Did I really lose 14 pounds since (last)Sunday night?

...

...

...yes. Yes I did.

Beer bottling, take two

Ugh....

These things are always a bit of a chore, aren't they? First I had to wash and get the labels off a couple of dozen bottles and dry them. Then sanitize the bottles and dry them AGAIN... that's going on right now. I've boiled the priming sugar and made the hop tea. The hop tea is for flavor. The priming sugar with react with the last bit of yeast in the beer and carbonate it in the bottle. I've sanitized the bottling bucket, and the siphon, and the bottle caps. When everything is dry and the priming sugar mixture and tea are cooled to room temp, I'll transfer the beer from the carboy to the bucket, mix in the sugar and tea, and start bottling.

Yay? This time I'll make sure to lay down some towels to minimize the mess. I'll put the bucket up higher so it is easier to get under it and transfer the beer gravity-style. And in only 6-8 weeks, I'll have drinkable beer. Tomorrow I'm brewing up another batch, and then yet another batch next weekend. My first batch is SO CLOSE to being ready to drink, and since I'm on a diet I'm not going to be drinking more than a few at a time, so I'll be done buying store-bought beer forever!  Yay!!

Did I really lose 16 pounds since Sunday night?

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...

...

... OK, probably not. Although I have to admit that I sort of cheat when I start a diet. I eat a couple of bigger-than-normal meals the weekend before I start the diet, so my starting weight is artificially high and I get a nice big first week weight loss to motivate me. So yeah, I should have stopped at the third taco and had six of them instead. :) Weighed myself a few hours later Sunday night and I was nice and huge. Figured I would be a couple of pounds up on Monday morning for the first weighing.

Monday morning, the scale didn't work. Tuesday I replaced the battery, still didn't work. Wednesday, yesterday, I bought a new scale. It showed me as having lost 15 pounds from Sunday night. Which is cool, fine, I didn't believe it. I assumed a difference between scales and placement on the floor and whatever would explain the huge difference. I figured I weigh myself again this morning and it should read the same both days give or take a half-pound. Lost another pound though, so that's pretty cool.

Ugh... Weight Watchers...

Weight Watchers.

My wife is doing it, and I figured that I had better do it to... both because I could use to lose a few pounds, and because I don't want to undermine her efforts. I know how I would feel if I was eating a strict diet and she was eating chips and burgers. But there's a weird thing going on...

WW works on a points system. The points are worth about 50 calories a pop on average, but weighted by the fat-to-fiber ratio or some such. Because I'm a man and pretty heavy, I get a crapload of points compared to my wife. And shockingly, I can't seem to eat that much. It doesn't help that most fruits and vegetables are zero points, and a huge salad has barely any points even with dressing on it because of the fiber. So I'm not getting to the end of my points, and I don't really want to eat a third dinner every night, so I don't know what to do.

On the other hand, for the sake of efficiency and lack of temptation, we're eating NOTHING but frozen dinners, pre-packaged salad kits, and raw fruit. Can you say "no dishes, no cooking, no cleaning, no nothing"? It is actually sort of a vacation for me, come to think of it.

I bought a what?!?!

Yeah, a new amp... but there's a really good story!

So, we have a few extra bucks this month. Wife is going out to spend a few hundred bucks on new clothing, and Joe decided to look into a new amp. The amp I bought before moving here is cool and all, but just a little too small for my needs.

... a quick technical aside for my non-musician readers. The power of an amplifier, measured in wattage, is responsible for volume and something called "clean headroom": the ability to get louder without distorting. Because of various math and physics things that are too complicated to get into here, doubling the wattage only gives you about 10% more perceived volume. So to get double the volume of my 4W amp, I need a 40W amp. But more importantly, a 4W amp starts to distort long before you hit half of its potential volume, while a 40W amp with a good clean channel will stay clean and clear-sounding until you really crank it up towards 11.

Anyhoo, I'm looking for a bigger/cleaner amp. Last night I saw a used Peavey Valveking 100W amp with a pair of 12" speakers for $300 at the local Guitar Center, on the website. Those amps usually go for around $650 new, so it seemed like a good idea to try it out. I sort of ran it past my wife without telling her that it was used and cheaper, and she was OK with the $650 price tag so I knew $300 would be no problem. If not that amp, then maybe over to Sam Ash and put something on layaway... yeah, guitar shops and gun stores are the last businesses where layaway is common practice.

