Hoping for a dry ride today

The weather report is a little sketchy today for this afternoon's ride home. There is a 50% chance of rain. While I don't mind getting caught in the rain, (not much of a Piña Colada drinker) I no longer start a ride off if it is raining. It saves me the time of having to clean my bike up afterwards. Things are looking up on the relationship front today. Improved communication brings an improved quality of life. The sitter is available so We have a date tonight, and then we get to bake apple pies for the Strolling of the heifers event this weekend.

Haiku Wednesday

Breezy summer day
Cherry Blossoms tickle me
-Olfactory bliss

DS resurfaces

It seems that the double standard has returned to my life yet again. This confuses me, and I am having a difficult time understanding it. Last time is made absolutely no sense to me, and this time I feel very sad and upset because my partner simply doesn't trust me. She wants to trust me, but doesn't. My life has seemed to return to great inner turmoil as I struggle to get my arms around this.
The irony in it all is that it has been almost a year since my life started down this slippery slope. I continue to struggle and try to stay awakened. At least Tomorrow will be another fucking glorious day, and my life is mostly good.

Recharged and refreshed

Despite the plethora of activities the family and I engaged in this weekend, I still feel quite refreshed this morning. It certainly was action packed with playdates, bike rides, muffin baking, tag sales, cookouts, hot tubs, and brewing beer. On Sunday I even found some time to watch the Red Sox on the TV. I really wanted to watch the game Saturday night, but fell asleep early and missed the entire game. Back to the office today for a short but intense work week. Gotta love month end!

Extra super long weekend

I'm going to take it easy Friday and start enjoying the weekend a day early. Winter and Sarah enjoyed play date Friday. I picked them up with the bike trailer, and we went over to the crowe lot for a picnic, and some freestyle play at the playground.

The fine art of commuting & it's delicate dance

In an effort to save money, and reduce my carbon footprint, I have been searching for over a year to find someone that I could share my ride to work. Thanks to Upper Valley Rideshare it has finally come to fruition. Not only do I have one person to share the ride with, there are two people that I will be commuting with at least one day a week. This is very cool, and cost effective too.
Taking it one step further, I have also started to commute home on my bicycle two days a week. A part of my past has finally been resurrected. As some of you may very well know, before Isabel and I had children I was an avid cycling enthusiast spending a great deal of my free time riding and racing mountain bikes. The impact surrounding the birth of our first child greatly impacted my riding. While some could argue that one could simply rearrange their priorities and fit cycling in, I opted out of that one and decided that being a parent was going to take precedence. So here we are almost five years later, and I'm going to be out on my bike, riding at least twice a week. Life is good, although my coworkers think I'm gay because I'm so enthusiastic all of this.

Haiku Wednesday

Brilliant Solution
Reducing carbon Footprint
Summer cycling Rocks!

I need to check my math

Ten gallons of Pale were brewed in the basement brewery last night. I missed the target gravity by about fifty miles. I'll need to re-check my math and see if I missed somewhere in the calculations. Here are a few other places where I may not have paid close enough attention.

1. The Profile. I am still tweaking the grain bill to match the efficiency of the new mill.
2. The Grist. I am going to need to really get this dialed. Last time I brewed, I ran the malt thru twice, and nailed the gravity. This time I only ran it thru once.
   
3. The Lauter. I was busy eating dinner, and chatting with my In-laws, and not really paying that close attention to it. I may need to DIY a sparge arm or something to mechanize it a bit to increase efficiency.

My target gravity was 1.054, actual gravity was 1.040. I'd probably get fired in a commercial brewery for missing the mark by .014. Screw that, I'm not doing the math to see how badly I screwed up. Back to the drawing board. If this ferments out quickly enough, I'm making more beer this weekend.

Gratuitous Birthday Post

I'm celebrating 39 years of life on the planet today. While my present life has recently survived many ups and downs I'm grateful to have managed to make it one more year.

I work for an awesome company that gives you your birthday off! However instead of taking off today, I'm going to take off Friday and enjoy a super long weekend. I'll be taking my birthday bike ride Friday morning. Tonight I'll be brewing up some Pale Ale, and enjoying take-out from theTop of the Hill.

