For the longest time I was pretty sure I wasn’t a fan of wheat beer. All wheat beer. I know, that’s like saying, “I only drink red wine,” or “I only drive cars over emperor penguins,” but so goes my irrational mind sometimes. The point is, having tasted a few wheat beers over the past decade, I had come to the conclusion that they all had an unrefined bite and little more than summer trend status here in the US. Silly lemon wedge. So when the warmer months rolled around I generally avoided the slim, straight-sided glasses of cloudy blonde libation and stuck to my cloying brown ales instead.

About two weeks ago, however, I sat down at the bar of one of my favorite watering holes and was offered (without asking) a taste of a new Belgian ale on tap. I still don’t remember the name of it, but it do remember that it was a “Belgian white” and it was incredible. I’ve since tried (and quite enjoyed) a few others, and it led me to examine just what differentiates wheat beers from each other.

First off, almost every wheat beer on the market is an ale. That means it’s fermented warm with ale yeast which often results in a fuller and sweeter (if only in aroma) brew. There are rare wheat lagers out there, and they’re likely more crisp and light. Beyond that distinction, we have two major schools of wheat beer: the German “weissbier” or “weizen,” and the Belgian “witbier.”

Hefeweizen seems to be the big German player here in The States, and that’s basically an unfiltered wheat beer made from at least 50% malted wheat (as opposed to all barley). It’s usually quite carbonated to balance out the sweetness factor, and that may be what I don’t like too much about it. But it sure seemed to be a gateway drug to Beer Land for my wife and sister-in-law, so it can’t be all bad.

The Belgian witbier is often made with raw wheat (unmalted) and brewed with a spice/flavoring blend called “gruit” that is often made up of coriander, orange, and hops. This stuff is magical to my palate, and it’s the style of beer that I photographed – and later consumed – in my post last week (Ommegang is the brewery, and the beer was incredible).

I wish I had some witbier right now, actually. It’s hot and humid outside today, and it’s well past 5 o’clock at this somewhere.

(via my buddy Patrick)

All of this to say that one of my main routines is the drive back from class (I’m still a graduate student) to the house twice a week. I’m not the type to require a lot of “me” time, but this semi-weekly trip is about right for my needs, so I stretch it out by taking a slightly longer route than necessary. I get enough time to hear an extra song or two, think over whatever’s coursing through my head, and decompress from a long day of work and school. Most of the “game” portion of this routine comes from trying to beat traffic signals, make it off the line faster than my neighbor in the next lane, and time my braking/downshifting so that I infrequently come to a complete stop. I assure you I do this within the bounds of posted speed limits and I always use my turn signals.

The latter stage of this drive takes me down Overbrook Rd. underneath Interstate 95. The weather has finally come down from its woeful high temperatures so I’ve been comfortable driving home with the windows down for the first time in recent memory. So I’m driving along Overbrook as usual and head underneath I-95 where I smelled the familiar stink of city-provided hydrocarbon.

Overpass gas.

In May of 2008 I hit 1000 posts after what was probably the most concentrated period of blogging this site has ever seen, but in the 2+ years since that time I’ve only managed another 541 posts (including this one) and I’m now barely posting more than monthly. Truth be told, prime blogging time for me used to be at the office. But as my responsibilities and workload have continued to ramp-up and I’ve gone back to school (in the past year), my chances to sit down and find interesting content, let alone create any, have greatly diminished.

My readership, too, has dwindled. Most of my daily hits come from indexing services, and even those folks who I can tell are real people check infrequently. I’m sure there’s a fairly direct relationship to my posting rate, of course.

I’m still here, though. No more vacuous promises of a design change or coding adventures or whatever. Just the occasional photo that I took or random question/opinion/review/what-have-you.

That’s that, I suppose.

More info on Tuesday, hopefully.

So InLight was fun last night.

So I put the WordPress blog back in place, but I’ve commented out all the CSS.

I didn’t feel like tackling two things at once right now (learning EE and CSS) while I’m preparing to be a grad student. Also, I was tired of things like embedded objects showing up all screwy.

So, my RSS feed should work again, people searching for stuff should be able to find the pages they’re looking for, and I have my nice, comfy admin panel back

Maybe now I’ll start hacking up the CSS a touch to gradually shape the page into the form that I want. We’ll see. At this pace, I’ll have columns in five years!

Maybe it’s been an uptick in work (I mean, hey, the workday is prime blogging time) or a general lack of things to say, but I just don’t have much in me lately. Not a bad thing, and I’m not upset about it – just some observations.

The funniest part about this is that I’ve come to such conclusions in the past as well where I feel that my blogging dries up – only to be struck by some diarrheic typing moments later. Whatever. I just had to say something that wasn’t “wow, this video is so cool” or “check out my pictures.”

I think all of that will wear off by the end of the day, because the alternatives to what I really wanted are both very good things, each with their own distinct advantages. I could just use a little Novocaine for the ego right now, preferably in the form of no more rain, time for photography, and a visit to Penny Lane pub with friends. Maybe at least some of that will be in the cards this weekend

I think it’s the result of one too many lame April Fools gags…I can remember in high school one year that I was getting ready to drive off in the car on an errand for my parents, and it wouldn’t start. After asking for help, my step-dad came outside with the ignition fuse in his hand, and happily declared, “April Fools!” It was a great practical joke. But was I fooled? They set up a situation over which I had no control, and my only conclusion was that the car wouldn’t start. It’s not like I was lead to believe it wouldn’t start when it was really okay. The car actually couldn’t start because it had been tampered with.

There was also a prank in college where several girls from Intervarsity Christian Fellowship decided to raid the medicine cabinets of a number of guys’ apartments, purloining our toothbrushes. They left notes behind, or something similar, to indicate that it was some big April Fools gag. Harmless, clever, and fun, but I still don’t think anybody was fooled here. Maybe a bunch of guys felt as if they’d lost their toothbrushes, but they weren’t really fooled in the sense that they believed a lie told to them.

When did April Fools day become a day for general pranks? Or has it always been that way? Maybe I need to get some history on this…I think I just miss people actually trying to trick one another in good-natured ways. Only when you convince somebody that some absurd story is true should you be able to declare, triumphantly, “April Fools!”

So I don’t mean to spoil anybody’s fun – by all means, joke away. Try to fool me. Play tricks on me. I try to trick people as well. Just don’t do something to me that’s a practical joke and try to claim that you fooled me. That’s just bad form.