Today’s a brewing day! It smells amazing in here like chocolaty caramel malt with notes of bitter, grapefruity hops. It’s been a long time since I’ve brewed any beer. This batch is meant to be for RuffinIt 2009.

I’m making a batch of Scotch Wee Heavy Ale right now based on a recipe from South Hills Brewing. They don’t have the kit I linked to anymore because the maker of the malt extract has gone out of business, but they substituted a similar one while maintaining all of the other ingredients. It should come out well.

I set out to make a Scottish Ale similar to Belhaven, but got off-course somewhere along the way and am making a Wee Heavy.

It’s in the carboy now for it’s fermentation. The air lock is already bubbling because I used a yeast starter.

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News, Pictures by Jack

I went for a ride today with my friend, Dave, and his friend, Ted. We rode about seven miles in about an hour forty-five. Given that they road bike all winter, I just couldn’t keep up with them and they had to wait for me a few times. (Thanks, guys!) In my defense, I’m a fatty. All the time spent jogging and on the stationary bike this winter has helped me to lose some weight and keep my stamina up somewhat, but it just doesn’t prepare you for the constant-sprint that is mountain-biking.

I snapped some pictures along the way, including one of Ted going down the hill we’d just climbed to meed up with Dave who’d bent his chain ring. The bevy of tools I keep in my bag came in handy today.

It was a lot nicer out than it looks in these pictures. It was around 60 degrees, but the overcast skies and barren forest make it look a lot colder. In three or four weeks these trees should be all leafed-out.

Man, it felt great to get out there. I was a bit wobbly, missed my line a bunch of times, and had one minor crash, but overall I did alright. I’m looking forward to lots more of it this year.

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Pictures by Jack

A while back we bought this small bed for Cookie to have during the day. She didn’t have anything to lay on for a little while because they’re not allowed on the furniture when we’re not home (except the ottoman which Simon lays on) and because there are no carpets anymore since Cookie liked to destroy them while we were at work. On the day we brought the bed home, Simon laid claim to it:

"Who cares if it’s a bit of a tight fit? For small-to-medium dogs? Seems to fit my gigantic frame just fine."

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Pictures by Jack

This weblog is back online! Yay! It’s only been, what, six weeks since it went offline? After switching to Verizon FiOS, I discovered that they block HTTP port 80. Since I ran this blog out of our house, no port 80 meant no blog. I explored my options and in the end chose to buy some web space from a hosting service. I went with DreamHost, if you’re interested. While is sucks to be paying for something I used to get for “free,” as part of my internet connection, it is nice knowing that I don’t have to tend to the server anymore. DreamHost will take care of all that for me. They’ll keep it patched and secure. They’ll handle my backups. That alone is probably worth the cost of the hosting.

Now that we’re back online, feel free to kick back, relax, and watch me update this site with my regular irregularity.

I realize this site looks different, funny even. I know. Even though this one is running the same software as before – WordPress – my old blog was running a way-old version so I wasn’t able to easily copy over the look and feel from the old one. I just picked a theme that had the same basic style as mine and I’ll be updating the colors & graphics sometime soon.

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News by Jack