Bourbon bar in Kentucky

OK, the Phactor must be on vacation because apparently he is in a bourbon bar in Lexington Kentucky.  How very nice although a bit C&W for his taste.  The Phactor has never really gotten along with horses, and Mrs. Phactor can verify this.  So perhaps it is a good thing in terms of being in KY that the Phactor gets along with bourbon very well.  In keeping with my formal policy of never endorsing any product that does not in some small way grease my palm, no particular brands will be mentioned.  And in any case, a considerable thirst compelled the Phactor to drink a tall, cold Kentucky bourbon barrel ale, which has the taste of a bourbon boiler maker.  It actually was quite good, very smooth, but not something you would want to responsibly drink more than one of.  Wow!  What a feeling!  Is it the bourbon beer, the fatigue, or academic decompression?  Immersion in scholarly projects is good for getting things done, but then you almost get light headed when you are peeled away from them for some R&R.  Sort of a rapid decompression and it goes to your head.  Hopefully, and this is my only worry, the Phactor will not loose track of where he was in the process and have to spend valuable time back tracking.  But now things get complicated.  Here's how it stacks up.  Vacation, then back for a week, and off to the botanical meetings, but still have to prepare the talk, and better look up the abstract and see what was promised.  And then finally about mid-July, it will be time to get back to the book project and get it DONE, because the fall semester will be looming.

Ancient Beer

How do you recover from a weekend of athletic disappointments, or even a season of disappointments? Obviously you turn to that most wonderful of all depressants: beer. Via an esteemed botanical blogger MAT Kinase, comes a HT about a wonderful advertisement for a truly ancient beer, Fossil Fuel Beer, brewed supposedly using really, really old yeast, in fact 45 million year old yeast from the gut of a bee preserved in amber (fossilized tree sap). This is of course the premise of Jurassic Park, obtaining dino DNA from the gut of similarly trapped mosquito. The Phactor does not doubt that such things can be preserved, but that such preserved artifacts are still viable, i.e.e, capable of growing, does generate considerable skepticism. Sorry but even spores have a half-life for viability. Still you gotta love the name; has a great amber color and should have a long shelf life. For one thing the Phactor is going to stop worrying about that bottle of beer that's been in the back of the fridge for a year or so.