Last night was one of those nights that felt like a weekend, thus making this morning fairly miserable. We started off at Lure Lounge for a $20 all you can drink in three hours happy hour. This was a benefit event for the Colorado Youth at Risk organization. Hard to argue with a few drinks for a good cause.

After that, a couple old friends from our Kansas City days called to meet up. They had already been through a few of our city’s fine breweries, and we decided to top that all off with a visit to the Falling Rock Tap House. With tons of beers on tap, this is a real beer drinkers paradise. I had a few of Stone Brewing Ruinations, while Kim enjoyed her always tasty Franziskaners. I forgot how much fun the Falling Rock can be, even on a weeknight. Thankfully the weekend is now here!

I don’t know what I was thinking. I delayed writing about my hockey game last night in hopes that the league would actually update the website in a timely manner. Well the work day is over (just about) and they still haven’t posted any results. We played our last game of the session last night before heading into the playoffs. Over the course of the last few weeks, we dropped all the way into third place after a series of loses. With last night’s win, we could potentially go back into one of the first two spots depending on how those teams played last night. The top two teams in the league get first round byes, and at this point we still don’t know if we’ll play next week or not. At least I can finally say that we won a game again!

The other day I finally signed up for my very own Google Voice phone number (the last 4 digits spell PAFF by the way). I only have one phone, so the new phone number isn’t much use to me for controlling multiple lines. However, I was really interested in the unlimited SMS messaging feature. I don’t text message that much, but figured if I could somehow eliminate paying for any SMS service if the Google Voice setup was good enough. Unfortunately, Apple (or is AT&T behind it?) has blocked access to the new Google Voice application for the iPhone and has also removed all similar third-party apps from the app store. Unbelievable!

You may recall a large flip cup tournament that we’ve participated in the past couple years. Well that event took place once again this past Saturday and we were there for the third year in a row. This time it was moved from our friends’ backyard and morphed into a block party outside of the Pub on Pearl. The organizers even launched a website to provide the growing crowd with all of the needed info.

This year we decided to go with a sailor theme, and named ourselves Down the Hatch. We were able to get some affordable gear from the surplus store a few miles down the road from our house to complete our costumes. The event started off great, though we lost our first match in the opening round to a team that wasn’t even dressed up. Before we could play our second match of the evening, the skies opened up to a nasty storm. The bar was quickly filled to capacity with people spilling out of both ends. It did clear enough for us to fit in another game in the losers bracket, and we won this time. But again the weather would not cooperate and the second storm forced the cancellation of the tournament when the 10pm curfew approached quickly.

Despite all of these troubles, and the fact that the bar couldn’t keep up with the large crowd, we managed to have a great time. Dozens of our friends were in attendance and it was great to see everyone in their most creative costumes. I took a few photos on my iPhone, which can be seen below. It was definitely another wild time!

Despite being a bit tired Friday, I convinced Kim that we should head down the Denver Summer Brew Fest. Though not nearly as big as the Great American Beer Festival (which unfortunately we’ll miss this year), the price was pretty hard to beat. At $35 per person, the event featured over 75 beers from around 25 breweries. Most of the breweries were local to Colorado, though there were a few from the northeast (Stone, Sierra Nevada) and even Alaskan Brewing.

We arrived just after the doors opened at seven and immediately worked out way to the outside patio. We first sampled some beer from Breckenridge, Left Hand, Flying Dog, etc. My favorite of that batch came from Breckenridge with their Lucky U IPA. Though not quite as good as their 471 IPA, this was great fit for the warm evening. We also enjoyed the bands that were playing outside on the stage. It was a nice touch to the fest.

Later we spent the rest of the evening sampling the many breweries inside of the Mile High Station. I finally go to sample Sierra Nevada’s Anniversary Ale, which I really enjoyed. Other beers of note were Upslope Brewing’s IPA along with some of Mountain Sun’s ales. There was a good sized crowd throughout the night, but you rarely had to wait for than a minute to get a pour, unless the pourer was extremely slow (like at Rogue). I also appreciated having the glass sampler, rather than a plastic one. Though when these are dropped they definitely shatter, as a few people discovered throughout the night. We had a great time, and will have to consider their winter brew fest early next year.

