Month: October 2014

Beerview: Elysian Bifrost Winter Ale

Beerview: Elysian Bifrost Winter Ale

I like beer, and I like to try new beers. I’ll tell you about the good and bad ones I find. I am not qualified an any way to talk about beer, but I’m going to anyway.

Winter is coming, and bringing dark, rich beer with it. Elysian Brewing Company from Seattle is never one to shy away from full flavors, and Bifrost is no exception.

Though it boasts citrus flavors on the label the thing that hits you in the face is the hops. It is a full flavor that will warm you to your toes on a frosty night. This isn’t a beer to enjoy a lot because it’s 7.6%, so be wary of drinking too many.

Overall this is a really solid beer to carry you from Fall to Winter.

Rating: 4 pint glasses

Quarter-Life Crisis

Lately a lot of my friends have used the phrase “quarter-life crisis” to describe how it feels to graduate college and be further away from knowing what you want to do than when you started college. The phrase started as a joke, but it seems to be something my friends are taking more seriously.

Though it seems dramatic and entitled, there isn’t a term for exactly what we’re experiencing post-college. We don’t yet have a name for this feeling. As I talked about in my post about millenials, people my age are in a unique situation. A college degree doesn’t guarantee you a career immediately after graduation. So a lot of us are finding us graduated and confused, thus the quarter-life crisis.

I’ve heard it from friends who have full-time jobs, friends who are still looking for work and even my most “put-together” friend. Maybe this comes from the fact that there aren’t any jobs out there so we have to find work in fields we don’t like. Maybe it’s because we have too many options and can’t find something to commit to.

Whatever the reason, it’s clear that no one really has a plan anymore. So what does this mean? Is my generation going to be working multiple part-time jobs our entire lives, or are we going to create new and interesting careers out of things we’re good at? I am sincerely hoping for the latter seeing as I am smack dab in the middle of my own quarter-life crisis.

Wineview: Wine Cube

Wineview: Wine Cube

I like wine, and I like to try new wine. I’ll tell you about the good and bad ones I find. I am not qualified an any way to talk about wine, but I’m going to anyway.

Look, I’m poor. If you didn’t know that you’re obviously new, so welcome! This means that I can’t splurge on wine. I’m more of a beer girl, but every once in a while I like to buy a bottle of wine. However the wine that is in my budget tastes like vinegar. With that in mind, I may have found the solution and it is ridiculous and excessive. It’s called the Wine Cube. No brand name, just a description of what shape it is and what it holds.

No it isn’t classy and yes you’ll feel like an idiot buying one, but it’s cheap and tastes good. In case you haven’t caught up on it it’s a cube of wine, take that Franzia, that holds four bottles and actually seals so it stays fresh for up to a month. I paid $15 for it, which means a little under $4/bottle. Here’s the kicker: It doesn’t suck. No it isn’t going to win any awards or be featured in any self respecting restaurant but if you’re sipping on a budget you are in luck/

I tried the Cabernet Sauvignon and it was dry, sweet and full-bodied. Let’s be honest though, if you’re buying wine in a box you can’t have super high expectations, but with Wine Cube you will enjoy your rotten grapes.

LDR: Part 1- Communication

Sometimes growing up means finding yourself living far away from your significant other. Post-graduation is a time when focusing on jobs is key and this can put people in two different places. That’s where I find myself at the moment. It’s not easy, but it’s part of life. This is part one in a series on Long Distance Relationships (LDR).

The key to any relationship is communication but that becomes the most important thing when your boyfriend/girlfriend lives in a different city/state/country. In 2014 there are so many ways to contact someone, calling, texting, FaceTime, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Tupac’s hologram. There is seemingly no excuse not to talk, but it isn’t that easy.

The first thing to take into account is time zones. Being three hours ahead or behind someone makes things trickier but not impossible. Pretty soon you’ll start to get good at adding or subtracting hours.

The next thing hurdle to get through is when the other person can’t contact you. In my case it’s because my boyfriend finds himself in dead zones for most of the day. He works in the woods, and for some reason America has decided Sasquatch doesn’t need cell towers.

However, no matter how hard you try there are off days where you can’t connect or even if you do the conversations seem off. These days suck. You find yourself mad at your person for no reason and then snapping at them because you’re upset at the situation. There isn’t really a fool-proof solution to this beside understanding it happens and you have to be as considerate as you can about each other’s feelings.

All of this seems obvious and cliche but it’s easy to get caught up in how you’re feeling away from someone and forget the other person is in the exact situation. I’m not an expert because I’ve only been in it a few months, and it’s not something you can understand until you’re in it, but the thing that makes it easier is knowing my boyfriend is working and fighting for our relationship too. That’s the only way to keep from going crazy.

Beerview: Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin

Beerview: Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin

I like beer, and I like to try new beers. I’ll tell you about the good and bad ones I find. I am not qualified an any way to talk about beer, but I’m going to anyway.

It’s October, and that means pumpkin. For better or worse, you can’t turn around in a grocery store without hitting something with spice in the title. Never to be outdone by Starbucks, the beer industry jumped on the gourd train and gives the signature flavor and alcoholic twist.

I thought I would start with a generic brand, Blue Moon, and a generic flavor, Harvest Pumpkin. Let’s give it a try.

The first think I noticed is it has twist-off cap, which is perfect if you’re on the go. On first sip, I detect some definite spice-like notes. Nothing overpowering or risky because it is Blue Moon after all.

