Meltdown Happening

So the last week and a half have been one whirlwind after another for me. With classes soon approaching, I have no idea what classes I’m taking, much less at what school, much less in what state. In the last 72 hours, I’ve gone from everything being taken care of to go to McNeese State in Lake Charles to now taking an impromptu trip to Tyler, Texas tomorrow morning.

So things are a bit hectic.

The last month has been busy enough as it is. I researched apartments, visited with advisors, arranged my financial aid, scouted various local sporting teams. Things were going well.

I spent all day Wednesday driving around Lake Charles and learning the different areas. You couldn’t get me to rent on the 5th avenue area for my life. Cars were on blocks. A hooker was outside one of the complexes with a cardboard sign. I ran a stop sign to get out of the area.

Closer to campus was a bit more friendly. I found a complex that I fell in love with, even if their idea of flooring is sealed concrete. It actually made it that much more interesting. As I continued past campus, I visited the high end apartments. Faking interest in them just to look around was a great waste of my time.

In the end, I sent in my application for housing to the one right across the street from campus. The building hadn’t even opened yet, but the community seemed close, and the buildings were all brand new. By Friday at 2pm, I had my application in and the deposit ready to go in the mail.

But then fun started. I’m not sure if the University of Texas at Tyler intentionally mailed their acceptance letter to me in an attempt for me to get it on my birthday, but if they did, I want to beat that person over the head with a baseball bat. While I’m sure that wasn’t their intention, I received the acceptance letter in the mail Friday at 4:30pm.

At first hearing this, you may say, well, you’re probably past the point of no return right? McNeese move in is a week from this and classes at UT-Tyler start this upcoming Monday. There’s no way you’ll be ready to go to Tyler in just 3 days.

Yeah, no. I spent the next 30 minutes of my Friday afternoon calling every office that was still open in Tyler. Admissions tells me I can’t register online and that I’ll have to late register on Monday at my advisor’s office. Great.

So I call my advisor’s office at the civil engineering department. The lady’s response to my telling her my story, "Oh, well, dear."

I told her, "I know," and she went to get the advisor’s office hours for Monday. Apparently he doesn’t have normal office hours on Monday so she had to set up a tentative appointment at the end of the day Monday.

So I’m driving up to Tyler, about a 5 hour drive, on Monday without any idea what’s going to happen.

Friday night was all about calming my nerves. Being my birthday, my two best friends took me out to Sherlock’s in Clear Lake and totally "alleviated" any concerns I had. After 8-9 drinks, I was just where I needed to be to forget all about Monday’s impending last-minute life decision.

Yesterday’s hangover didn’t help the situation, but it at least distracted me from thinking about things too much. Today, though, I’m hitting the googles hard trying to sort out a life in Tyler. I’ve gone through every academic information I can muster.

The good news is most of the classes I need and can get into still have a few openings, so I should be able to get into them – I’ll be attempting to at least sit through some of them tomorrow. The bad news is my transfer credit leaves me with a few oddly placed classes. I took a senior level course as a sophomore at Michigan (just differences in different schools’ teaching order) and I’m missing one course, Statics, that I really need to move on. Statics is basically a prerequisite for everything and I haven’t been able to take it since leaving Michigan.

More good news is that the couple of other courses I REALLY need to get out of the way are offered in the summer. There’s at least 2 classes I’ll be taking this summer, and that should get me caught up to graduate AT LEAST one year quicker at UT-Tyler over McNeese State.

The one year difference between out of state tuition fees and a year of tuition could save me over $20,000 dollars in debt. This is why I feel like the point of no return on going to McNeese hasn’t passed. So while things like having a University of Texas degree might be more valuable than a University of Louisiana (McNeese State is part of the UL system), just the overall cost saving and time saving measures make this headache well worth the initial mental suffering.

The rest of the day is going to be spent researching housing options around campus and even the greater Tyler area. My head is going 1000 directions and close to exploding. I’m just glad I’ve stopped yelling F@#$ every time I think about Monday.

