Alyca's Daily Life

Okay, so it has been awhile, but I have been busy and out of town. We went to Reno last Wednesday for a locksmithing convention and classes. Ethan took classes on building/fire codes and lockpicking/lock impressioning. Those were on Thursday and Friday, so we had a ton of time to ourselves to do with as we pleased.
Wednesday night, we went to a show called Smokey Joe's Cafe, which was a musical production featuring songs from the 50's. Very cool. We had a great time there. After the show, we went to the Brews Brothers microbrewery, located in the El Dorado hotel and casino. Very good! Cheap, good food, their own microbrews, which I actually drank a full 15 oz beer of (my first beer since, I don't know--years ago). Ethan had BBQ baby back ribs and chicken, and I had a great chicken with cranberry sauce sandwich ***good for me***. This brewery sponsored the festival we went to Saturday. Back in our room, we discovered a show on USA called The 4400, which has us fascinated, so we must now watch it. It turns out that this Saturday, there will be a marathon showing all of the shows starting with their very first one, so we need to remember to record them. Or, Ethan needs to remember, since I am working 7-7.

Thursday, Ethan had his class from 0800 to 1600, and we met for lunch, then had the rest of the evening to ourselves. We watched the NBA finals game 7, which ended up sucking, and then we headed over to a restaurant in the hotel called Lindy's, where I had a delicious steak. I don't like steak all the time, just once in awhile, and this one was really good.

Friday was Ethan's second and last day of classes. We met for lunch and went to the buffet, which was great. Tons of different foods to choose from. AND I abstained from eating junk and desserts and crap. Go me! Friday night, we went to a comedy show at the Hilton. It was pretty funny, very good except for the fact that there were over 2k high school volleyball players in town for the biggest volleyball tournament in the US. And they all scream and giggle. A few of them would NOT shut up and kept interrupting, but the comics handled them well.

Saturday, we headed downtown on the Reno public buses (much cheaper than the horrible taxi ride we took Wednesday, and they ran every 20 minutes or so), for the BBQ, Brews and Blues festival sponsored by the El Dorado hotel and casino. They had a deal where you buy a plastic mug and a bunch of tokens and try out the 42 different beers there from all the different microbreweries that came. They closed off a bunch of streets and had vendors and tons of good things. Now, the beer mugs had a line clearly marking off 4oz, which is what 1 token bought you. 2 tokens bought you a full 10 oz beer. Well, lets just say that EVERYONE overpoured. It didn't help that all the brewery people were partaking of the brews as well, but our total of 22 tokens went a lot further than they were intended. And, I don't drink beer. I don't like it. All the carbonation and the taste in general--just not me. But......it was vacation, and it was a good time so I did it anyway.
We started out at the Alaskan Brewery, which stood out like Mecca for Ethan and I. A familiar logo, and a step up from the corona which he had been drinking. So we got our beers there, had tons of discussion with the brewers, based on Ethan's Sonics shirt he was wearing (actually, we got a total of 5 tokens from people who talked to Ethan about Seattle and/or the Sonics. This on top of the 22 we actually purchased). So, we tried out a wide variety of beers. Note of caution--the Hoppsmasters beer is TERRIBLE. Remember the bitter beer face commercials? That was me, much of the day, but mostly with this one. I remember also trying Moose Drool beer, beers from Germany and Denmark, Mirror Pond beer, and tons of other ones. I managed to stay pretty sober. I didn't feel intoxicated at all, despite drinking quantities of actual beer, which I have never done. What I didn't feel was the massive sunburn I got on my neck. I bought sunscreen on the way to the festival, and got my face and even the tops of my ears, but my hair was up and I never even thougth about my neck/shoulders, so now I have a terrible open sunburn with blisters, and shirts are painful.

But, we finished up there, ate at the Brews Brothers restaurant again, and headed back to our hotel, where Ethan took a long nap and I watched You've Got Mail, with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. She is so cute!

Sunday, we got up and checked out at 11am then gave our luggage to the Bell Desk and headed back downtown. While waiting for the bus, we thought we felt an earthquake, which was later confirmed to be a 4.8 magnitude. Downtown, we wandered around, had a few strawberry margaritas, and headed over to a theater where we watched and thoroughly enjoyed Batman Begins. After that, we went BACK to the Brews Brothers and had some drinks and nachos, then headed back to the hotel to go to the airport and get home. We got home around midnight, and were greeted appropriately by the kitties, who, it turns out, had plenty of food left and did not forget where the litterbox was. Go kitties!

So there. Worked 12 hours yesterday, but Ethan stayed over to work through the night, and I am expecting him home in an hour or so very tired, so I rented some movies for a quiet night in. And that is what we have been up to.