Last night, Kim and I participated as secret shoppers at a local Mexican restaurant called Rio Grande. We’ve been to the downtown location a number of times and always found that the margaritas were excellent but the food leaves something to be desired. Our assigned location was out by our offices, but we still were expecting the same variety of food, especially since the menus are identical. Even with those expectations it is hard to refuse a $60 gift card to use as we please, with the only rules being that we have to order at least one entree and either an appetizer or a desert.

As I’m eating the leftovers from Kim’s entree last night, I’m trying to fill out the three page survey that is also required. Well it’s one page of yes and no questions and then we are expected to write a couple pages of review. I don’t know if I’ve written this much in a long time, but fortunately I’m enjoying putting my opinions down on paper. A quick synopsis of our visit would be that the margaritas were as good as always, the food was as bland as ever, though we were surprised by the tasty appetizer of melted Monterey Jack cheese, mushrooms, onions, and peppers rolled into warm and fresh tortillas.

My hockey team is really falling apart at the end of the season. We suffered our second loss in a row last night, a 2-0 defeat. If the third place team in the league won last night, we will be switching positions in the standings with only one game left to play in the regular season. We completely out-shot the other team, but their goalie shut us down the entire game. One thing that we didn’t do well was crash down on the net, but all five of their skaters constantly jammed up the slot, making it very hard to get a rebound shot. We also had a number of penalties in the second period that didn’t help either. We are playing the last place team in the league next week, so I’m hoping we can build up some confidence right before the playoffs.

Last night I was really looking forward to making these chicken tacos. I’ve made them a few times before and I’m really happy with the way they turn out. I started cooking it up, but when Kim came down to the kitchen she said that the chicken I was using smelled bad. We had just bought it on Monday, but I guess the store had it for too long? It was a major disappointment, but I quickly heated up some refried beans and had burritos instead. Regardless, I would highly recommend the recipe linked above. I look forward to trying it again in the near future.

Once again this year I’ve been pretty addicted to the coverage of the Tour de France on Versus. With little to watch on TV during the summer, this is a nice way to kill a couple of hours each day. I’m sure everyone already knows that Lance Armstrong is back in the tour. It’s fun to watch him and his unbelievably talented team each day. And now that the race is in the Alps, the action is super exciting and will remain that way all the way to Paris. All of this really makes me want to get a road bike, or at least buy some slicks for my mountain bike.

As I already mentioned, this past weekend was pretty much dedicated completely to the second annual Mile High Music Festival. Kim and I arrived before the music started on Saturday morning and lasted for nearly twelve hours in the heat. Sunday was a later start for us, but we managed to stay through at least part of the final act of the festival, Widespread Panic. Rather than breaking down each of the bands we saw, I’m going to highlight the good and the bad of the festival just like I did last year.

First the positives. My biggest complaint from last year was the lack of an affordable ride to the festival from downtown Denver. I’m so happy that this was corrected this year. We purchased roundtrip green shuttle passes for the weekend for $50 each. Even though the website said that the shuttles would run every hour on the hour, I found out that they actually seemed to run them more frequently than that. Whenever enough people were there to fill a van, that van was assigned a driver and ready to go.

The sound issues that really hurt one of the stages last year was corrected. The entire stage was moved from the grass fields and onto the street directly in front of the stadium. I wasn’t a huge fan of the paved viewing area, but the sound was much better than last year. In fact it provided a couple of my favorite sets of the second day, both John Butler and Robert Randolph. I’ll accept the negative stage placement for the improved sound quality.

One change that had both positive and negative impacts was that the entire festival grounds were shrunk significantly. It was nice that the walk between stages wasn’t as far as last year. But this came with a huge drawback in that the sound was really carrying over from one area to the next. This really affected the two tent stages, which were both setup very close to each of the two main stages. The sound from the very large main stages easily carried into the smaller tents, which were often featuring quieter bands. This problem was most noticeable for me during Railroad Earth (with Galactic playing nearby) and Guster (with Gogol Bordello nearby).

And the biggest disappointment for me was definitely the lineup. Obviously it was going to be tough to top the headliners from last year (Dave Matthews Band and Tom Petty). I really enjoyed many of the mid-level afternoon acts, but felt that the headliners were fairly disappointing. Tool was good on Saturday, but The Fray left a lot to be desired on Sunday evening. I definitely noticed the crowds were much smaller this year, though I’d still like to see some attendance figures.

Overall, I give this years festival a B- or C+. I was really glad that some of my biggest complaints were addressed this year, but I feel like some of the things I loved about last year were lost this year. With that said, I still hope the festival is around for years to come and I will likely continue to show up.