Golden Monkey and Nintendo Wii

Last night, as a means of avoiding some loitering followers of the Insane Clown Posse and their all-too-real-looking rifle, I took a short fifteen minute drive over to Stroudsburg to enjoy my weekly visit with Grigs. We are both quite competitive when it comes to Nintendo Wii, which is a great outlet for her job stress and my over-thinking stress. To make things more interesting, we each slowly consume a bottle of beer during our 2 hours of jumping around the living room trying to recapture the power serve in tennis. Maybe it's because I'm a lightweight, or maybe it's because I haven't eaten for a few hours, but I've discovered that a bottle of Golden Monkey packs quite a punch. Those Belgians must have special hops for brewing, which is much more pleasant to consider than them using fermented monkey feces. Needless to say, I'm glad that we jump around for two hours so that my body can metabolize the alcohol before I drive home. Once we get tired of exerting ourselves in tennis, which I tend to dominate, we move on to bowling, which I struggle with at times, especially when I forget to release the ball properly and end up with a human strike, which involves tossing the ball into the crowd standing behind me. Grigs and I are both amused at our change in temperament between tennis and bowling. While we are still competitive at bowling, we tend to compliment each other when we get strikes or spares. Tennis, on the other hand, is much more cut-throat with threats and our bodies bouncing around the living room. It is definitely one of the highlights of my week, though, to just be able to let lose and pretend like a kid again. As Grigs likes to say, we are channeling our inner middle school child.

Missoula and Uncle Bob

Started out on our drive this morning at 6:30 am. Drove west on I-33 in Idaho to meet up with I-15 North towards Montana. Along the way Chrissy spotted a bald eagle flying next to the river and back to its nest. There also happened to be snow flurries as soon as we crossed into Montana this morning, which is making me look forward to California even more. Made our way to the Bayern Brewery in Missoula. There happened to be a white cat chilling on the bar as soon as I walked in and it followed me down the bar stools and sat on my lap. I was very amused because the cat's fur was cut like a lion giving it a mane and a skinny tail that was bushy at the end. Chrissy and I sampled Dragon's Breath, Dumptruck, and Maibach. I ended up getting a Maibach pint glass and a Faceplant beanie.

We then ventured off to find my uncle's place in the hills of Montana. It was great to see him again after five years, even though we were both a bit anxious about the meeting (it's what we do haha). I enjoyed listening to his stories of growing up watching Joe Namath play football, going to Broncos games, and a party he went to on Lake Tahoe. He also talked about college and how he struggled through biochemistry. Chrissy and I enjoyed petting his cats Darwin, Jake, and Keira. Jake apparently likes to use Bob's cactus for a brush every time he walks by. I showed him some pictures from the Tough Mudder and he said he was very proud of me and that he would have done the race if he was my age. Uncle Bob also told me about a 100 mile race that they are holding in his area, but might get postponed due to the grizzly bears. The three of us then wandered up to the house that is for sale on the ridge for $600,000. It has a five car garage and a beautiful deck view. Darwin happened to tag along on our walk, which was entertaining. Uncle Bob showed me his Boy Scout knife that he has kept for 45 years and he talked about his running days and how he medaled at the Penn Relays back in the day.

Chrissy and I left after 3 hours and drove back to Missoula to eat dinner at the Cracker Barrel. I was very excited to eat steak, mashed potatoes, and corn. Now we are chilling at Starbucks before venturing northward towards Kalispell.