You guys! My brother is a FUCKING ROCKSTAR.

His brewpub has been planning to expand, to a second facility where they would brew and can one (only one right now) of their beers. It's going to be a 15-barrel facility (not, obviously anything like the ginormous breweries like Budweiser -- this is one of their barrels [and my brother]: [link] It's going to have a store there, where they'll sell that beer in 4-packs (each can is 16 oz., which is larger than the typical beer can), and other stuff like t-shirts. It's going to be big enough that they're planning on having TOURS, like, well, like Budweiser does.

This is a big deal. (Here's more info if anyone really cares about the details: [link]

So, my brother called me tonight to tell me that after 7 years as executive chef of the brewpub, he's no longer going to be cooking. At all.

Because he's going to be the operations manager for the whole thing, both locations, brewpub and new brewery. Which is why he is a FUCKING ROCKSTAR. I am so goddamned proud of him. I think him not cooking is a loss for the people who eat at the brewpub, but it's not as though he was the only chef there.

I know you guys don't know him, but I'm just bursting with sisterly pride and wanted to share it.

justified sisterly pride.

Rock. Star. Totally rock star, Steph. Congrats to him.

Ooooh, that is awesome news for your brother, Teppy. May he have continued success in his new role as operations manager of that awesome brewery.

Trudy's home. Surgery started late, went long but it went well.

Congrats to your brother Steph. That's very cool news.

Glad to hear Trudy is out of surgery.

Windsparrow-thank you so much for that posting about wellness cat food. that's what i feed my (slightly special needs) younger cat and he's been acting extra weird lately - leaving turd surprises all over the house in unusual places and randomly yowling for attention. Behaviors that have in the past indicated UTIs. At least now i know WHY and it's a far easier fix than going to the vet, trying to get a pee sample, and banana-flavoured antibiotics *shudder*

starting tomorrow morning i will be feeding him some backup cans of different vintage, and i should be able to stop by the petstore after work to restock. i'll sleep better knowing that tomorrow he'll start getting his B1 again. (but with the bedroom door shut, he pooped on my comforter last night. boo. hiss.)

(I am a little bummed that i've been ordering my wellness wet cat food via petflow - next shipment in a couple of weeks - and have received zero notification from them about the recall. If you hadn't posted here, i would have finished that case of cat food and likely ended up in the vet's office with no idea. You'd think the company that sent me an email reminder today for a shipment including a recalled product might have noticed. oh well.)

eta: i was wrong, petflow shipment was shipped today, so it's already enroute. likely they didn't know about the recall yet when packing it up. Fingers crossed it's a later lot and i won't have to call the recall hotline again for replacement of another case.

Good news on Trudy's surgery! Here's to a swift, easy recovery.

And ~~ma for relatively pleasant diaper-filled recovery to Trudy. Hint: pain killers make crappy television rather awesome. Best time to catch up on all those guilty pleasure shows (and movies, and books) that you would never normally admit to enjoying. Hand-wavium not even necesssary when enough vicodin is involved, IME.