Weekend Wrap Up – The Very Tired and Late Addition

I am not sure what to think about this week but one thing I do know is that I need to take it easy for a little bit. There is way too much going on in St Louis and I have to try to stop doing it all. With that said, I have a customer dinner on Monday, Dr Z is playing Twilight Tuesdays at the History Museum, Parties in the Park is on Wednesday, and another Lakers game is on Thursday (as well as Tuesday). Needless to say I will make an appearance at Parties in the Park and watch the two Lakers game at home … or at least that is the plan. With all that out of the way, here is what happened this past weekend for me.

I attended the St Louis Heritage festival (otherwise known as Beerfest) for the third year in a row. The weather was 10 times better than last year … no drudging around in the mud. They also moved the event and it looked to have twice the area of prior years. One other thing I noticed is that they also doubled the glass size. Good thing Matt Smith had the idea of “tasting” all the beers so we started getting our glasses only a ¼ full about an hour into the event. All the major StL breweries were in attendance and some of the new ones. AB , Schlafly, Buffalo, Amalgamated, O’Fallon Brewery, Mattingly. Alandale, Trailhead, and Augusta. Surprisingly, Square One was not there which I think is a bad PR move because they are a good brewery in a prime location but still very unknown to the general public. Good times were had by all. It was a perfect night for drinking some beer in the park. The one bad part is that St Louis cab companies still do not have their act together. There was probably like 2 or 3 cabs waiting after the event ended and at least 5 other groups waiting for cabs. We called a cab but then ended up walking to Kingshighway where we ran down a cab. Next on our list was the grand opening of Banana Joes right next to my condo. This place is in the same building as McGarveys that opened a couple weeks earlier. The place was dead but did have a good layout except for the fact that we went in the McGarvey’s entrance which had no cover but then had to go out of our way to go to the Banana Joe’s entrance to pay the cover for it. But I heard that all the bars downtown were dead so not sure if that was a good judgment. One other thing, is this the same owner of the old Bananna Joes on the landing? If not, they did a horrible job in naming since a quick Google search only shows reviews for the old location. Also, how can you expect to start a bar these days without a website? At least have a Facebook or MySpace page about the bars.We went to Pepper briefly to see if it was alive but it was also dead so I had a little afterparty hot tub session round out the night.

I was exhausted Saturday so I skipped the gym, the pool, the BBQ I was supposed to go to in the afternoon and the BBQ grad school party in the evening. I am really disappointed about not going to the grad school party because the guy had karaoke at his house and I heard it was a blast. Instead I meant to take a nap around 5PM but ended up not wake up till 3AM the next morning. Because of that, I went to Schnucks and made myself some breakfast and watched movies all morning. I watched Valkyrie, Big Fish, and Benjamin Button. Big Fish is one of my favorites so it was good. Valkyrie was good but I was expecting better and Benjamin Button surprised me. People said it was too long but I can’t see what scenes you would cut. Overall, I thought it was a good movie. I rounded out the Sunday afternoon by driving around randomly with Mike and Courtney. Mike did get the last Palm Pre at the downtown Sprint store so that was a plus. They said they had 40 and did have a line Saturday morning. The night ended perfectly with a nail biting Lakers win. Courtney Lee is lucky we are not in Japan; otherwise he would probably have to shoot himself. Hoff and Courtney did bring over a bunch of junk food for the game so that did not help the eating healthy mentality.