The weatherpeople predicted snow on Wednesday and the fear of snow caused schools all over the area to preemptively cancel school. But the snow never came. It did come Thursday morning. We woke up to about a half-inch of snow and at 8:30am it started snowing and hasn’t stopped by 1pm. We have about 4 inches here on Vashon.
Vashon schools were closed yesterday but not today. Kids had to go to school this morning only to be sent home at 10:30am for elementary and 12:30pm for middle and high school. Someone in the “Vashon school district”:http://www.vashonsd.org/ needs to spend a little more time looking out the window and less time listening to fortune-tellers on TV.
The Steelers clinched their division yesterday beating the Ravens 13-9 by keeping the Ravens to only 202 yards (no team has gained 300 yards this year) and no touchdowns. The Steelers prove that a good defense is more important than a good offense. If they beat the Titans next week and both either lose or win the last week, they will be the #1 seed in the AFC.
It started snowing Saturday night while we were at Megan & Jon’s Christmas Party. We left at 9:30pm and ran into some slick roads on Vashon when we got home.
We got about 1.5 inches. It was in the 20s all day Sunday and the forecast is for 20s all week and even more snow on Wednesday. It’s rarely this cold in Seattle so it’s fun for a little while, but it reminds me too much of the East Coast weather.
Republicans in the Senate rejected the auto bailout because they want the union to agree to allow the companies to pay competitive salaries. But the Governor of Michigan “doesn’t know why the auto companies are failing”:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/13uaw.html?_r=1&hp:
bq. Washington gave a bailout to the financial institutions, and did not ask a single question, the governor said, “then lay the blame for the auto industry, which is a victim of this financial meltdown, on the backs of the people who are working on the line.”
Helping the Wall Street financial firms amounts to handing them cash because their product is cash. If the government could hand GM, Ford and Chrysler cars or even designs for really good cars, a bailout would make some sense.
The auto industry is not a victim of the financial meltdown. If they were, then Honda, Toyota, BMW and Daimler would also be on the verge of collapse and begging for money from their governments. Well-run companies can handle economic downturns and drops in sales. Poorly-run companies don’t anticipate them, prepare for them or survive them without help.
After an 8-year hiatus, Red Hook has started making their Double Black Stout again. When I lived in Virginia and visited Seattle in 1996 I went to a grocery store to bring some good beers home. This is one that I found. It’s an Imperial Stout with coffee. Back then, it proudly claimed that they used the local Starbucks coffee. Now it doesn’t, so I assume that either Starbucks’ name doesn’t offer the same cachet or uniqueness or, more likely, that it’s not Starbucks coffee. Either way, this is a great beer. It reminds me of Deschutes’ “The Abyss”:http://troyandgay.com/blog/2008/03/29/deschutes-brewerys-the-abyss/ and “Stone Imperial Russian Stout”:http://troyandgay.com/blog/2008/07/03/stone-imperial-russian-stout/. The bitterness seems to come solely from the coffee and it has a nice roasty taste. It has a “B+ on BeerAdvocate”:http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1330/55 and a “3.75″:http://ratebeer.com/beer/redhook-double-black-stout/665/ out of 5.0 on RateBeer.
This was a surprise. Gay found it our grocery store and thought of me. It’s a Belgian Stout (I’ve never heard of such a thing) made with Belgian chocolate. It’s not as cake-like as Old Rasputin or Stone’s “Russian Imperial”:http://troyandgay.com/blog/2008/07/03/stone-imperial-russian-stout/ and it’s very slightly sour, but has a nice chocolate flavor and a slight bitterness. I could drink several of these in a row, which is not usually true for me and stouts.
