Friday Four

1. My daughter, 4, has taken to bringing a doll or a stuffed animal with her to play with during the short break between her brother's gymnastics lesson and her own, so I thought nothing of her taking along a Hello Kitty yesterday -- until she said to the other girl waiting there, "Let's play 'Hello Kitty soccer!'" and started kicking it around.

"I swear I didn't come up with that," I told the girl's mother.

Meanwhile, at the age of two, my son has been amusing me with various shows of defiance lately. His very definitive, rapid-fire, "No!" is priceless. Also, I learned he knew the phrase, "Shut up," when he used it on me a few days ago. I was amusing myself by extending the last syllable of, "Rapido caballo," into a Tarzan yell, so one could quite easily make the case that he was justified.

2. Here's a beer recommendation that is well off the beaten path: Not Your Father's Root Beer. The brewer, Small Town, describes it as an "ale brewed with spices."

Kovac passed down his family's beer making tradition by working tirelessly with his son to craft the first version of "Not Your Father's Root Beer." At 10% ABV, the silky, smooth and satisfying finish is unmatched in flavor. It appeals to craft beer aficionados as well as those who don't typically drink beer but crave something unique.

The award-winning "Not Your Father's Root Beer" achieved a 95 rating from Beer Advocate and is a very popular choice at several Chicagoland bars. Small Town's personally delivered "Not Your Father's Root Beer" kegs consistently sell out at taverns across the Chicago area.

I recall thinking, "This tastes exactly like a really good root beer: A few of these could sneak up on you really quick." But ten percent! I can usually tell when a beer is that strong, but this went down like a root beer and I had no idea until I read the above for this post. Enjoy with caution!

3. A man's long, but fascinating personal narrative of losing his memories due to a tumor -- then regaining them after a very successful surgery -- provides a brief description of the incredible procedure that saved him. It reads in part:

... His proposal involved drilling a hole, roughly half the size of a dime, in the top of my skull, from which the entire surgery would be conducted. A catheter would be inserted, followed by an endoscope, all passed through two and a half inches of my brain, straight into the cystic, fluid filled portion of my craniopharyngioma, which had grown so large it was protruding from my brain's third ventricle. This sounded horrifying at the time. It still does.

"What are the side effects?" I asked, nervously.

"We don't have any complications with this procedure," he said. "Some bleeding is possible, and you may get an infection on the skin that we would treat with antibiotics; I've never had that." ...

The above computer-guided procedure and a post-recovery course of targeted radiation completely rid the author of his tumor.

4. From the New York Times comes a look at the new barter economy in Greece. Interestingly, several social media startups are helping this along.

-- CAV