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Beer Review: Troegs Nugget Nectar

March 5, 2014 · by Oliver Gray

This morning, as I forced a crowbar of consciousness between my eyelids to coax them out of the sweet cocoon of sleep, I heard a bird. A single, sung, string of notes, like a flutist practicing her frills before a big performance. It didn’t last more than a single bar, but it was enough to flash Spring across my mind, warm my cold soul, reinforce that our sunlight temperance was, like all this snow, only temporary.

I suffer during the winter months. As soon as we lose Fall to those clocks who think that somehow giving us an hour will make up for all the long darkness, my energy slumps. The timely affliction is technically called Seasonal Affective Disorder, which I admit sounds like a completely made up thing to anyone who has never been hit by its unforgiving, inexplicable symptoms.

Medical research suggests it’s partly a deficiency in Vitamin D, a lack of exposure to daylight, a chemical void that can be fixed by little lamps, little pills, and little jabs of optimism. But the sulking pseudo-depression feels like more than that. It feels like someone dumped sand into your engine, like you’re pumping old, dirty oil into your brain to try to lubricate it, like your whole body is in serious need of a tune-up. Your car will start after some laboring and you can technically drive, but it’s a shuddering, slow affair, and you’re worried your clutch is going to slip at any second.

My energy isn’t the only thing that wanes; everything I hold onto and love seems muted by January grey. I find my ideas are trite, my confidence lacking, my creativity stagnant. This year’s winter was made worse by the chemicals having emotions to share a playground with, which lead to several weeks of getting little done, and then feeling especially bad about how little had gotten done.

But even if the plant looks brown and dead on the surface, the roots are strong and patient.

The little signs of spring – an early birdsong, a peeping crocus, a late-winter release of a favorite beer from a favorite brewery – start to pull me out of my mental morass. The Spring seasonals, be them buttercups or bees or beers, mark a turning point, when I feel the real me, the one who has been hibernating, shake the sleepy sludge from his shoulders and rise to greet the long rays of sun.

I’ve waffled on seasonals before, sometimes thinking they’re a bit too gimmicky for their own economic good. But there’s something about the rebirth of classic styles that makes Spring my favorite. Long gone as the spices of winter warmers and the gourdy-sweetness of the pumpkin patch, replaced by lagers of long tradition, pilsners and helles and all the bright bitterness the comes with. Hops don’t seem as heavy in those lower ABV beers you share a warm breeze with, and suddenly you’re not bound to your couch or your stout to hide from the bad kind of bitter, the one that howls on winter wind yelling at you to stay indoors.

I know Nugget Nectar from Troegs isn’t really a Spring seasonal. But it’s a herald for me. A knight, clad in brown and orange, sitting on a hill top with banner held high. His sole presence is enough to remind me that he has an army is at his back, an army made of baby animals and beautiful buds, an army armed with and by life, ready to put winter where it belongs: behind us.

nuggetnectar

“If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.” ― Anne Bradstreet

Forgotten Friday: Some Old Gym

December 7, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

(To my new readers: Sometimes, on Friday, I’ll do a post in a series called “Forgotten Friday.” Its focus is modern archaeology, or things that have gotten lost in plain sight. See here, here, here, and here for previous post in this series.)

I have irrational empathy for inanimate things. In the small town where I did my undergraduate studies, there was a little Korean restaurant that I always wanted to go to, only because it never had any customers. I talk and apologize to damaged cars in parking lots because I feel like their owners don’t love them. I even go as far as to worry about particularly unkempt lawns, as if the grass is somehow in pain because it hasn’t been manicured regularly.

Remember that old IKEA commercial with the lamp? That’s how I feel, just about all the time.

I work in a nondescript office building in a small corporate park in Maryland. It’s one of those places that you don’t even notice that you don’t notice because it is so short and brown and plain; the kind of place that no one comes to except to trudge through their work day in whatever placed deigned appropriate by their boss’s boss’s boss.

In this building is a single room that is sadder than the others. A room that from outward appearance once perspired with potential, but has fallen into a state of lonely abandonment. It’s not some obscurely placed storage closet. It’s not the creepy, drafty loading dock. It’s not the deli of questionable freshness.

It’s the poor little fitness room.

The door is locked, which seems strange, because in four years working here I think I’ve only seen about four people in this room. It is organized and tidy, as clean as a fitness area should reasonably be, and at first glance, not so bad.