Halfway through the bottle the spices dull and it tastes like Blue Moon, and I like Blue Moon, so that’s good. Imagine you spilled cloves in your Belgian Wheat and there you have Harvest Pumpkin. Not bad, but nothing to write home about.

Rating: 2 pint glasses

What is a Millennial?

Millennial is a buzz word. Technically it means anyone 18-35, but it has different meanings for different people. For some it is an annoying teenager who doesn’t know how to interact in the real world. For others it is a huge group of people to advertise to with hash tags and jump cuts. But for me and my friends, it’s us. I am a millennial in the technical sense of the word and the stereotypical. I love social media and Apple products. I watch a lot of Netflix and YouTube and I have been out of college for a year and am still working two part time jobs.

I’m not saying this is true of all millennials. I have many friends who have high-paid full-time jobs. Who are working at the careers they went to school for and want to stay in. However, for most of us, that isn’t a reality. This isn’t just my inside experience, it has been talked about. It’s more okay for millennials to live with their parents or work shitty part time jobs to make rent. It’s not that we don’t want to be successful, it’s that we have different dreams than past generations.

My parents went to school to be teachers. When they graduated they got teaching jobs. They didn’t have an “off year” where they watched court shows and job searched. They did what everyone else did, worked hard in college and started their careers. It isn’t that easy anymore for a few reasons.

It started with the economic crash. Employers were cutting back right when millennials started to enter the “real world.” It wasn’t just that people weren’t hiring, but people older than us who were laid off from a career during the crash were not reentering the job market. For the first time in a long time we weren’t only competing against our peers but also our parents and siblings and aunts and uncles. There are less jobs and way more competition.

But that didn’t crush the hopes of millennials because we are such a hopeful generation. We created other jobs from bloggers, to YouTubers, to social media consultants. Fresh out of college, it became clear that our options were more limited than when our parents entered the working world, so we started to find our own way. The biggest trick with manufacturing a career from nothing is waiting to get paid for what we’re created. So we end up living back at home or working at Target while we try to take our passions and skills and turn them into careers.

At the end of the day, millennials are in a pretty rough situation but we’re making the most of it. You better believe we’re not going to settle.

Street Harassment

Today I was on a run around my neighborhood and a random man asked me why I wasn’t smiling. First of all, because I just ran two miles, and secondly eff you. This isn’t the first or second time this has happened. In fact, I get some sort of comment every time I go for a run or buy a six pack from the store. I’m not flattered, it’s not a confident boost, it makes me nervous and uncomfortable. I could write books upon books about this subject but other people have discussed it better than I ever could.

That said, I had an interesting conversation with a good male friend yesterday that brought something to my attention, there are men out there who have no idea how bad street harassment really is. My friend had heard the term and read some articles about statistics but he hadn’t really thought about it until he started hearing stories from his girlfriends. If you do it or see it happen, how can you understand it? I rarely get comments if I’m walking with a man, so my friend had never witnessed anything happening to me. He referred to it as an entire world that is happening right under his nose, and that is the reason I’m writing this.

My friend listened to story after story of things that happen to me every day and started to develop an understanding. The only way this problem is going to get better is if more and more people understand it, and that can be done by talking about it constantly. Talk about it with your male and female friends and slowly we’ll eradicate the behavior.

For more information about how to end street harassment visit Hollaback.org.

Beerview: Mirror Pond

Beerview: Mirror Pond

I like beer, and I like to try new beers. I’ll tell you about the good and bad ones I find. I am not qualified an any way to talk about beer, but I’m going to anyway.

Deschutes’ Mirror Pond is not a new beer by any means but it is one of my favorites. I’ve sort of forgotten it in my attempt to try every micro brew in the greater Portland area, but I revisited it tonight and it’s like talking with an old friend. It is full-bodied and warm. I once referred to it as a beer that tastes like a bar, maybe because it actually tastes like wood, but this is the beer to drink if you want to feel like you’re having a night out without leaving your couch. Drop some peanut shells on your floor, light a cigarette, and you’ve made your own personal bar.

Drink it in a glass.

Rating: 4 pint glasses

How to: Survive a 14-hour day

Graduating college might mean that you have to work two or three jobs to make ends meet. Sometimes those jobs work together and you can have a life outside of work, but more often than not that’s not the case and you’ll find yourself in the middle of a 14 hour day. The more of them you do, the easier it will get, but until then here are some tips for getting through a marathon day.

Tip 1: Snacks. A key part to keeping up your energy is lots of snacks. Legally you should have designated meals throughout the day, and those are very important to, but I’m talking about in between meals. You want to bring things that will stave off the hanger at 2 pm. This can be anything you like. You can go for something healthy or stick with comfort food to keep yourself happy.

Tip 2: Make a game. Say you work in retail and you’ve folded the same shirt thirteen times in four hours, that could become tedious. Pretend the president called you to say a meteor is heading toward North America and the only way to stop it is to fold all the shirts on the table in two minutes. Or imagine each shirt is work ten points and getting 500 points means you can go home.

Tip 3: Caffeine. Drink it and love it. I’m not a coffee drinker so I opt for tea or if I’m really desperate soda. Nothing puts a pep in your step like more sugar than should be legal.

There is no formula for getting through a long day, but practice makes perfect.