More on this soon.

DR9 First Taste

Alright, after two days, I’ve finally found time to taste Saint Arnold’s Divine Reserve #9 – Imperial Pumpkin Stout. So time to walk through my thoughts as I enjoy it for the first time.

Upon opening the bottle, I take a good waft from the bottle neck to get a strong scent of gingerbread and a slight hint of pumpkin. There is also a hint of alcohol, but it’s not prevalent. I used a standard pint glass, my Shiner Commemorator glass, for my tasting. There’s no way I’d waste a solid beer like this straight out of the bottle, eliminating the smells.

The pour is as dark as the bottle.

The pour comes out black with a slight caramel tint. The beer appears very lightly carbonated as there isn’t much of a head on it. What head there is comes as a dark tan. The smell here is definitely of alcohol, but there is a background of pumpkin spice. That 11% is definitely noticeable.

At initial contact, I can definite taste a bitter dark chocolate from the malt. Most of that flavor is nearer the front of the tongue. The middle taste moves to the side and back of the tongue, definitely bitter. My first few tastes, the bitter was overwhelming. I think this is due to drinking it before it either reached the right temperature or not letting it mellow enough.

The bitter taste finishes with a sweeter, yet still bitter, pumpkin pie taste in the finish. The aftertaste is more of a pumpkin spice than pumpkin pie. The finish is also very dry.

As I’ve worked through the 12 oz. bottle, it’s definitely improved in taste, so on my second tasting I think I’ll let it mellow out a bit more and warm up a little bit before enjoying it.

The end product has been delicious. I’m not a huge stout fan, but it’s been pretty good. It’s a shame I haven’t been able to get any of the previous DR beers. Several have claimed this to be the best yet from Saint A’s, so hopefully they continue the streak of ever improving but still great beers.

DR9: I got me some

That, my friends, is Saint Arnold’s Divine Reserve No. 9, an Imperial Pumpkin Stout. What is an Imperial Pumpkin Stout, you might ask? I’ll let Saint A’s explain the beer for you:

Important: let this beer warm to at least 50° before enjoying.  This beer is black with some ruby highlights.  The nose is full of pumpkin pie spices and some alcohol.  There are notes of nutmeg, caraway and vanilla.  The taste starts with chocolate malt with a hint of spice and rolls into a warm spicy alcohol taste which has the effect of creating the balance that usually comes from the hop bitter.  There is some hop bitter on the finish, but not much.  Overall, this beer finishes relatively dry for such a big beer.  As it warms, the spices move forward in the taste and the chocolate moves to the finish.  The pumpkin provides a pleasant undertone and a nice mouthfeel.  The spices will probably fade some over time; they mellowed considerably while still in the fermenter.

There are only 1,500 6-packs, 23 half-barrels, and 20 1/6 barrels of this brew, and it’s a hot commodity in the Houston area right now. Several stores have already sold out, and others will be inundated with Saint Arnold fans in the next few days as the last couple of stores receive their shipment. This has to be the fastest a $15 6-pack of beer has ever sold.

Saint A’s has the hashtag of #DR9 already set up on twitter for those trying to find locations that still have it, and the tag has been surprisingly busy today. I’ll be doing my initial tasting a bit later tonight. I’ve got a differential equations exam tomorrow, and the 11% alcohol by volume may not be the best study catalyst.

Buckeye State Baseball Links

Helping out with Buckeye State Baseball’s link page. Not much to see here other than a long list of links.

Bayou Bucket Trip

It’s been a while since I’ve had enough time to enjoy something enough to write about it, but this weekend I happened to make it out to the University of Houston to catch the Bayou Bucket rivalry game between the Cougars and cross-town rivals Rice Owls. The game was in Robertson Stadium on UH’s University Campus, which is also home to the Houston Dynamo of the MLS.