What you might expect a gym to look like, I suppose.

What you might expect a gym to look like, I suppose.

But the devil hides his cruel smile in the details. The rack of free weights is wobbly, and in a way that could be easily fixed. One of the 20 lb barbells is missing, making it the only incomplete pair. The metal of the weights is pockmarked with years of mistreatment. The lighter weights in the set look as if they were salvaged from the local dump.

I don't even know how you would intentionally remove that outer rubber coating, never mind accidentally.

I don’t even know how you would intentionally remove that outer rubber coating, never mind accidentally.

Tucked in the corner, as if shamefully hidden there by some long gone member of this ghostly gym, is a stack of tapes. VHS tapes. Anachronistic fitness celebrities stare blankly from the brightly colored sleeves, echoing fitness crazes of decades passed. Billy Blanks grins at me, urging me to do some Tae Bo. There is no VCR in the room.

"Kick, punch, it's all in the mind."

“Kick, punch, it’s all in the mind.”

The machines are all functional, but dated. They wear the unmistakable clothes of the mid-90s; garish, unsophisticated LCD displays and boxy, hard-edged design. They were probably technological marvels when they first arrived, but now they look like rows of antiques, carefully lined up as if on display in a museum of fitness history.

Never mind the age of the machine, I just can't run on a treadmill. I never feel like I'm going anywhere.

Never mind the age of the machine, I just can’t run on a treadmill. I never feel like I’m going anywhere.

Directly in front of the center treadmill is a tiny picture, pinned to the wall. This piece of paper has been on the wall for about three years now; it appeared as if by magic sometime in early 2010. Sometimes I wonder who took the time to so carefully cut out this picture and so intentionally place it where it is the only thing you can focus on while running. Were they aiming to one day conquer the seventh, using the idea of playing this hole as motivation to get back into shape? Did they ever make it to Pebble Beach? Did their time in this room, on this very treadmill, start a journey that ended with a little white ball dropping quietly into a hole as West-Coast waves crashed on nearby rocks?

The famous "Seventh Hole" of Pebble Beach Golf Links.

The somewhat famous seventh hole of Pebble Beach Golf Links.

I don’t think I’ll ever know. I’ll never know who used this place and to what end; whose life has been improved at the hands of these stalwart, endlessly hard working machines.

But I’ll continue to feel bad for this room. I’ll continue to think about its underused potential. I’ll continue to picture it sitting in the dark, on the bottom floor of the building, neglected by everyone except a select, disciplined few.

Maybe someday, when the economy rebounds, and this corporate park thrives with the energy of optimism and fervor of growth, this gym will once again become a place of dedication and personal transformation.

Ode to a Favorite Cat

May 22, 2012 · by Oliver Gray

Yesterday we lost a family member. His name was Boddington (named after the beer, imagine that in my family). He was one of the greatest cats I have ever known.

This is for my mother, his mother, the greatest mom and cat-mom to ever grace this planet with her kindness. Her devotion to her cats is something of legend. Her love of life is unrivaled. She is a living model of compassion and selflessness.

Ode to a Favorite Cat 

Although I will not be around to wake you with meows,
Do not mourn my passing, for my life was sweet.
I had years and years of love and purrs,
A life that cats in the street dream endlessly of.

I have gone to a place where the weather is clear,
Rain never rustles my shiny coat;
I’ve gone to a place where the bowl is never empty,
And I never get fat.

The birds give perfect sport, the mice are clumsy and plentiful,
The grass I eat is soft, never makes me sick;
The rays of sun passing through the windows always make a perfect spot for me to bask,
And I can roll on my back without fear.

I will miss you as you miss me,
But know that I am with my brothers, Tom, J.R.;
In this place I am not sick, but in the prime of my life,
I am strong and fast and silly as a cat should be.

While my physical strength has left me,
I remain powerful in your heart;
As long as you remember my playful biting and relentless cries,
I will live forever.

Although I will not be around to sleep on your feet,
Do not mourn my passing, for my life was sweet.
You gave me something that makes life worth living,
Love, companionship, and an embrace so warm it can never fade.

We love you Boddington. You will be missed more than you know.

(Inspiration found here)

Rest well my noisy friend, our hearts are bigger and sweeter for having known you.

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