Wow... I've gotten *really* bad at regularly updating this thing, huh?

Yeah... 5 months since my last post on here.  Oof.  I don't think I've ever gone that long between posts before.  I guess there just hasn't been a lot going on for me as far as "real life" goes -- it's all been just going to my job and working on various stuff on the computer, for the most part.  I don't see friends nearly as often as I'd like, and it's a really depressing thought that so many of them are going to vanish after this semester is over (and even more within the year or so after that.)  I've gotten to see several people recently, but it still never quite seems like "enough," especially when there's still so many friends I really want to see but I never really get the chance to.  I hope I'll be able to keep in touch with people better than I have up to this point... not hearing from people for months at a time is pretty awful (and seems even worse when they're people I could easily just walk over and visit!) and I'd really rather avoid that in the future if at all possible.

Anyway... job has been going okay for the most part.  I've made some progress toward finishing those training videos I need to get done before my pay can get bumped up to $8.00 an hour (it's at $7.50 an hour right now), I think I only have one video left to go now... though it is the longest of them, supposedly in the range of an hour and a half.  I'm kind of dreading summer, though, after hearing about how insanely hot it gets in that store when it's very warm outside.  Hearing that it sometimes gets into the freaking 90s inside during the summer almost makes me glad that my hours will be shorter over the summer... I'm definitely going to have to start applying to other jobs soon, specifically jobs at places that actually use their freaking air conditioner rather than setting it to 78 which... doesn't actually cool the place down that much, especially with all the heat blasting out from the oven and the pizza-heating racks.  I mean, it's an improvement over 80-82 that it would get up to without the AC on at all, but still not great, and apparently when it's really hot outside even turning the AC on is not enough to keep it within "actually a tolerable indoor temperature" range.  95 degrees is not within that range... heck, 95 isn't even tolerable when you're outside unless you're in a swimming pool or something.  And apparently when the AC broke last year, it got up to 115 degrees inside.  And stayed that way for months because it took them forever to get someone to fix it.  Yeah, if that happens I'm going to have to find somewhere else to work because I'm pretty sure I would be in actual danger if I tried to work in those conditions (even the 90s might be in "Eddie is in danger of overheating and dying" range, really, considering how bad that one day of 80-82 degree temperatures in there was for me.)  I've got an application for Subway, but I'm going to have to check the place out a little more and find out how they do their air conditioning (I'm assuming it'll be saner than what Papa John's does, considering that Subway has indoor seating) -- I don't want to have two jobs where I'll be roasting alive all summer, after all.  I'm actually seriously considering giving Wal-Mart a look, since I know they keep it pretty cool in there... I've heard Wal-Mart isn't too fun to work for, but this is going to be a summer job rather than something long-term so if it sucks I can always quit when my Papa John's hours start going up again when the college students come back in the flal. XD

The warmer weather hasn't been all bad, though (it's actually been pretty nice aside from work-related complications!)... I've been going on walks a lot more often lately, sometimes more than once in the same day when I'm off from work.  I had already explored Buena Vista from one end to the other (walking all the way up to Food Lion in one direction, and way out past city limits to the "old fences and grassy fields" range in the other), and I'm pretty sure the flood wall is pretty much the far end of Buena Vista on that side, but now I've walked up to what may be the highest point in town.  And I took some pictures, which I'll post here now:

Source of all water in BV that doesn't come from the Maury, perhaps? XD

Most contradictory signs ever.  KEEP OUT, STOP, WELCOME!

The view from the top of Buena Vista.

Oh, and back in February I made another OHRRPGCE game -- this time one based on Teekee, that fat, goofy gray stripey cat who's currently living back at my mom's house.  The game isn't finished but it is playable and even beatable, since it's going to have multiple story branches with different endings when it's done (currently only one is reachable... not counting a couple of "bad ending" possibilities, anyway.)  It was made for one of Slime Salad's many OHRRPGCE game-making contests, and came in second place (though I get the feeling that if one specific voter hadn't put the game at the bottom of his votes solely for "I was too lazy and/or not-smart to figure out how to get past this point" reasons I would've won.  Heck, I would've tied for first place if I had switched my own votes around slightly.)  Here's some screenshots:

No random encounters -- Earthbound/Mario RPG-style wandering enemies instead!

