This blog is moving!!

I am moving this blog to wordpress. I really like the way the set everything up better. So come to http://schacalieu.wordpress.com/ to read more adventures with us!

Beertastic!

What goes best with the onset of Fall (Winter?)…beer! Saturday we geared up for an IPA tasting. Jeremy and his fellow lab-mate, Jeff, organized a night of tasting and rating IPA’s.

The great thing about doing a blind tasting is that it leaves all your preconceived notions at the door. You can’t judge the beer by the label or what you normally think you like. For example, Jeremy loves Sierra Nevada, but when he blindly tasted it he commented that “it smells better than it tastes, and it tastes like poo.”

Some other great comments were "Ugh, and I thought number 6 was bad!" and "The budweiser of IPA's".

There was a good group of us there, about 14 people and it was fun hearing what everyone thought. Everyone’s results were tabulated at the end and then the beers were ranked from lowest to highest score.

Here is a picture of the lineup and what we thought was the best and worst. They are lined up from worst to best (left to right)

The winner was...Great Divide's Titan IPA
The loser was...Berkshire IPA
After tasting we headed to Mezcal. After our dinner there on Saturday night I have changed my opinion of Mezcal and it’s not because I had been drinking. I have been there after St. Patrick’s Day a couple years ago when I was way more inebriated. Mezcal is actually pretty decent Mexican food…dare I say it is even good! I had the biggest quesadilla I had ever seen. It was ridiculous and I might add—very tasty.

After dining we made the drive back to Fairfield and fell asleep listening to the Angels/Yankees game. I was very upset when I was awoken by the announcer screaming that the Yankees won. Damn Yankees!! At least it took them 13 innings.

New Blog is Up

Ok, it's up...

My new blog venture...http://2bahealthyfit.com/ ( I got my own domain name!)

It's going to be about health & fitness, something you all know I am nutty about. Hope you enjoy!

Holy Winter Batman!

What the heck is going on around here? The last couple of days have been freezing cold. Literally.

Last night, October 15th, what started out as rain, turned into sleet and then...snow!!! It is way too early for snow! The snow didn't really stick, it was pretty wet, but still...It has been so cold that last night Jeremy aka The Scrooge of Heaters agreed that we should probably turn on the heater. That means it is cold. Like I've told you, last year I wasn't allowed to turn on the heater until my mom visited for Christmas.

What happened to Fall? Why did I feel the need to buy a new puffy coat today that goes down to my ankles??? Blame it on the weather...

Leaf Peeping

The Schacalieu's finally got the heck out of dodge and had a mini vacay! This was our third attempt to do so; so I guess the third time is a charm!

We took a 2 hour drive last Friday to the Berkshires where we stayed at the glorious Yankee Inn. I was excited because our room had a fireplace! It was really like a HoJo or Motel 6 type place, but the name sounded better. Those B & B's are so expensive! When we checked in they had hot cider and granola bars, so the Schacalieu's were definitely stoked! Free food and beverages...who could complain?

After nabbing some cider we headed out to explore the town of Lenox and Stockbridge. We explored multiple little shops in Stockbridge. My favorite was a chocolate shop (surprise) and this old time corner store. We bought some maple syrup and corn on the cob that you put into a pan and pop into popcorn. Very cool! After shopping a bit, we went to the historical Red Lion Inn. It is a very old and very cool hotel. Jeremy was excited to sit in a rocking chair and now wants one for our house. (Mom- hope you still have the one you said you would give me)

We grabbed dinner at a place called Firefly. It was just ok. I had thought I read it was a tapas place, but it wasn't. Jeremy wasn't impressed with the food, but he recently ate at a Michelin rated restaurant so now he is pretty much destroyed when it comes to eating out.

As soon as we got back from exploring our surroundings a bit and eating dinner we turned on the fireplace. It was kind of romantic, but it heated up the room very quickly. Shortly after turning it on our room was sweltering and then the air conditioner was on all night. The air conditioner not only brought the room down to a normal temperature, but came in to handy around 2am. In the wee hours of the morn I heard some moaning from the next room, so I just turned that bad boy back on to drown out the noise and went back to sleep like nothing was happening.

The next day we got breakfast at a yummy bakery & cafe (I had the yummiest oatmeal with grilled pear) and then went for a hike on some trails that were near our hotel. It was quite brisk outside and it was nice to get some fresh air. The leaves were pretty. More color than you would ever see in California, but there wasn't a lot of reds and oranges.

After hiking we set out to explore the town of Lee and to try and find a fabulous restaurant for dinner. Lee was another cute little town and we found a french place that looked promising for dinner. After Lee, we went to explore Lenox a bit more in depth and then hit up Chocolate Springs (yep..another chocolate shop). It was amazing!! We split two truffles and bought some chocolate for later. I would go back to the Berkshires just for that shop!!

We tried to get dinner reservations at the french place, but they were all booked up. Actually, almost everywhere was booked. Everyplace I called either was totally book or only had 5pm or 9pm open. 5pm is just too early for dinner unless you are a senior citizen or close to death and if I had to eat at 9pm I would probably eat my left arm off. I finally found a restaurant, Bistro Zinc that had open reservations at 5, 6, or 9pm, so we took the 6pm reservation and then headed off to a wine bar before dinner. Dinner ended up being one of the most fabulous meals I have ever eaten! Basically, this entire trip was wining and dining with a splash of hiking thrown in. Perfect!

