Not As Lazy As I Look

May 1? I am a little embarrassed that it has been this long since our last post. What the hell? Has Brett been too busy drinking beer to post anything at all in the last three months?

Actually, um, yeah, that’s part of it.

The truth of the matter is that I have been extremely busy but I cannot lie and say that there has not been a lot of beer consumed along the way. This is what happens when you find yourself stationed at a brewery six or seven days a week. You see, I have the pleasure of being friends with the guys at Quest Brewing Company and have been helping them out on the construction of the Upstate’s newest brewery. 

If you are unfamiliar with Quest Brewing Company, you are missing out on the best new thing to hit the Upstate in quite some time. An entrepreneur and a nationally award winning brewmaster have joined forces to create Quest and after only a few weeks since their official launch they are taking the Upstate beer scene by storm. Their launch party at Barley’s Taproom on July 3 packed the house and their retail launch at The Community Tap introduced their brews to even more Upstate beer lovers. It really hit the fan at their grand opening, however, when almost 2,000 beer drinkers from all over the southeast swarmed their grand opening and consumed an inexplicable amount of delicious craft beer. 

I promise that I will share more about the Quest saga on this page with increasing frequency in the very near future but today I am being egocentric and just talking about me. For more Quest news check out great stories here, here, or here. For more about what we have been doing the last few months, please read on…

As I was saying, I have been very busy at Quest. What began as “contractor helping out friends” turned into “can you be here every day?” and that eventually evolved into what one can almost define as “hostage crisis”. In the beginning I intended to install a couple pieces of glass and maybe hang a door or two. Somehow that snowballed into a to-do list that involved building rooms, sheds, and stages, painting, plumbing, remodeling bathrooms, finishing concrete floors and a host of other construction tasks that I am sure I have forgotten. Even now, the list continues to grow and I hear the words “Guess what you are building next?” every few days or so. 

We Built This Between Beers

I am not complaining, however, and can definitely not blame Stockholm Syndrome for the fun I am having at my never ending jobsite. Working with great people that are making delicious beer is spoiling the hell out me. At some point soon I am going to be devastated when I find myself on one of our normal jobsites in somebody’s home or on a commercial construction site with no access to a Kaldi Imperial Coffee Stout for breakfast on a Monday morning. 

In other news, my super awesome wife has been consumed with studying for a physics exam. I enjoy math and English but always abhorred science classes in high school and college. I can only imagine the torture of the things she had to learn but I was one proud hubby last week when she passed the exam that will soon lead to her earning her official certification in her position at St. Francis. Kudos to her for kicking the crap out of a subject that I cannot even begin to wrap my mind around.

What does anything of this have to do with a lack of updates from Upstate Under Your Nose, you ask? Really, it is just me making excuses and saying “I’ve been pretty buzzed, exhausted and mentally drained for three months, and I am sorry”. This is not to say that I have not been writing, however…

A few months ago my friend Jake asked me to contribute to the Upstate Be which, coincidentally, was the subject of my last blog post so many moons ago. Since the first week of June I have been proud to be included in this great entertainment publication in Anderson. Having had writing aspirations in some form as long as I can remember, I have been absolutely thrilled to see my name in print in a real publication every two weeks. I never thought I would be able to put the words “paid” and “writer” together in the same sentence in reference to myself but I have to say that I am enjoying the hell out of it. Big thanks to the Upstate Be for letting me contribute.

So, Anderson folks, if you were not already doing so, make sure you pick up a copy of the Upstate Be every Thursday. Every other week look for “30 Miles North” which will be written by “this guy” and I will share a few of the upcoming events and that you might find to be worth the drive into Greenville. I try to make a point to only include events and happenings that we intend to attend ourselves and it would be great to see some familiar faces from our years in Anderson.

Most importantly, writing for the Upstate Be has actually inspired me to write more from different perspectives so I have been toying with a few other projects that I will (hopefully) share with folks down the road. In the meantime, though, I will do my best not to disappear for so long. We are sitting on a list of new restaurants, a theater, and tons of upcoming concerts that we are itching to share with you guys. Provided that I do not to have a nervous breakdown when I return to jobsites where drinking beer in the morning is prohibited rather than encouraged, we plan on updating this site a lot more in the near future. 

We’ll be back soon…