesitant about. I wasn't sure what to expect. The aroma was slightly deceiving, I was expecting a similar beer to the Left Hand Milk Stout. For those of you who haven't had the Left Hand Milk Stout, this beer is in my opinion an overpowering coffee beer with a hint of chocolate. I would have to say that it wasn't something that I expected at the time. But this time with Moose Drool the coffee had definitely a weaker punch, which in my opinion made it all that much better. Not only did I sense the coffee but there was caramel prevalent in the aroma as well. So far this was exactly like the Milk Stout that I had before. But to the taste the first couple seconds there is definitely a similarity between the 2, but I do like how Moose Drool ends with a sweet chocolate taste. It almost feels like one of those water log rides at Disneyland. You start going up with the aroma and have a feeling for what to expect. Then you go for a pretty wild ride for a couple seconds, and finish off with a nice smooth ride back home. I thoroughly enjoyed this beer, it definitely lived up to the hype. Grade: A

After those 2 beers I'm feeling a bit buzzed. Each one has about 5.1-5.4% ABV I would say that if you were going to pick one or the other, pick the moose drool if you haven't had it. If you guys want to add some beers that you've tried just leave me a comment and I'll put it up on the next post. Cause god knows that I won't be able to try all 12,000 + beers! I'll be drinking all the time and probably too wasted to even use my palate to tell you guys what each one was like.

Oh, I'm thinking about starting a video blog addition to this on the different beers that I try. But it's in the works. Happy drinking! and well here's hoping to my life as a virgin! CHEERS!

Unappreciated

Yes, my work seems to be unappreciated. Right now I'm still working for my parents business. Today I got news that we just did 150% better than we did on our normal Saturday. I'm ecstatic! Because we haven't seen these numbers in over 5 years. This is insane. But when I bring the good news to my mother that we had done better. I was shot down by her saying that our assistant manager should not know how much we are making. This is ridiculous! It was thanks to me promoting one of our supervisors that we have been able to go over the wall that has been blocking us for a long time. No matter how much work I put into this business I could not get it over the wall by myself.

So I brought in one of my supervisors to be my assistant manager. I developed a confidentiality clause in the contract. But it seems that no matter the fact that there is a confidentiality clause, my mother says that I did wrong and we should make it go back the old way. In my personal view, all expanding businesses have to trust their employees. But have legal backing to protect themselves from their employees.

I have done exactly that. I provided the legal protection while putting my trust into my employees or in this case my employee.

I'm tired, all I think about is work, and simply no matter what I do it is wrong. When I took over as manager I was able to effectively put into place cost-management and efficiency management. This was done to be able to climb back out of the hole that we were in. Once we finally began to see the light I began planning for expansionary management. I noticed that even though I was planning for expansion I could not focus on it because I was busy doing daily operations management.

This got me thinking, can I bring in an assistant manager to help me out in this area? The answer was yes. In nearly all businesses exact numbers are closely held but basic numbers are known by many people. With this knowledge I began to look into what I can do and how I can protect the business at the same time. Protecting the business was #1 priority.

That's when I started writing up a contract and discussing with a certain employee about an opportunity to become assistant manager. This employee was excited and accepted the opportunity. Once the contract was drafted, I made sure there was a confidentiality clause in there to protect the business from her leaking out vital information about our business.

It has been about 2 weeks since then. We have seen great improvements in our business and look to large future growths. But, the co-owner, my mother disapproves of my methods. She believe that the necessary information for my assistant manager to do her job should not be given to her. Plain and simple. Her exact words were, "I don't want to get dragged in when you fall in the whole." to both me and my father. She then goes on to state, "I want to be reimbursed for the health insurance that I'm paying for." to just my father. I'm currently paying my own.

That last part she said to my father was very unnecessary. It was my idea to start off and my dad, still weary of the idea, reluctantly approved. I believe that I should take full responsibility of this project. Not to mention we are "suppose" to be a family and family do not abandon family. I gave up opportunities because my parents' business was beginning to fail. It failing was not the only other reason for me to start taking over the family business. I noticed that my dad really enjoys helping the elderly with their medicare problems and issues. But because of the business, he can't do what he enjoys. I want my dad to at least have some enjoyment out of his life, he has sacrificed so much for us.

But no, all my mother can think about is her, her, her. I'm sick of this. She thinks she's always right and doesn't believe in me. She says she does but in all reality she doesn't. She still treats me like a child, I am by no means still a child. I have knowledge and a good sense to use it for the betterment of everyone around me.

Once I get accepted I'm gone. If I don't get accepted anywhere I am leaving to Japan to go teach English as soon as I can. If I don't do either, as long as I'm leaving this place I'll be fine.

Oh, did I mention that I've been working there for free for the past 2 months. I haven't been paid in 2 months, so far I'm living off of the money I made earlier and the money I had been given for graduation. I'm starting to think that my mother loves herself and shopping more than she loves this family.

By the way, the beer of the day is a high end Breckenridge 471 IPA. It is bitter to the taste with the overpowering amount of hops and the aroma seems to hint towards fruit, I think it's grape. Grade: B+

The dreaded Bar Scene! dun dun dun

Hey everyone! Not much has happened today. I pretty much stayed home, went to the gym and went to a Mesa Bar. Considering Mesa is majority Mormon and well they just don't drink. There wasn't much of a crowd, not to mention any hot girls. I would have to say that the only day that I went there and saw an even smidget of a hot girl was when I was there 2 weeks ago.

She wasn't exactly drop down on my knees and propose to her gorgeous, it was more like she was hot but not hot enough to pick up at the bar. So I didn't get her phone number and pretty much every other time that I've been to this bar I have not gotten a phone number.

Eh, what can I say? Bar scenes aren't me. I don't like picking up girls at the bar.

Today's beer is a Widmer Hefeweizen, apparently this beer has won awards at a couple beer events. I enjoyed the taste as well as the aroma. It is perfect with either a lime, lemon or my personal favorite a orange slice. I would not consider this a light beer nor a strong hops beer. It is about near the middle in my opinion. This is the type of beer that you can session at nearly all occasions. Grade: B+

Crocodile

MMMMMmmmm gotta love those days where you get 4 or less hours of sleep. Today was one of those days. I had to wake up early to get to work and do the accounting work in addition to my normal work. Long day, long day indeed. But as it turns out all of the accounting work was done by the time I got there. I swear it was by some magical elfs or I'd like to think so. =D
I'm not sure if any of you know about the boarder illegal alien issue in Arizona. For those of you who don't, there are a lot of mexican citizens crossing the Arizona/Mexico boarder everyday. But a lot of them were dying of dehydration. So a group of people decided to start putting out gallons of water in the desert for those people. But there are some stupid people who are slicing and smashing those gallons of water.

I mean I'm not exactly happy about how these Mexican citizens are getting into America but that doesn't mean that they should die for it. Have we sunk so low as moral human beings to not help those who are dying? I'm sure someone out there can rebuttal this by saying that putting out the gallons of water out there only encourages them to cross. Even I have thought about that scenario. But, if thinking of the consequences if we do not put water out there. I could not live with myself.

People from Mexico will cross whether there are those gallons of water or not. With the dream and belief that they can come to America and have a better life. That seems to be just a fact of life right now.

I am in plain words, siding with those who are putting out the gallons of water. They are doing a noble and moral thing. I say to you who argue the reverse, have you no respect for human life? We are all humans on