Pull over I'm going to boot

Saturday night was an absolute hoot aside from my impending case of acute alcohol poisoning. Iz was tired so Gibson and I dropped her off back at the inn at 9:00pm . We then returned to Connie's house to enjoy copious amounts of Yuengling lager. This would prove to be the beginning of my downfall. After most of the party cleared out Connie, Stin, Gibson, Tara and myself enjoyed a few more beers before Tara gave me a ride back to the inn.
I clearly had enough to drink, however for some reason when I returned to the inn I was compelled to enjoy a hot tub and a Storm King stout. Apparently this was going to be the straw that was going to break the proverbial camel's back. The hot tub, a 9.1% beer, and being inadequately hydrated would prove to be a recipe for disaster. I awoke with a slight hangover that got exponentially worse as the day grew on. This would eventually culminate with me booting in the grass at a rest are on the Sawmill Parkway Sunday afternoon. A hard lesson was relearned on the day before my birthday.

Party Favors

Here we are modeling the shirt that Austin designed for Connie's 40th Birthday.

What is Glibbidy doing in my living room?

This is was Connie's initial reaction when he walked into his living room Saturday evening. Needless to say he was suprised. I haven't seen this guy since Austin's wedding in 2002. Woah, how time flies. We got to see some familiar faces from days gone by. It was a treat. Heck, just getting out of town for the weekend without the children was the highlight of the weekend.
On the way down to Malvern we stopped in Bethlehem at the local Homebrew store so I could pickup supplies to make a few Belgian knock-offs, and some more lager beer. Ummmm lager.
We then made our way down to Victory brewing company for a snack and some samples before going to the bash. There is nothing like a Golden Monkey right from the source!

From the Road

We are in Bethlehem this morning visiting Big Dave and Joanne. My dad got a dog recently, and it is a Peakinease. It's name is Pam, which coincidentally is the same name as my older sister. WTF? Pammy is a very nice dog. It's off to the secret party today. Tonight we'll be staying at the General Warren Inn.

Worn out, big weekend ahead

The game was great, Schilling was a little shaky, however Hinske pulled thru last night with an amazing catch, and then sealed the Tigers fate with a two run homer in the 7th inning. Iz and I are headed to a secret location this weekend for a surprise party. It's our first weekend away without any children. Almost 48 hours of pure bliss. Oh joy. Enjoy your weekend.

Off to Fenway tonight

The Sox got rained out last night, so it's a double header today. I'm headed down to Fenway tonight to meet up with Manzo for the second game and watch Schilling work the Tigers. It should be an interesting game.

The final cut

It took me a few days to figure out Microsoft movie maker. After some trial and error I was able to add audio to the video. Hear is what you all have been waiting for... the final cut. Enjoy. I'll be pulling the link to the other video, and inserting it here to preserve bandwidth, and reduce my virtual web footprint. I'd love to hear your feedback on this either here, or here .

Haiku Wednesday

Soft wind on my cheek.
Longing to feel your embrace.
-Endless Summer days.

The crack in the road

Did you ever notice the crack in the road going southbound on route 5 from Bellows Falls to Putney? B mentioned something about it last week, and I noticed it on my bike ride home from work on Tuesday. The crack goes on for over 8 miles. Riding the bicycle home from work sure is a treat. It would be even better if I didn't have to negotiate rte 5 at all, but unfortunately it's unavoidable.

The Hefe is happily fermenting in the basement. Should be a real nice beer. I'm planning on brewing either the simple stout or a pale ale on my birthday next week. In the meantime I'm on to designing the La Maudite clone.

American Hefeweizen

My life has been pretty busy these days, and I simply have not been able to find the time to post much recently. Oh boo hoo right?
I brewed up 10 gallons of American Hefeweizen last night. I manage to nail my target gravity of 1.043. This is a huge success in my brewery.
Next weeks brew will be the Simple stout again.

Tuckermans Slideshow available

I was able to edit the pix that everyone gave me from the TUX trip. I managed to hack together a video without sound. More to come, maybe even supplemented with audio.
Credit and Thanks go to JC, Connie, and Hank for providing additional photographic footage of the trip. Sit back and enjoy the show!



EDIT: This is the final cut, the old video without sound was removed.