This Week in Mayfair (05/28/12)

Coming at you live from the Jersey shore people!!! Well, geographically I'm a couple of blocks west from the actual shoreline but I can smell the beach from here. Trust me, I'm not that crazy person happily tapping out my novel on the beach (I go to the local coffee shop where people can marvel at the rainbow colors of my Mac, my designer rumpled clothing, and my witty yet obscure sticker flair). Plus, I would get sand and sunscreen in my laptop and the glare off of it would probably give me worse sunburn than I typically already get. (Thanks Anglo-Irish-Scotch-Polish ancestors, you pasty SOB's). I also have my 2 boys to look after while on the beach and while the little one isn't busy eating sand, he's probably one step away from drowning. I'm also required to focus my 4 year old's attention into something more productive than staring at the girls in bikini's in a way that he's going to have to unlearn by the time he's a legal adult or he's going to get the cops called on him. My husband is teaching him the finer points of sunglasses and the occasional lingering leer while building sandcastles. The force is strong with this one.

Since I'm heading back to Mayfair tonight (kids are staying down with the in-laws til tomorrow--YEEE-AH!) I need to know what in the holy heck is going on this week. Huh. What do you know? A blog post titled "This Week in Mayfair". How informative and brilliant (Why, thank you. You're welcome! You look lovely today. Stop it. My hair is a frizzy humid mess.).

Now that it's officially summer, Mike Perzel wants you to celebrate it with one of the great symbols of summertime and leisure--a baseball game!! Get a quote on your personal insurance (Auto, Home, Renters, Life) to be entered to win seats (Section 131, Row 5--game to be determined) at The Perzel Agency. While there, don't forget your $5.00 Wawa Gift Card. Just make sure you mention the MBA! All MBA members also qualify for a $25.00 Amazon Gift Card for getting a quote on your Business Insurance. No Purchase Necessary must be 18 years or older.

There's only a couple days left to take advantage of the MAYfair Special at Guppies Child Care Center. Any family that enrolls in the Center (7915 Frankford Ave)  for care and says that the Mayfair Business Association sent them will receive FREE registration! A $65 value! Give Melissa a call right now at (215) 624-5434.

The Grey Lodge Pub is gearing up for perhaps one of their most important weeks of the year; Philly Beer Week. As always, Quizzo is set for Wednesday night at 8pm and then the fun never stops. Check out their full calendar here but I will give you some of the highlights and not-to-miss events! On Friday, June 1 from 8am to 10:30am (time for your other grandmom to "kick the bucket") join Scoats and crew in "Occupy the HOG". What's the HOG you ask and why are we occupying it? Why it's The Hammer of Glory, the omnipotent symbol of Philly Beer Week. Like the real Occupy movement they have no focused reason as to why they are occupying other than the fact that it's making it's 2nd stop of it's daylong journey to open up the taps at the Grey Lodge Pub.  However the GL has several things going for it that the official Occupy movement didn't; they have jobs and take showers (rimshot).  After having some breakfast courtesy of the Grey Lodge get ready to protest whatever you feel like (again similiar to the Occupy movement) with protest signs courtesy of the Lodge and then climb on the Sugar House Bus to follow the HOG around all day if you like!

Visits from brewers from Chimay (4pm), Voodoo Brewers (6pm), Spring House Brewers (8pm) round out Saturday and they will be bringing with them the best of their delicious concoctions for everyone to try. Then Sunday starts at 5pm with Lew and Scoats presenting their findings from their New Jersey Brewery Trek followed by a visit from Dr. Beer, Roger Barth, a chemistry professor at West Chester University at 7pm. He teaches a course called The Chemistry of Beer (Dude. Where was this class when I was in college? I pretty much did the homework EVERY night). He wrote a book with the same title, which he will have for sale for just $25, and heard  your Dad say it's what he wants for Father's Day. Dr. Barth will also be taking and answering questions and will be performing experiments that explode (beyond awesome--take video!!) Home brewers, Dr. Barth will bring equipment to measure SRM (the nerd in me had to Google that--Standard Reference Method--system used to specify beer color) of your beer samples.Round out your night by having a beer at 8pm with Don and Wendy of Vanberg & DeWulf!.. the importers of Dupont and lots of other iconic beers. Safely head home full off beer knowledge and bask in the glory of your beer-filled weekend. 

This post would not be complete without addressing the true meaning of this day; a day of memorial to those men and women who have fought and died for this country. The unselfish sacrifices our soldiers have made since the inception of this country is one of the most amazing things to me.  I personally would like to thank each and every one of you for giving yourselves up to a greater cause then yourself. I truly think most of us take for granted the freedoms that come with your sacrifices because we have known nothing else but the freedoms your deaths and sacrifices have afforded us. We never pause to think that the small things that we demand as regular ways of life in this country are huge luxuries in other countries. Whether you politically believe in the "cause" or not, these people laid down their lives and put themselves regularly in harm's way so you and I can continue to live the way we do, say the things we want to say, and go about our lives in pretty much a state of oblivion.

"What is a hero? My heroes are the young men and women who faced the issues of war and possible death, and then weighed those concerns against obligations to their country. Citizen-soldiers, who interrupted their personal and professional lives at their most formative stage, in the timeless phrase of the Confederate Memorial in Arlington National Cemetery, 'not for fame of reward, not for place of for rank, but in simple obedience to duty, as they understood it.'"
~Jim Webb, US Senator and former Secretary of the Navy.

"Where do we get guys like this the reporter asked? The answer is as simple as it is profound. You give them to us. You parents, you families, you brothers and sisters, grandparents, uncles and aunts, friends, you loan us these wonderful young people. They are the fruit of our country, raised by caring parents or a single parent, nurtured in love, and taught that Americans are supposed to have concern for the rights, freedoms and needs of not only our own citizens, but the citizens of the world ... The credit for their goodness, and their greatness, rests with all of you back home. The mothers, the fathers, husbands, wives, all of the family members, all the friends, the teachers, the preachers, scout leaders, football coaches, volunteer youth workers of all sorts, each person who had a positive impact on the lives of these young people deserves a piece of the credit."

Colonel Ron Smith, US Army, The Meridian Star, March 9, 2005