Big Day

First of all, I'm watching W as I type--it's a little stunning, and I'll have to read up on the accuracies/inaccuracies of it's portrayal of Bush and those around him.  Regardless, I continue to be wowed by Josh Brolin--where did he come from?!  What a quick string of great performances, No Country For Old Men, W, and Milk, seemingly out of nowhere?  This is frickin' Brand from The Goonies, and I hadn't seen him in anything since then up to No Country.  I just checked his IMDB filmography and he's been working the entire time--pretty crazy--20 full years in the industry and only now really making his presence felt.

Anyway, looking forward to a big day--maybe a little bit of playing Oblivion on the 360 (new to it, and blown away--it was recommended to me when I bought the 360 and I should have bought it then--it's incredibly deep and rich in content, and probably waaaay to nerdy to describe here, but suffice it to say I'm in geek heaven when I'm playing it), then clean up a bit getting ready for my sister-in-law and her boyfriend to spend the day/night here, then we've got the MSU game this afternoon, Settlers of Catan, introducing Margaret and Kenny to Guitar Hero (Margaret is going to be hilarious, I just know it), and then heading over to Duke's for dinner.

Duke's is the only nice restaurant in Portland, and it's a Cajun restaurant, and I love it.  Meg can't find a lot there that she likes b/c she doesn't like spicy food, but I love it--good beer, interesting food selections, actually pretty decent store atmosphere which is severely lacking in the other plastic-booth-flimsy-table-country-decor-fluorescent-lighted restaurants around town.

Oh, and one last note, I have finally completed my world beer tour at Old Chicago after probably 4 years of working on it--that's 110 different beers, so 27 a year-ish, which means I probably visited about once every other month or so, with 4 beers per visit.  Along the way have earned a deck of cards, a bottle opener, a t-shirt, a baseball cap, a travel coffee mug, a cooler, and a sweatshirt, and I've drank a fair amount of crappy beer, because in order to get up to 110 that means I'm having to do the Bud, Bud Lite, Miller Lite, Coors, Pabst, MGD, Heineken, and Corona series as well...ick.  Most of the gifts were crap, particularly because the WBT logo is UGLY, so that pretty much wipes out the t-shirt, baseball cap, and sweatshirt.  The cards and bottle opener are great, but also the first gifts you earn, so it's a loooong dry spell.  And a travel coffee mug is the LAST gift a BIGGBY employee needs--how do they not have a logo pint glass?  That's always felt like a major misfire.  So now I'm through it, and the good news is that now I get credit for any beer I drink, I don't have to keep drinking the different (and crappy) beers, but will I feel as strongly compelled to visit to achieve?  We'll see.  

P.S. I'm trying to get a similar reward program introduced at BIGGBY--I found it very compelling, and that was at a place where you really can't visit all that often--how many times a month can you go out for pizza?  But we've got some fanatics out there that I think would really cleave to a program like this.  We'll see...