Beer Review: Arquebus

Strictly speaking, this is not a beer, but a barley wine. Emphasis on "wine".

Cambridge Brewing Company (at 1 Kendall Square) has this as a seasonal offering, so get there quick before the season ends. Knowing that these tend to run at 12% alcohol (remember that I said "wine"), I ordered the 6 oz stem glass.

Clarity: None. This was a glass of amber cloud.
Tartness: Lots. I could swear I tasted notes of raspberry, knowing very well there was no fruit juice in this.
Body: Moderate to high. It is barley, after all.
Legs: Get out of here, snob.

What this brew did was make me glad to be alive, thankful that I was sentient, and blissful that I could experience this.

And what more do we ask from beer?

Modern Busybodies

It is next to impossible to purchase a house for a family of four within commute distance of employment without either living stacked like cordwood or having to deal with... a Homeowners' Association.

Once upon a time, there were biddies in gingham dresses who would walk around neighborhoods and cluck their tongues at people who didn't have their laundry on the line to dry before 10am on Monday.

Nowadays, they wield much more clout. Our Homeowners' Association is full of those people, but they like to spruce up the neighborhood with my money. Up until now, they haven't really done that much damage.

But they got a "deal" from a paver on repaving all the streets in the Association. Not just the common thoroughfare to the only egress to a public road; every residential street which is effectively an extended driveway.

For "only" seven times the typical annual dues.

I attended the Homeowners' Association meeting tonite. They explained themselves. They had a few rational reasons (besides "it was on sale!"), such as some codicils imposed by banks and mortgage companies on mortgaged property about paved access.

But more to the point, these people are all Civic-Minded. They believe in Neighborhoods. They find it appalling that people don't mingle with other people who bought a house near theirs.

One even said, "Most people know more about what happened half-way around the world than they do in their own Neighborhood!" You could hear the capital 'N' when he said it.

I refrained from saying, "And I like it that way" to his face, as I still needed to schedule a payment plan with these people.

"Geography is an arbitrary basis for community." -- woodwardiocom

The Catch-22 is that people like me don't want to be on the Board of the Homeowners' Association. No, I really don't want to. One night with these people, who outvote me, was more than enough.