Obligatory in-battle screenshot.  Teekee vs. the dreaded demon-beetles. XD

The Big Humpty Star nose-vacuuming Crocowilliam.

Hmm, what's that mysterious stone arch here for?

A cat's take on human toilets.

I've also been drawing more stuff than usual lately, as you've seen if you've been looking at my Facebook uploads... or my other blog... or my Deviantart account.  Yeah, I put stuff all over the place now. XD  And here's one more place, though I'll only be posting one picture this time... I actually painted something for the first time in months recently!

That's the girl with the fish-sword that I came up with a couple years back, except now she's actually colored in (the original drawing was black-and-white... and I had no idea what kind of color scheme to give her.  Whoops. XD  Thankfully, my first attempt actually turned out really well!)

And I've also continued trying different kinds of beer.  Yep, this is the point where some of my Mormon friends may want to tune out, so I've conveniently plunked the beer portion of this post behind a thingie you have to click on to expand it if you're reading this from my main blog page! If that thingie doesn't work, well, this is the last bit before I start talking about beer, so if you don't want to read about beer, pretend the post ends here. XD

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Back around December, I bought a six-pack of this one from the local Kroger -- Pilsner Urquell, imported from the Czech Republic and apparently the original pilsner-style beer (named after the city of Pilsen/Pilzn that it comes from) that all the others can be traced back to.  This one was pretty good -- had a very biscuity sort of flavor to it, rather than just "bready/grainy."  Also a bit of something grape/champagne/yellow raisin-like in there, though the biscuityness was the main flavor.  Sadly, I found out the hard way that this beer (or maybe beer in general) does not taste good when you have a cold -- with a stuffed-up nose and messed-up taste buds, I could only taste the grapey bit.  And alcohol, which is weird since this isn't even high in alcohol to begin with.  So yeah, moral of the story: don't drink beer when you're sick, especially good beer that you don't want to waste.

Later on in mid-January, I stumbled across something else at the local Kroger that I hadn't seen before: a cart in the aisle where they put "old" bottles of beer and wine for sale at discounter prices.  Single bottles, too, not six-packs or anything.  I took this opportunity to try out a few different Sam Adams beers that I'd seen around.  The Harvest Pumpkin was only "okay" (though I wouldn't mind trying it again when it's fresher, since this was an old bottle), and the Harvest Saison is hard to judge since it seemed pretty different between the two bottles (pretty good from one, had a weird taste that didn't seem to belong in the other--maybe just because these bottles were right at the end of their "best by" time period?), but both the Boston Lager and Oktoberfest were pretty good.  I've since had a fresher bottle of the Boston Lager and it was definitely better than the old one (and I liked the old one), so I'm planning on trying the Oktoberfest again for sure when they come out with it again in the fall -- that one was my favorite of the four going by the old bottles, so I'm hoping a fresher bottle will be even better.

 In late January/early February I had a variety pack from Starr Hill, a local-ish brewery from over in Charlottesville.  The above two were my favorite beers from that pack.  The Grateful pale ale was pretty good when I first had it, and then grew on me as I had the other two bottles over the course of the next week or two.  It actually ended up being the first of the four beers in the variety pack to run out.  The SnowBlind doppelbock, though, was one that amazed me from the very first time I tried it and was consistently really, really good every other time I've had it afterward.  Dark, sweet, bready, almost sticky and filling enough that you don't need a snack later on if you drink one of these later on (appropriately enough, considering that the original doppelbocks were brewed by monks so that they could get through periods of fasting during Lent without feeling like they were going to starve to death.)  This one is one of my top 3 favorite beers so far.

I also revisited one of my first Mexican beers -- Negra Modelo -- thanks to the discounted beer cart at Kroger.  Picked up three of these for a dollar each, which is a massive discount from the usual six-pack price of $8.49 or something like that for six of them.  They may have been old bottles, but they still tasted good to me -- bready and raisiny just like I remember from the second time I had this one.