Well, I go out this morning. Too early as it turns out, since Guitar Center opens at 11 on weekdays. Sam Ash was open at 10, so I popped in there. Turns out they have a 12-month layaway, so I could pay $20-30 a week and afford any amp in the store! WOO! Most amps at least, since you have to put down 20%. So I tried a Peavey Valveking at Sam Ash... hated it mucho much. So much for getting out cheap. I tried a couple of amps, and then had the sales guy demo a couple while I listened... I get guitar store stage fright occasionally. We tried a bunch of amps in the $600-1200 range. Then I thought about it, and questioned the wisdom of committing myself to $300 down and biweekly payments for several months, so we scaled back and checked out a smaller Marshall just for no good reason since it is a 5W amp and not really any improvement over what I have now. Right behind us though, there was the UGLIEST AMP I'VE EVER SEEN FOR SALE IN A REAL STORE. For shits and giggles, since I was about to walk out of there and bring my wife back on the weekend, I told sales dude to plug his guitar into that amp.

No kidding, it was the best-sounding amp in the store. Turns out to be a American-made Peavey Classic 50, four 10" speakers and 50W. Torn tweed covering showing the wood underneath, control panel with the chrome rubbed off and starting to rust out, stains and holes in the grill cloth, dirty all over, dry-rotted leather handle, just a real beater of an amp. The model nameplate fell off not so long ago, so it has a slightly less dirty rectangle patch on the front. The power cord isn't original, and Satan only knows where the footswitch came from, although it seems to currently do absolutely nothing anyways. The damned thing is right around 20-21 years old if I'm reading the serial number correctly. And yet... it is kind of a magical sounding amplifier.

The sales guy called over the sales girl to ask her about it, I guess someone dropped it off the day before and it was my good luck to give it a chance. I brought it home and started looking into fixing it up, but my wife thinks it has "character" so I'll probably leave the cosmetics alone. At least until I have to crack her open to replace a vacuum tube.

Why my wife is the perfect one for me, Part 34,487

So my wife is surfing the web, and she sort of shouts out something like "Oh my GOD!!! You've got to see this! You've got to... no! I have to buy this for you!!!" Care of uncrate.com:

In case of emergency. In case of zombie outbreak. In case of rabid squirrel attacks — whatever the case, you can rely on the Mossberg Just-In-Case Kit ($360). This all-in-one survival pack includes a 12 gauge Mossberg 500 Pump-Action shotgun inside a re-sealable clear bag, inside a waterproof synthetic carrying tube which also holds gear like a "Survival Kit in a Can" and a multi-tool and serrated knife combo pack.

HOW FUCKING COOL IS THAT?!?!?! And it is only $360!!!!


... my wife totally loves me. :)

I DO understand hoarders now!

No kidding...

Everyone who has read this blog for awhile(all 11 of you) know that I LOVE watching those hoarding shows on the TV. Not for nothing, I've got the gene for it based on my dad's behavior. Seeing people destroy their homes with junk and filth is an inspiration for me to run a vacuum cleaner more than once a month and keep the dishes clean. We're not in any danger of being overwhelmed by hoarding... there's not a room in this house that can't be cleaned from top to bottom in less than an hour by the two of us. If the two of us worked on one room for more than an hour, there would be painting or alphabetizing involved. We're not great at housekeeping, but it is at the level of "honey, can you PLEASE get your socks in the hamper" and my wife grudgingly apologizing and promising to do better next time. :)

But...

Since I started this homebrewing business, I've been collecting empty beer bottles. Not RANDOM bottles, mind you. No twist-tops! Mostly Sam Adams bottles, but also some Magic Hat, and a couple of other random brands. Plus I bought a few dozen empties from the local brewing supply shop just because. I've been putting off getting the bottles cleaned and the labels off, mostly because I'd read that the process can be rather arduous. Today I decided to break down and start washing and soaking the bottles. The good news is that the process is EASY! The labels peel right off, and the adhesive residue comes off with a quick scrub of the sponge.

The bad news is I stopped to count to see how many bottles I have to clean. Not counting the bottles that are currently full of beer, I've got nineteen 12-packs worth of bottles. 228 bottles total. If I scrub 24 bottles a day, it is STILL going to be more than a week to go through all of them. Can I stop now? Can I?!?!?! Well, let's think about this:

It takes 4-6 weeks in the bottle for a batch of beer to be drinkable. Each batch is about 48 bottles worth of beer. So I need around 6x48= 288 bottles. So no, I guess I can't stop... at least not for another couple of weeks. It is starting to take up a whole lot of room though. At some point soon, I'm going to have to figure out some sort of system, some sort of organizational method to keep this from overwhelming me. Maybe stack-able file crates from Staples? I guess the point is to get it organized before it gets out of control, right?

Elsewise, I might end up with this:

Sweet Satan it is COLD!!

