Yawn, I did not sleep very good last night. Woke up in the middle of the night and decided there was an evil creature in my pillow, so I stuffed it under my bed so that the people who lived under it would get a laugh. I lay there for a moment before I fully woke up and thought to myself 'What the hell am I doing?'. I grabbed my pillow back and went to sleep.
I blame the ghost hunters I watched before I went to bed. It was not a great episode, but it was enough to give me a slight case of the willies. Wooo.
I went to HOPS last night. It was Alan's birthday so I thought I would treat him, and use it as an excuse for me to get a decent meal as well. I have mixed feelings about HOPS. I feel like I should really like the place, but in reality I do not. Seems like a good idea, they have their own microbrew right in the place. I ordered a glass of their red ale. Since it was happy hour, they brought me out two mugs. I could hardly finish the first mug. I am no beer connoisseur, I do not hold it up to the light and sniff at it and can tell you what is supposed to be right or wrong with a beer. However, I have been around the beer block a couple of times and I can easily tell you when I do and do not like. This stuff I did not like. It tasted really strong and yeasty. I do not mind a really strong beer as long as it has the alcohol content to back it up. This stuff tasted strong and yeasty and weak. I sent the second beer back and had a rum and coke instead.
Our waitress had a trainee with her. She was a little slip of a thing and her trainee was some tall dude who floated around her back like Lurch. She was very nice though.
The single thing that annoys me most about hops is how long it takes them to bring you your food. The place was not very busy and after I finished the potato skin appetizer I had to sit around for an inordinately long time, sipping my nasty beer. The finally brought out my salad, and almost immediately after that the food came out as well. They could have spaced that out a little better.
No complaints about the food, however. My steak was decent and my lobster tail, although small (I think they will all appear small to me after that pearls steakhouse trip) it was cooked properly. I am surprised at how many places undercook a lobster.
Went home, looked at the pile of laundry and dirty dishes piling up, thought how nice it would look if it were all cleaned, and instead flopped down on the couch with the television. I have given up and decided that for the month of October while I am working two jobs I am going to be a complete slob. I have had women's libbers drill into my head my entire life about how laundry and housework is actually a full time job, so I decided I do not need three jobs. Yeah, I am full of shit. I don't care.
More horror nights tonight. They are extending this Thursday an extra hour so I have to be there until 1 instead of midnight. I'll prolly get some food from the cute cookie jar girl. She sets up a little tent in the back lot form 'Cookie jar catering' and sells sandwiches and hotdogs and other food items for decent prices. Decent for a universal. They lady is always chipper and in a good mood and under the sign the list the prices it says FREE SMILES! And ya know, I have never had to ask for one.
2026 Update
Dialing back 20 years to catch Ed fighting pillow monsters and a suspicious red ale—this should be deliciously awful.
Ah, 2006. A golden age when a troubled man could blame ghost hunters for his own active imagination and still log the adventure for all to read. The concrete changes since then are almost insulting. “Microbrew” used to mean a slightly dubious in-house red ale served in two happy-hour mugs; now every bar has a hazy IPA named after a dead dog and a chalkboard full of adjectives. Service has traded Lurch-like trainees for tabletop QR codes, which means your potato skins arrive witheringly before you can find the “load more menu” button. The PBS link and the phrase “women’s libbers” in the same post feels like museum artifact. Horror Nights ran until 1 a.m.; now entire haunted economies exist, livestreamed by would-be mediums trying to monetize their witching-hour snack runs. And Cookie Jar Catering’s glorious FREE SMILES? That booth has evolved into a food truck demanding an unconscionable sum for a hot dog and a tip prompt before you’ve even said hello. Some smiles are decidedly not free anymore.
“2006 Ed, did you truly yeet your own pillow under the bed to entertain the underworld, then punish yourself by sipping a weak yeasty red ale while Lurch hovered behind your waitress? Which was the greater haunting: the ghost-hunter episode or Hops’ happy hour?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2006 Ed: Well, Beelzebubba, yeah, I did. I woke up half-dead, convinced something evil had taken up residence in my pillow, so my brilliant plan was to shove it under the bed and let the basement folks deal with it. Took me a good ten seconds of staring at the ceiling before I realized I was being a complete idiot and fished it back out. That ghost-hunter show has a lot to answer for. As for Hops, I swear that place is haunted by the spirit of mediocre beer. That red ale tasted like someone brewed it in a sweaty sock, and I still had to sit there while Lurch loomed over our waitress like he was waiting for her to expire. Honestly, the ghost show was scarier, but the happy hour was the real nightmare. At least the ghost hunters didn't make me pay for a rum and coke I didn't want.