And here's another beer I picked up at Kroger, one that I'd been looking forward to ever since I heard it announced.  It's from New Belgium (the brewery who makes Fat Tire, and also the one I had a variety pack from back in November), and it's a porter, which is a style I've been wanting to try for a while.  I kind of overdid it a bit when pouring the beer into my glass before I took this picture -- it foamed up a lot more than usual and almost overflowed. XD  That doesn't normally happen, I just poured a bit too quickly this time.  Anyway, this was a good beer also -- lots of almost-coffee-like roastiness (which seems to be a common feature in the porters and stouts I've had so far) and also a chocolatey sort of taste, though more dark chocolate than "Hershey bar" chocolate.  Also a bit of nuttiness.  Interestingly, I actually like the "coffee-like" flavors in beer even though I don't like coffee... maybe because the "coffee  taste" in beer is actually more like what good coffee smells like, rather than what coffee tastes like, and I've always thought that coffee smelled good even though I didn't like the taste of the one actually-coffee-flavored thing I've had (some coffee ice cream.)

Toward the end of February, I picked up a few six-packs from Kroger all at once -- taking advantage of a special offer they had, where if you buy any four six-packs you'd get 20% off on all of them (which is pretty much the cheapest six-pack price you can get anywhere as far as I've seen.)  I tried a few beers I'd never had before -- the Vanilla Porter, Beer Camp Hoppy Lager, and Red Stripe -- along with Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, which I had tried (and liked) at a restaurant once before.  It seems like I tend to like pale ales in general -- I've had three so far and really liked all of them.  Interesting to see the differences between them, too -- the first one I tried (Sweetwater 420) was very strong piney flavors and a little bit of sweet breadiness, then Starr Hill's pale ale had a bit more of the breadiness and a pine/citrusy combination from the hops, and then Sierra Nevada's had the most of the sweeter/bready flavors along with a lot of orange-like citrusy flavor and not as much pine.  All good, all similar enough to count as the same type of beer, but all different enough that you'd never get them mixed up.

Anyway, out of these beers Red Stripe is by far the lightest (possibly the lightest beer I've had so far, actually) but still pretty good; definitely a "drink a few with a meal" sort of beer rather than a "drink one beer when you get home from work" sort of thing though.  Very nice with the pasta I made with some garlic-butter sauce the first time I tried one, though -- so much so that I ended up going ahead and having two of them with that meal! XD

The Beer Camp lager was more on the other end -- higher alcohol, much strong flavors.  It actually came across as almost spicy, interestingly enough, though in the "basil, oregano, etc." leafy-spice way rather than in the hot-pepper sort of way.  That's an interesting flavor to find in beer.  I liked it, though I did notice that the ones I drank shortly after I got them were better than the last couple left in my fridge when I finally finished off the last of them -- beers with lots of hops in them do tend to lose a bit of their flavor with age, and between my rate of drinking (maybe one or two beers a day maximum; sometimes none!) and the fact that I had four six-packs in the fridge at once I must've let them sit a bit too long.  Still not bad, just noticeably less-good than the freshest ones I had from the same pack.

As for the Vanilla Porter, sadly, I think I got a bad (or old?) pack of them.  None of them seemed bad, but they were so inconsistent from one bottle to the next that I can't imagine they were all "right" either.  Interestingly, the very last bottle from the pack got the closest to what I imagine was the intended flavor of the beer -- a bit of a dark chocolate sort of thing, a bit of vanilla, a bit of raisiny sort of flavor.  It was the best of the six, which was a nice surprise considering it was the last one I had left.  If these had been fresher bottles I'm guessing the vanilla would be stronger... maybe wasn't such a great idea to buy the last six-pack Kroger had left on the shelf, I should've figured they'd been there a while at that point.

I also got a little present from Julia during a visit back home for Spring Break -- a bottle of another Sierra Nevada beer, the Torpedo IPA! Julia had a six-pack and let me have two, one to drink while I was at home and another to bring home with me.   This one was pretty good also; bitter, but the bitterness blended in more with the other flavors rather than coming across as a harsh blast of bitterness on its own.  I'm thinking I like it more when the bitterer beers do it that way (the bitterness blending with the other flavors, rather than standing out on its own.)  Some piney flavor but more of the leafy/herbal sort of thing, almost like the Beer Camp lager in some ways -- probably my favorite IPA so far, though I noticed that the bottles were actually around 5 months old already... so considering the "beers with lots of hops lose flavor over time" it's probably even better when it's fresh.  I'll have to try this one again at some point in the future.

