Roswell's Ramblings

The wife returned from her busy week abroad on Friday. She said it was very productive from a business standpoint and she was happy with the experience she gained from the travel. Now she will be off again in a few weeks. She received her schedule from her coordinator in regards to the Dominican Republic. It was basically what she had anticipated - a week away and then two weeks at home. This will go on most of the summer.

The boy and I fared well with her absence - well at least I did. The boy missed her very much. He kept asking about his Mommy and when was she getting home from Gerbany. You should have seen him when we picked her up from the airport. He went wild for a couple of minutes and then wanted to know where his present was. He decided over the weekend that Daddy wasn't his friend anymore - just Mommy. He was very clingy - so much so that she would have to slip into the bedroom and close the door. She just needed a break! hahhaha.

Saturday was fairly low key. The wife slept on and off and the boy and I puttered around. He has really gotten into "mowing" the lawn with me. So that's what we did. Later in the evening we went to a family gathering and then the in-laws came over to our house and spent the night. They stayed for a while on Sunday as it was Mother's Day and I cooked them a big breakfast.

We came home to a warm house Saturday evening. The wife and I had noticed that the A/C was not working too well during the day. I went downstairs into the laundry room and looked at the blower and it had ice on it. I then went outside and the condenser also had an ice build up. So, at 11:30 at night, I got the hairdryer out and started thawing the ice. If the in-laws hadn't been there we would have suffered though the night as it wasn't really that hot - 78-80 degrees. Anyway, I think it's just low on freon and that's one thing I know nothing about. You've got to be licensed to deal with that anyway so we've got to call somebody in. I hate that but, now I know the view from a homeowners standpoint. I get so worked up about somebody ripping us off. And now, to top all of it off the wife wants to replace the heating and air system. The furnace is original to the house and I'm sure it is inefficient. We replaced the A/C condenser a few years back because the old one broke down over the fourth of July holiday. I just don't want to shell out $4000 right now. Yeesh! The joys of homeownership! I think I've got her convinced to limp along with this behemoth until the end of the summer. We'll see.

Brewing

I started a batch back in the late winter when I had my kidney stones. The first pic shows the ingredients that come in a kit. There are varying degrees of difficulty when you decide to brew. I lean towards the easy/ intermediate kits, because to move up in difficulty means the purchase of more equipment - which I'm not ready to do right now. Someday, I would like to have my own mashing equipment and be able to purchase the grains and make my own malt. In all honesty though, I am not ready for the additional steps... I need to perfect what I have at the present time. This was a Honey Brown Ale kit and as you can see there is a large jug of malt extract, honey, yeast and two different kinds of hops. What you don't see is the 5 gallons of filtered water, the extra grains for steeping and the priming sugar. The apples you see to the right were not used in this recipe... ha ha!

The second pic shows the grains steeping in a cheese cloth. The wort - as it's called now is slowly being brought up to a boil. Before the boil came on strong I removed the grain bag and added the malt extract. I then added one of the bags of hops and let it boil for about an hour. Towards the end of the boil I added the finishing hops and the honey. The chore after the boil is to bring the temperature of the wort down quickly and efficiently. I chose to submerse the pot in the sink with ice and cold water but, there are other methods which can make it faster. It's like anything else - if you have unlimited funds, there is always some doodad that makes things easier.

After the temperature comes down you can transfer the wort into the primary fermenter, add the remaining 3 1/2 gallons of water and pitch the yeast. The last pic shows the lid on the primary fermenter with the airlock installed. The fermenting wort lets off a lot of gas and it needs a way to escape - hence the airlock. I left the wort in the primary fermenter for a week and a half and then transfered it to a glass five gallon carboy. Usually you leave the wort in the secondary fermenter for a few weeks and then it's ready to bottle or keg. Well, as usual I didn't get around to bottling for more than a month and a half. Leaving it in the secondary that long is okay as long as the airlock is in place.

The wife finally had enough of seeing the carboy in the laundry room and told me to get it bottled. I use "Grolsch" style bottles if you are familiar with that brand of beer. They are the bottles that have a flip top with a rubber seal. I use these because the are larger and they are much easier to seal. I have a bottle capper and bottle caps but, trust me when I say that bottle capping is a pain in the ass. To prepare the wort for bottling I boiled a pint of water along with 1/2 cup of priming sugar. Priming sugar adds a little fuel for the remaining yeast cells in the wort. I then added the sugar mixture to the bottling bucket and transferred the wort from the carboy into the bottling bucket. I gave it a little stir and began bottling. This batch makes 5 gallons of beer - which equates to about 2 1/2 cases of bottles. The priming sugar is what carbonates the beer. Mass manufactured beers use a forced carbonation method with CO2 gases - this is also what home brewers do when they keg rather than bottle their beer.

I waited about a week and opened up a bottle. It was better than I expected. It's a dark, slightly bittered beer with a good head. The longer I let it age, the better it gets. The alcohol content is slightly higher than what you get in a mass produced beer... and these days one of them is about all I need at a sitting. Talking about this makes me want to order another kit. Cheers!

I didn't do it! I swear!