Sunday we slept in and watched tv in bed. We explored the town of Great Barrington and then headed home. It was a nice, relaxing get-away. I'm glad we got to explore some new East Coast areas.

View from our room

The hike

The Gym Rat Shuffle

If you know me, then you know that I get up and work out at the butt crack of dawn every morning to work out. Recently, the gym I currently go to (Fitness Edge) is really ticking me off. I use to get up at 5:15 - 5:30 am and would call in to the gym to reserve a bike for the next morning’s spin class. After making the call, I get ready and go to the gym. Actually, when I first started going there I would wake up at 5:15am drive down there and sign up in person, but after not getting in a couple of times I started calling once I woke up.

Fitness Edge has now switched to an online registration system. Apparently their front desk people are over worked…must be all the smoothies they are making. (Special Note: I have never once seen anyone waiting for a smoothie.) I don’t mind the system going online, what I do mind is that I now must wake up before 5am so that I can get to their website and press “reserve” on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings so that I can get a bike for the next day’s class. On Wednesday morning the Thursday class was totally reserved (27 bikes) in two minutes. This is crazy!!! I sat in bed with my laptop and just laughed at the absurdity of how fast the class filled up.

I have belonged to many a gym before and have never encountered spin classes being totally packed at all hours. This is becoming so insane! It’s almost like Russian Roulette or something. The other crazy thing to me is that everyone at the spin class the next day is talking about how fast the class fills up. It is gymsanity.

I really think the solution is to move the class from 5:45am to 5:30am so that they could have a 6:30am class afterwards or build a bigger bike studio. The bike studio is pretty small and the bikes are very worn down. Maybe they need to start charging more that $19.99 a month and stop having so many promo’s for people to join the gym. I should write them a letter…

I know-- a good solution to my problem would be to actually ride my road bike outside. Brilliant! Right?...Wrong. I am so scared to ride out here. The road’s are poor there is little to no bike lane, drivers are crazy, and I have no one to ride with. I have looked into tri-clubs, but the one closest to be is uber competitive and the other one is a bit far away to make it for rides by 6am on a Sunday. For these reasons, I will remain a slave to my computer at 4:55 in the morning. It’s actually not that bad, it’s just that I cannot believe how many people are vying for spots for a 5:45am spin class. I guess they are all just as crazy as me about getting a good workout in before starting the day.

Here’s to working out and waking up before the sun comes up!

It may be Fall

As quickly as the summer heat and humidity came...it seems as though they may have to bid farewell in a hasty manner as well. It seems as though overnight the summer has turned to fall and I couldn't be happier! I really love the Fall weather. Sunny, blue skies, sometimes a small breeze---oooh it makes me giddy.

With the birth of Fall it means that I don't have to sweat for no reason! That is good news since I started using natural deodorant (I know earth mother here I come). Jeremy always gives me crap about using antiperspirant and how the chemicals are horrible for you, it may lead to Alzheimer's, blah, blah, blah. Well, this summer I decided I would try out being a true hippie and just use all natural deodorant. We were at Whole (Paycheck) Foods and we went by the natural cosmetics isle. I decided to stop and peruse the deodorant section. Sure enough, some smelled pretty granola--I'm talking patchouli oil scents here people! I couldn't hang with that and went for some kind of lavender smell. Of course, two days after I purchased my way to hippiedom, the humidity spiked up and I was really rethinking my choices.

I do not like to sweat unless I am running/spinning/hiking/shopping. I'm talking real sweat starting activities. Seriously though, if I'm a sweaty mess and haven't just come back from a 4mile run, I am not a happy camper. Just ask Jeremy. I proceed to have serious are-you-kidding-me meltdowns. You really don't want to get to know that side of me. It's not pretty.

I have to say this summer only produced about 2 weeks of unbearable sweating as far as I'm concerned. I cursed Jeremy's name more than once since he is against us getting a air conditioning unit. His motto is basically no air in the summer, no heat in the winter. Last winter I wasn't allowed to put the heater on until my mom came for Christmas. He would just tell me to put another sweater and a beanie on. Hello--pipes can freeze out here Scrooge! Don't get me started on the no cable rule. Anyhoo, the compromise to the no air conditioner fight was getting an input/output fan that you put in your window. I swear it made our room at least 10 degrees cooler.

It was a good summer. I will miss laying out on the beach and listening to the high schoolers talk about boys and the college kids talk about being a drunken mess the night before and who's sleeping with who. I will miss the long hours in the day and riding our bikes in the evening. We also saw a few good shows this summer in New York--Pete Seger's outdoor festival & Old Crow Medicine Show. I saw Britney (for free), but that doesn't really count as a "good show".

I will miss summer, but I am more excited for Fall. I love sweaters and boots. Yes, pretty much everything that is important to me is wrapped in my love for commercialism. I love being able to run outside and not have the humidity stifle my breathing. I'm looking forward to our 2 night trip to Lenox, Mass to be "leaf peepers". I also see some apple picking in the future and pumpkin muffins!

I really hope that the weather gods are not tricking me. They better not be luring me into Fall and then plan on bitch-slapping me with an Indian Summer. Not cool weather gods, not cool. I guess time will tell.