And then another IPA, which the Lexington Food Lion apparently got a month ahead of the "official" release somehow -- Blue Moon White IPA.  Basically a combination of the wheaty/spicy characteristics of a regular Blue Moon with piney and fruity flavors from adding a lot more hops.  I didn't get nearly as much orangey flavor as a regular Blue Moon, so it seems like they mixed things around a bit more rather than just dumping a bucket of hops in regular Blue Moon. XD  Even the color of the beer is a little less orange.  Anyway, this one was pretty good also.

 During a visit to Salem to see Julia, we both picked up mixed six-packs from the Kroger over there (I wish the Kroger here did that... the discounted beer cart is nice and all, but getting to try six different beers all in one pack would be something that'd be really nice to have easier access to.)  Anyway, in that pack was a bottle of Guinness Extra Stout, which I had on St. Patrick's Day, appropriately enough. XD  I've had the Guinness Draught on-tap at a restaurant before, but I actually liked the Extra Stout more -- seemed like there was more flavor to it, and some different flavors that I hadn't picked up in the draft version.  The draft version was pretty good too, just not quite as strong in flavor as this one; definitely did look nicer, though, with that layer of tan foam that pretty much never goes away even when the glass is almost empty.

Another one from that mixed six-pack: Birthday Beer, the beer that basically tastes just like a chocolate cake!  Not even exaggerating there.  (The other four from the variety pack were good too, but I'm already oversaturating this post with beer pictures so I'm skipping over a few. XD)

 And here's another one that just recently came out.  Wasn't sure if I was going to try it or not -- it normally comes in clear bottles and is kinda expensive considering that it's basically just a light beer with margarita-type flavors mixed in -- but then I found this jumbo-sized can for $2 at a gas station and figure "hey, why not?"  Not bad, though it really did not taste like a beer at all -- all I could pick up was a tequila/agave-like taste and artificial lime flavoring.  Nice to try once, and I'm definitely keeping the neat Dia de los Muertos skull can for my collection, but I probably won't buy it again.

 And here's my most recent beer purchase at Kroger -- two bottles of Raven's Roost Baltic Porter from Parkway Brewing (found in the discount cart) and a six-pack of Azrael, a Belgian-style ale from Devil's Backbone.  I've tried both now and both are very good -- Azrael is reminding me that I need to try more Belgian-style beers (the flavors the yeast causes are so weird, but somehow they work so well -- for example, in this one I taste pears, maybe apples, maybe bananas or sometimes cotton candy, something wood-like or almost smoky occasionally... and then that banana/woody/smoky flavor shifts into something more like peanuts, and then something vaguely spicy.  Sounds utterly bizarre, but tastes good!) and the one bottle of the Baltic porter I've had so far was really nice also -- flavors were primarily dark roasted grain and something like raisins/dates/figs, and interestingly didn't really come across as "coffee-like" the way most other porters/stouts have for me so far.

 And this enormous pile of beers is what I got in the mail a couple weeks ago -- someone on a beer forum I'm signed up on offered to send me a six-pack of Yuengling Bock after I posted about how I was a little disappointed that I never got a chance to try it before it was discontinued, I paid the cost of the six-pack plus part of the shipping cost, and then... I got twice as much beer as I had paid for in the mail! Not only a six-pack (plus one extra bottle) of the Yuengling Bock (which is pretty good -- I've had two bottles so far, it's basically a dark and more flavorful version of the regular Yuengling Lager) but two bottles of another Yuengling beer I've wanted to try (the Summer Wheat, which was also pretty good, though fizzier than I expected -- of course, it's made like a German hefeweizen, which is a type of beer I've never had before, so I wasn't sure quite what to expect!) and also a bottle or two two beers I've never even seen before -- I haven't gotten around to trying either of them just yet, so I can't say much about them beyond that. XD