Not much break in this break

Uff da, the past two days were brutal.  Two special events at the pool, and two 12-13 hour days for Ky.  Somebody's gotta do it.  Tomorrow (Thanksgiving) is my only day off for the week, and I cannot tell you how I am looking forward to sleeping after 3 days in a row of being up at 4 am.

All of the snow has melted since my last post.  You can only imagine my displeasure.  However, I will not let that get me down.  I'm compensating with a New Belgium winter brew I had never tried before, Snow Day.  I always loved their 2˚ Below, but I don't think they made it this year : /  Snow Day is quite good, however.

It's very dark, as winter ales tend to be, so slightly bitter at first, but it makes me feel warm inside.  The description reads:

"With 3 feet of powder closing the roads, a brewery is not a bad place to get snowed in.  Given the unanticipated hall pass of a snow day, our brewers decided to experiment.  Hmm...what about this dark caramel roasted Midnight Wheat braced with a serious load of Styrian Goldings, Centennial and Cascade hops? Shovel it in.  What a deliciously unexpected way to spend a SNOW DAY!"

I finally got to go ice skating this week (after many failed attempts last weekend) with Kate.  It was a little crowded and the ice was in dire need of a zamboni, but I say any time spent on the ice is time well-spent indeed.  I finally bought some guards for my skates, so now I can carry them around more easily and at least feel like I'm taking good care of the blades.

While in that area, I also stopped at a used bookstore.  These are dangerous places, because everything seems appealing, particularly when the store is having a 40% off retirement sale! I originally went in with the intention of buying some Charles Dickens, which I did, but also came across a few other treasures.  I bought some cute Danish books, and found a Chinese language instruction book from 1943.

I think this is something really special.  It still uses Giles Wade romanization, which is very old-fashioned and no longer the norm (for example, spelling 北京 "Peking" instead of "Beijing," 南京 "Nanking" instead of "Nanjing," 喜欢 "hsihuan" instead of "xihuan," and so forth).  It even reads the Chinese texts up-to-down, right-to-left, which is also quite old-fashioned.  Aside from the novelty of this book, it gives detailed explanations of grammar, and will certainly provide some useful practice.

Tomorrow night, I am house-sitting at a beautiful 100-year-old farm house out in the country, with a great dog to boot.  I'm glad it's only for one night, because I don't generally like sleeping at other people's places anymore, but I am looking forward to the quaint solitude in the time I do have there.