January 16th

I am grateful for three day weekends. The weekend started off with a Broncos loss. But, considering I was predicting a 3 game win for the season, going to the playoffs was pretty exciting. It was fun spending time with my parents, aunt and uncle, and of course Chris. We tried some new beers, one was too hoppy (Chris liked this one more than I did) and one was dark with hints of toffee, vanilla and chocolate (I liked this one more than Chris did). Chris has been sampling the Wild Wild Brett Series from Crooked Stave. Last weekend we had the W.W.B.O which is a beer brewed with a brettanomyces  yeast strain and minneola tangelo, orange peel and other spices. My first impression was it had a sour aroma with a hint of orange cleaner smell. I have an overly sensitive nose and I was the only one that was not a fan of the odor. The flavor was pretty sour and orange-y. It was not one of my favorite beers. This weekend Chris tried the W.W.B.G which is part of the same series. Before trying the beer, he explained to me that Crooked Stave is going to have a beer for every color in the rainbow. So, the G in W.W.B.G stands for green. This was the hoppy beer that I mentioned. Although it was much better than the W.W.B.O, I don't really like hoppy beers. The other beer that we tried was a 25th Anniversary Vanilla Doubledog from Abita Beer. I really liked this beer with the light toffee flavor and subtle hints of vanilla and chocolate. It was almost like a dessert, so of course I liked it.

On Sunday, we went to Jonesy's Eatbar for Geeks Who Drink Trivia. Chris and I first went to Jonesy's last year for trivia during the Martin Luther King Day weekend. We had just purchased the Eat Denver Deck and wanted to try out some new restaurants. As with last year, it seems that people use the opportunity of having Monday off to stay out late and go to trivia. There were 16 teams, which made the competition pretty high. We did alright for a two person team. But what is better than trivia is the food at Jonesy's. Chris gets the shrimp and grits whenever he gets the chance. They used to have a delicious pork chop and mashed potatoes. Sadly, it is no longer on the menu. I try different things every time I go. But, I always get the truffle fries. At the end of the night, it was a good feeling that I didn't have to get up and go to work. That gave me one more day to get stuff done (aka grocery shopping and cooking a real dinner).

Today I had coffee with my college rooomate who is getting ready to head back to Melbourne, Australia where she is a student at the National Institue of Circus Arts (NICA). Liz does some crazy stuff like fly around on a trapeze. It was good to catch up with her. After coffee, I decided I should figure out what I was going to make for dinner and use the bananas that have been sitting in my fruit bowl for two weeks. I decided on Sausage Lasagna in the slow cooker and a new recipe for banana bread. Both are recipes from America's Test Kitchen.  Both tasted delicious. Now I have lunch and a snack for work tomorrow. The banana bread recipe called for walnuts. I decided mini chocolate chips sounded better. These weren't the most healthy options as I found out after I put the recipes into the recipe builder in Weight Watchers. The recipe builder is a cool feature that allows you to put in a recipe and it calculates the points for you. In preparation for my high point dinner, I did another Jillian Michaels workout. I probably sound like an advertisement for her workout DVDs but I really like them. Yesterday I did Six-Week Six Pack and today I did No More Trouble Zones. My abs are sore, my legs are sore, and my arms are sore. I am pretty much sore everywhere. Probably because I haven't used most of these muscles for months. Tomorrow I am going to get up and try some yoga to stretch out my muscles.