An all expenses paid trip to... Cincinnati?

As most of you should recall (considering I just posted about it two days ago), I've decided to fill my life up with more pressure and needless studying in the hopes of becoming a beer judge. Having realized that it will be nigh upon impossible to fulfil my grandfather's dreams of me ever becoming a Circuit Court judge, due partially to my inability to pay attention to anything for more than fifteen minutes and partially to my inability to be a better lawyer, he, I, and my family legacy will have to settle for National Beer Judge.

And let's face it kids, which one of these do you think gets a better pop at parties?

At any rate, I've found the sign-up process so far to be a bit more difficult than anticipated, based mostly on the fact that I'm not the only genius with this idea. BJCP limits exams to 5 times a month, and only 20 people per exam, so while here I am trying to join the ranks of the 6000 or so judges in this country, like 100 people a month are doing it before me - and worse yet, are preventing me from even finding an available exam seat! Now when I took the bar, the bar admin folks couldn't cash my check fast enough in order to allow me the privilege of sitting amongst 12,000 or so other stressed out law school grads who desperately wanted the summer to end. This time, I'm trying my ass off to track down exam hosts but I'm getting nowhere.

First bite at the line - a mid-August availability out in Cincinnati, Ohio. That's right, unless I hear back from someone closer to my precious East Village home, I'll be jetting off to O Hi O in order to judge beer for money. While I am relatively excited about visiting the brew pubs that Cincy has to offer (and maybe even taking in a pre-season Bengals game while judging the Budweiser at the stadium), I already have Green Day tickets for that night!

It's not easy being a Brewmaster, apparently...Green Day or Beer Judge exam. I wonder if my grandfather has an opinion about how I should deal with this latest dilemma. With any luck I'll score a Brooklyn test date and I can live out his dream of me becoming a Judge of one kind or another without impacting my own dream of going to more pop punk shows.