Beer

One of my new loves at 30 is beer, specifically Sleeman Honey Brown Lager.

As some of you are aware, I went through a long dry spell where I forswore drinking. After my dad died in 2000, I had decided that alcohol was not for me. I went a bit over 8 years (3000 days and change) before I decided to re-evaluate. To be honest, I felt that I had made my point. I wanted to know for myself that as a drinker, and I drank pretty heavily 1999-2000, that I could walk away from it if I wanted to. I wanted to live part of what my dad did as an alcoholic so I could understand better.

To be honest, it was painfully easy for the most part. When you have obsessive compulsive tendencies, maintaining a routine is not too difficult, and the trauma around my dad's death naturally set the stage to break my existing habit at the time.

It wasn't until I had gone through my first common-law "divorce" and was within days of going bankrupt that I decided to re-evaluate. A lovely lady by the name of Colleen stopped into my mostly empty house and persuaded me to try some mudslides with her. The next thing I knew I was back acting like a "woo girl" and drunkenly calling people on my cell phone. Ah, good times.

Looking at it with slightly more mature eyes, I'm the kind of guy who likes to have the odd beer. A beer a day is fine, and maybe a couple on the weekend, but that's about my limit. I don't like to get completely wrecked - I don't like to make an ass out of myself regularly or operate machinery.

I will say that marriage and children aside, two inconsequential things have marked 30 for me: beer and sawdust. They do tend to be somewhat related for me. A beer before a project keeps me amused, and there's something about drinking honey brown while staining wood.