You know... people can maybe get used to anything, given enough time. But once gotten used to, the opposite can be difficult to deal with. I moved to Florida on Valentine's Day 2003. That's almost a decade of living in the Sunshine State, so moving to Virginia has been a shock in a lot of ways. 


Twenty Two Degrees. At Nine A.M. 


Right now in Florida where I lived it is 55° which is a pretty big difference right? Yes?

Beer Brew, Take Two (Part1)

Yeah...  yeah! Went down to Weekend Brewer and picked up a "Big Sky Amber Ale" ingredient kit a week ago. Because I'm lazy, it took me until yesterday to start brewing up the new batch, especially since it takes ABSOLUTELY FUCKING HOURS to put this shit together.

It starts at 9AM, sanitizing and then filling up a couple of gallon pitchers full of filtered water, and chilling it in the fridge.

Time to get my yeast out of the fridge while I'm at it.

Then, three more gallons of filtered water in my 5-gallon brew pot.

While I waited...and waited... and waited... and waited for the water to get up to the required 150-ish degrees, I grabbed my sack of grain...

... and turned it into a sock of grain!

Sock of grain goes into the pot to steep for 30-40 minutes. In "real" home brewing, the start-to-finish kind that makes you a master of the hipsters art in your skinny jeans and ironic T-shirts, you'd actually have pounds and pounds of grains and soak them for hours and then drain off the sugary liquid for your beer... and I might go that route someday. Seriously, no kidding. It can be up to 25% cheaper to go that route, although it is a bigger mess. The upshot is that you get a richer flavor... which is why you go ahead and steep a small amount of grain even when you're using the dried malt extract. Speaking of which...

SIX POUNDS OF DRY MALT EXTRACT!!! My first batch of beer was with the liquid extract, which comes in a can and is a very thick syrup. The dried stuff is a little easier to deal with, since you don't have to separately heat up a can to loosen the syrup and then rinse the cans out with boiling water to get all of the sweet sugary goodness into the pot. After the steeping is done, you take the sock of grains out of the water, and mix in the dry malt extract. After a bunch of stirring, my wort looks something like this:

**Not pictured: what it looks like when the pot boils over, spilling sugary badness all over the stovetop. 

After my little... mishap, I added in a cup or so of liquid extract to make up for the spillover loss, and to raise the sugar levels overall. That becomes important later. Also at this point, I added the first of the hops. Hops are cool!

**Not rabbit food, or rabbit poop either.

The hops are sort of ground up and dried into little pellets that dissolve in the wort. You add one type at the start, a different sort at about midway, and a third type for the last few minutes. Stirring regular and avoiding boilover helps at this point. After about an hour, the boiling is done, and the pot goes outside on the back porch. I've got a cheap metal tub from Target that I fill with ice water that sits outside in the cold. I take the brew pot and stick it in the tub to cool down the work for fermentation.

While I'm waiting for the wort to go from boil to room temp, I start sterilizing my fermenting bucket and lid, and the airlock that goes in the lid. Adding the previously chilled water helps hasten the process. When that's done, I pour the wort into the bucket through a strainer, which gets rid of the boiled hops AND helps at air to the liquid. Gotta stir and stir and stir to get plenty of air in the wort, although some people use an aquarium aerator... me too someday, I've got it on the list! 

At this point, I take a cup of wort out of the bucket and put it in a beaker with the hydrometer. Should have taken a picture, but my wife dropped a broke the hydrometer minutes after taking the reading. No harm done... anyhoo, the point is that you measure the specific gravity (density) of the wort. At the end of the fermenting process, you check the specific gravity a second time, and the difference in the two numbers plus some math lets you know how much sugar was converted to alcohol by the yeast, which is how you get the Alcohol By Volume figure. My first beer came out to about 4.5%... but this time I added extra malt extract, remember? More sugar in the bucket means more food for the yeast, which means more potential alcohol production. By my calculations, I should wind up somewhere in the 6-6.5% range by the end of the fermentation. SWEET!

At this point, I dump in the yeast, give it a swirl, snap the lip on and insert the airlock, and I'm done. The bucket sits on a chair, with a couple of magazines propping up one end of the bucket. As the yeast does its work, the older yeast dies and settles to the bottom. Having the bucket at an angle makes it easier to siphon off the beer while leaving the dead yeast and whatever grain/hops crap might be left in the bucket. After twelve hour or so, the airlock is full of bubbles, which means the fermentation is going well and I'm done for a couple of days. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Can't I get a visit from the Prize Patrol instead?

NO!

Monday I get a visit from the landlord, and Friday I get a visit from... THE COPS!! Three of them, all sort of hands on guns and in tactical positions around my front door. Looking for someone, but not me thank Satan. About a minute after I shut the door, three MORE police cars drive by my house, one after another after another.