You all have probably heard by now that there have been some uncontrollable wildfires in South Georgia. The fires started near a town called Waycross. We happened to drive through that area a few weeks before the fires started. We were on our way home from a week in St. Augustine and decided to take the scenic route, because we had never been through that area before. Ever since the fires started they have been threatening the Okefenokee Swamp and Wildlife Refuge. We visited the Okefenokee Swamp Park and that is where this picture comes from. I have never before had any interest in visiting a place like this but, I was pleasantly surprised. It was very educational and I learned that this park has been around for years. All of the signs along the highway indicated that we would be seeing alligators and we were not disappointed. As we drove in to the park the wife said "Oh! Look at the fake alligators on the bank over there". I asked how she knew they were "fake"? She answered me rather sarcastically " Can't you tell? It's obvious." I let it go and said no more not knowing what to think. As we exited the car we saw a group of people standing near one of the "fake" alligators. My wife, with the boy in tow, saunters up to them and asks the boy (loud enough for everyone to hear) "Do you want to go stand on that alligator so I can take your picture?" A woman standing there asked my wife "Are you serious?" To which the wife replied "Well yes, after all, it is fake." The woman looked at the wife rather incredulously and said "I don't think fake alligators move around and breath". At that moment the "fake" alligator opened his mouth with all of his big shiny teeth and slithered into the water, while my wife's jaw fell to the ground. She swooped up the boy and ran back over to me at the car. I asked her what she had expected? Damn city slickers anyway.

Okay, I have to ask...

Who works for Freddie Mac? Come out, come out - whoever you are! LOL!

Hello again.

Golly gee willakers Wally, it's been a while. I guess I got out of the habit of posting. What to say... hmmmm. I think I will make this an update of life's goings on rather than any funny stories. It's been a very busy spring. In March the boy and I spent 8 days in Wellsboro visiting my sister, her husband and two kids. It wasn't really a pleasure trip - I spent most of the time helping Sis and my Mom with odds and ends around their respective houses. Sis had a number of electrical things that needed taking care of, such as hanging light fixtures and fixing things that didn't work. My Mom recently bought a house and we tiled a tub surround and I hung some fixtures for her. I knew going in that I would be busy - that's the main reason for going. The boy had fun with his two cousins and got to see snow for the first time. Overall, it was a really fun trip.

Same old projects going on here at home. The week before I went to Penna. we had our house painted on the outside. There is still more work to be done. I've haven't been attacking the punch list like I should. Gutters, touch up painting, some trim work etc. I'll get to it - I putter around but, I really need to just get at it and get it done.

My contracting work has really slowed down and that's okay. I've done some service work and have roughed in a fairly large basement. Now, I'm just waiting on the painters and trim guys to finish so I can go back in and finish up my end. Not having a lot of work has been good right now because the wife has been extremely busy with her career. She has recently changed projects (temporarily) and has been under a lot of stress with that. Her company is launching a new project and she is quite involved. The vendor that is helping them is located in the Dominican Republic - so as you can guess, she's going to be spending a lot of time down there. She's been putting in a lot of hours and it's a good thing that someone is around the house to hold things down. She is leaving tomorrow morning for a whirlwind trip to Germany, Italy and the UK - meeting with prospective clients for another project she's been working on. She'll be gone for eight days and I'm hoping the boy and I fair well with it. Her trips to the Dominican are going to be ongoing for most of the summer and into the fall - up to two weeks at a time. I don't know if anything will come of it but, she said the company is willing to pay for the family to go down there over the 4th of July for a week. If it comes about I will take advantage of it. I'm going to schedule some cigar factory tours... cha, cha, chaaa!

The boy has three weeks left of school. Good God! I can't believe how the time has passed. It seems as if he just started. He has really enjoyed it but, unfortunately he will not be returning - at least not there. It was a great program but, our needs are different. I think we're going to place him in a daycare for two full days a week. The church program we have been sending him to is just three and a half hours a day. We have found that having someone pick him up and then watching him the rest of the day has been very frustrating as the caregivers are either sick or can't come for one reason or another. Knowing that this is the situation has prevented me from taking on the work that has been offered to me. Anyhow, we've been checking out various daycares near us and hopefully we'll make a decision soon.

As far as other things in our lives, well, let's see. We have started a large garden. It's located at a friends house out in the country and it's been a lot of fun and a lot of work! We started working on it about a month ago. We tilled up the soil and added some amendments, such as horse manure and granite dust. A few weeks ago we tilled again and planted. It's been very fulfilling watching the plants come alive. The boy and I go out every few days and putter around for two to three hours - watering and planting. I have a fence that has been started and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to irrigate the whole thing. It's fairly large for greenhorns like us, but we're learning a lot. We're going the Organic route... no chemicals. I can't wait to taste the corn and the tomatoes...

We're still talking about selling our house and moving to a bigger one - who knows? The housing market here is in a slump, so now is not the time to sell anyway... I guess we'll see what happens later on this year.

I need to download and post some pics - I've got some from my trip to Penna., gardening and my beer brewing - which by the way came out great... if I say so myself.