I am a good boy. I claim my beer writing income as a business. Every April, as the Canadian deadline closes in, I go through the receipts of the year to figure out the credits and debits. The balanced owed. It's not a huge job in the sense that it's not my real job but I put it off. It's irritating... until I get to it.

A huge envelope stuffed with receipts and notes through a whole year gets organized into smaller envelopes with words like "gas" and "books" and "hotels" scribbled on them. Posts cross referencing purchases are checked out. Trips are remembered. Great beers recollected. The paper shuffle becomes something of an annual review. Great experiences of the year come back to mind. Like hitting the Portsmouth Brewery in New Hampshire in August and that mammoth haul aka "The Attack Of The Geuze" back in July that cost me $82 at the border when the customs officer waived me to the main building. There's the Revenue Canada slip to prove it. Shopping trips from Cape Cod to Quebec as well as the neighbourhood LCBO. Then there is my last receipt from the Galeville Grocery, before the news of the passing of owner Bernie Rivers. Glad I got to talk with him that time.

It's a funny thing all this beer writing. I began blogging eight years ago yesterday. Never expected that I would be chronicling my relationship with fermented grain water for over a sixth of my life span to date. But I have. And I have the receipts to prove it.