Someone's in pretty deep shit. I'm glad it isn't me.

Funny thing though... I had my gun on my hip, and they didn't say a word. :)

So far, so good? (Beer edition)

Well... I tried one of my homebrewed beers last week. The results were... less than encouraging? I started to panic a bit, which is why I haven't posted anything about it until now. The beer was sweet but sour, and upset my stomach some. But I read up on it, and that "green apple" flavor is not unexpected or uncommon, especially if the beer hasn't had time to fully "condition" in the bottle. Usually 3-4 weeks, and it has only been 12 days now.

Now, I decided to try another beer. The verdict? Not too shabby. It isn't nearly as sweet, and the sour is starting to turn more normal bitter. It is nice and carbonated, so that part worked out pretty much perfectly. And it should only get better if I can continue to be patient. The home brew websites all say the same thing: the last beer is always the best beer. So I've still got 46 beers left, and I'm going to try one beer every 3-4 days for the next two weeks or so and see how the flavor changes over time.

In the meantime, this gives me the confidence to start the next batch... which is a hell of a lot more complex, but I think I can do it! But, it is a whole crapload of stuff....

There's nothing like a 5-day notice of pending eviction

... it really adds zest to your day.

Seriously, these people are fucking idiots. We wrote a rent check before Xmas, it cleared two days after Xmas, and now they've assessed us with a $120 late charge and an eviction threat for not paying the rent. FUCKING MORONS!!

You know... I wanted to kick the shit out of the guy. I comes to my house like "I don't know if you guys forgot, or what happened, but you haven't paid January's rent and this is your 5-day eviction notice." When I told him that we paid before Xmas he got this puzzled semi-stupid look on his face. "Oh... people don't usually pay early... ummmm... are you sure?" He looked even more confused when I told him I would have the bank fax him a copy of the cancelled check first thing in the morning. You know, like people who rent can't pay early or call the bank. I guess he thought we were paying in food stamps and extra chickens.

Fuck, this shit makes me miserable sometimes.

I can't believe I cut my own hair!

Because that makes perfect sense when you're insanely depressed, right?!?!

So what I couldn't stand was the idea of sitting in some stranger's chair and letting her cut the hair off of my head, so I blew through most of my allowance for the next two weeks and bought clippers. To be fair, the clippers only cost a little more than the haircut would have. And I had to cut my hair, SOMEONE had to cut my hair, because it gets long and it gets magically shitty like Einstein hair. And then I came up with the crazy idea that if I could cut my hair myself, because my wife was afraid of cutting my hair and I figured that if I could cut my hair OK, then she could do it better.

And I guess it turned out OK? My hair was acceptable, once my wife spent about 4 minutes cleaning up the back of it. So yay, I guess.

Depression is like...

... being covered in cold wet itchy blankets, 100 pounds of them soaked in salt water, right after someone has scraped off the top layer of my skin. I'm miserable and sluggish and barely able to think let alone do, but I'm also super-sensitive and prickly about everything. I get all the lethargy with none of the numbness that other depressed people are lucky enough to have.

Why I can't get anything done, New Year's Edition!

My little sweetheart Lily has had some ups and downs since we rescued her outside the former home of the people who abandoned her when they were evicted. She was really scared and aggressive for a bit, then she went exploring through the house and even took naps with me. Then something went terribly wrong, and she went back to being scared and aggressive again and then even started peeing in inappropriate places even though she has her own litter box.

Well, now she's back being lovey cat again. She's started talking, which is new for her. She plays with string and rolls around in front of my keyboard... OK, in front of AND ON TOP OF MY KEYBOARD. She's still not ready to be around the other cats very much but at least she's not scratching me bloody every other day. We're currently playing a new game, where Lily stretches and rolls around while I rub her belly, and she "accidentally" knocks everything off of my desk one item at a time.

I actually started to panic a bit just now, she's acting like she's had a stroke or something. Nothing wrong... this is just the absolute most relaxed she's ever been since she's been in our house, and she's actually displaying some normal cat laziness instead of being on her guard all day and half the night.

Anyways, here's the picture:

We're going to try again...

New year, new list of books I'm reading. The goal is to read 100 books this year. Call it a resolution if it turns you on. :) 100 seems like a good number for me, wait and see.

I'm going to try to brew at least 100 gallons of beer? Why not? That's like 20 beers a week. More than enough.

What else? Save $100 a month? Probably not. Lose 100 pounds... and leave a beautiful corpse? Not likely. Watch 100 movies? That's doable. I can sit on the couch in front of the TV with the best of them.

I dunno... at least the house is clean. That's something.