Beer

I had Brandon as my roommate for one year when I lived near Washington State University in Pullman Washington. Brandon had to take technical writing class in order to finish earning his Bachelor of Science degree and he wrote about beer for his final project. I understand that his writing about beer was well accepted and that his teacher was willing to put his or her points where his or her mouth was so that Brandon's grades were quite good.

Brandon was quite generous and has provided the digital copies of his work to me. He has also given me permission to publish his work here for your enjoyment.

The Pullman/Moscow Beer Handbook

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank my current community group leader and Seaside Church's newest elder for inviting me to his residence to drink beer with his family on the evening of December 23 of this year after he learned that I was sitting at home all by myself.

Community Group 1

One of the meetings of my Missional Community Group took place last night.

I have included the picture of an instant of this meeting on the left there not because it makes me look good (clearly), but because it is the only picture that I was able to have taken last night; my batteries only had enough energy for one picture and my backups had been sitting around for far too long to be worth anything.

The beer in the blue cup was the first beer from a can which I had ever consumed, and I did not find it positively impressive, but it was a gift which was offered to me by a military man directly after he learned that I had finished with my engineering exam. I felt very uncultured after I had begun to pour the can of beer into the blue cup which I had been using for dihydrogen monoxide because Crystal decided to tell me that there was too much foam on the top of the beer which I had poured into the blue cup and that I was supposed to tip the blue cup while pouring. I was later informed that I was not supposed to pour the beer into the blue glass at all. Isn't it convenient that people in the beer drinking community are so pleased to share the correct cultural protocols?

My whole community group seemed to be on a mission to rejoice with me, even though I wasn't bent upon rejoicing.

Hostess: When you found out that you passed, did you jump up and down?
Me (not wanting to think long enough to remember that I did jump up and down): I don't remember.
Hostess: I would have jumped up and down.

I got to eat oreos and potato chips and a hot dog bun. Crystal told me that the hot dog bun is called a veggie bun or something like that when it is empty. I can't imagine why it is called that.

Please note that Real Deal Mark Keel (pictured) is not the military man whom I mentioned above.

My first Acts 29 Resurrection Sunday

The alcohol that I consumed on Sunday was located at Mike's house and had been built previously (i.e. prior to being consumed by myself) by the lead pastor of Seaside Church. I had never had such an easy time with getting a beer (this one was an ale) down before then.

Mike had just finished leading one of the three (or so) bands at Seaside Church during the Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday services and pushed me and a bunch of people through a fair amount of work that we all wanted to do. I didn't find myself thinking about anything explicitly ultra-spiritual except for the rebellious attitude that rises to my head so that I realize its presence every time that I am told to do something that I wasn't about to do regardless of the opinions of others. When this happens I can't very well say to myself, I'll do it because I want to, not because you told me to.

Oops. That last paragraph probably made you think that Mike wanted me to do something that I didn't want to do anyway, but that is not the case. I may blog about this later.

The good part of the whole thing is that after all of the bullets had been bitten, the result was appreciated a lot and I got a better idea of what the sound system can do after working with it for four days straight. One church member commented that some of the music was the best music that she had ever heard in church or elsewhere, and a number of others indicated that the services were spiritually beneficial to them!

Let me also point out that he Good Friday service did not include commentary. Just about every other Good Friday service that I have ever attended (e.g. the ones at other churches) included quite a number of little interpretive readings that were placed in the program between songs and scripture readings and I always thought that they were stupid because many of them seemed quite distracting and a number of them seemed unbiblical. The Good Friday service at Seaside Church went like this:

Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song
Scripture reading
Song