Clark Creek Blog: May 2006

Wednesday, May 31, 2006

I post

T. (aka Train Boy) has progressed to the point where he uses a personal pronoun with adjectives (I funny), but not when giving voice to a verb he would like to accomplish (See pool? See water?) unless it’s a verb he realllly wants to accomplish (I see mama?).

Ran home from work tonight. That is really working out for me. I haven’t done it as many nights as I’d like but when I do it rocks. I’m going to lap swim tomorrow at noon for the first time in years and then to toddler swim after work. Besides getting ready to leave for Louisville on Sunday, my main goal for this weekend is to unearth the bike and take it for a shake down ride.

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Long Weekend Recap

Looking back on it, sometimes the best plan is no plan at all. This past weekend we did absolutely nothing and it was everything it could have been. OK, while fun to say, that isn’t precisely true. We actually accomplished quite a bit. We just didn’t rush off for a long weekend of highly structured fun and travel related expense and stress like we usually do on the Memorial Day weekend.

Accomplishments:

The corn is in the ground – four varieties in about ten fifty foot rows. Corn baby!
I bottled five gallons of IPA and kegged a hefeweizen. Unfortunately I squirted about half of the remaining hef. onto the wall in the basement
Planted various beans, spuds, and tomatoes. The new plan this year for carrots is to plant the seeds in tubs that can be overturned and the carrots hosed off in the fall.
No running :( No progress upstairs :(:(
Came in comfortably high in the middle of the pack at a pistol match at the range
Went out to the studio and loaded the kiln – wedding season is upon us and I’ve got to get wedding bowls done for several friends. I’ve got some big steins in the works, too, that I’m excited about.

The weather has turned obscenely pleasant today - more torment for those who spent the holiday weekend huddled in tents at the coast no doubt. Tonight is swimming at the Y and then we are going to run the lake.

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Tell it Ice Cube...

...Today was a good day

Today was a pretty good day all around. I had a good work day – working on projects all day that are the ones I look forward to spending time on and I had fun with my coworkers. It was sunny, dry and 85 here. I kept finding reasons why walking across campus was necessary. I had a really good lunch, outside in the sun with good company. After work, I ran the five or six miles home without any pain or pooping out. When I got home Brit and the boys were here with my favorite aunt who came to visit for the day. They were just arriving home with yummy food and gardening stuff. After eating and having beers on the deck, they put in herb gardens and I went out to my brewing area to confront what I was pretty sure was a spoiled batch of porter. It turns out the beer was in good shape after all. It tastes really good so I ramped up the CO2 and started the force carbonation. Tomorrow looks like about the same thing but substitute toddler swim lessons at the Y with my boy where favorite aunt came into the picture today – not much to complain about on this end.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Beer Update

I just wrote the following in an email to an enquiring friend. I'll post it here as well (pics soon).

Beer - I forgot to respond to that.

My first two batches were a stout and an IPA (which I blogged about initially). They both turned out quite tasty in my opinion, with the stout being the better of the two. The IPA was too hoppy and bitter for a lot of folks, but I liked it. Maybe I'll call that recipe Earwax IPA for now. Both the stout and IPA are now mostly a happy and somewhat foggy memory except for two bottles of each that I kept for doing future comparisons.

Then I did a porter, which is currently in the keg but hasn't been there long enough to sample. I'm a tad concerned about it as I never saw any active evidence of the fermentation process happening (no bubbles). On the other hand, it did ferment at a lower temp and for a longer period of time than the first two and the sediment in the primary looked normal. I'll probably tap the keg this Friday, so we'll see.

This past Saturday I brewed another IPA (different recipe) and a hef, both of which are bubbling merrily away. In fact the hef blew out two fermentation locks before I finally put a burp tube in instead.

Monday, May 15, 2006

Salad Shooter Get Behind Me!

I’m excited. My wife and I just made a date. We’re not going to a restaurant, or a movie, or anything nearly as lame as that. No, we’ll be in our kitchen, getting rid of clutter. Periodically we schedule a date to do just that and attack a particular room. After reading Jeannie’s post about de-cluttering, I contacted the spouse and we penciled it in. Do we really need 18 spatulas? No! All the stupid crap that people give you at Christmas because they don’t know what else to grab so they get you a plastic microwaveable potato rack or rubber ice cube trays at Ikea? No! Pick a room, de-clutter it and then clean – that’s my idea of a hot date.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Still got a pulse...

Long time, no blog posting, no blog reading…

Warning; I just read back over this, and wow, what boring prattle. Who cares, I’m posting it anyway. Try and stop me!

It’s amazing how quickly something can become a part of your daily life and then how quickly you can drop it as well. Maybe partially it is because the summer weather is here and I’ve gone into my usual hyper-frenzied levels of activity, and partially because I haven’t been training and following training blogs, and work has been crazy-go-nuts, but mostly I just haven’t been interested in journaling. Maybe I need a new camera. Yes! A new toy, a new material purchase would make everything better!

Speaking of material purchases; I drove the truck down to the lumber supply place yesterday for what I hope will be the last load of pine boards for the upstairs project. If you are ever asking yourself how much extra cost and expensive putting up wood paneling vs. sheetrock would be, the answer will be somewhere in the orders of magnitude. Its been a fun project but I don’t think I’ll ever to true paneling again, at least not until I’m old and the kids are gone and I’m looking for projects. I bet by then, the thought of laying on my back in a hole in the wall, holding paneling up with my feet and running the nail gun probably won’t be all that appealing then either. Anyway, that project nears completion (does anyone still believe me on that?).

Yesterday I put my third batch of beer, a porter, into the keg and started five gallons of IPA, and five of hef. I’m starting to get things figured out in that realm but I bet I learn a ton the first time I get to brew with someone else present. I’ve discovered three guys at work who brew and one acquaintance from school. Maybe we’ll form some sort of club like the one Keith attends in E-burg. I did have one scary moment yesterday when a mistake I made caused boiling wort to spray back into my face. Luckily I just burned my lip and missed the peepers. I won’t do that again.

Garden: I got everything tilled up, spuds in the ground, and about half my seeds into seed trays. That’s my goal for the evenings this coming week – seeds in pods.

Right now I’ve got five gallons of beef stew simmering and a monster fruit salad to cut up later. For now I think I’ll take a book and got sit outside for a while.

About

About Me

Previous

Archives