All Is Not Lost

The unveiling of annual holiday brew Christmas Cookie Ale didn't go as well as we'd hoped. We tinkered with the recipe this year and we tinkered too much. We added too much cinnamon and vanilla to this one and made something that borders on undrinkable. Fortunately for us we have updwards of 30 bottles of the stuff left to drink. Awesome. Just awesome. We hope it mellows out over the coming weeks and softens enough so we can drink it. For now it stares. Not mocking or tempting. Just idling in its own vat of borderline mediocrity.

One of the most excellent gifts the Amazing and Wonderful Wife gave me for Christmas is the fixins for our next brew an oatmeal chocolate stout. We've been talking about whipping up an oatmeal chocolate stout for at least a couple months now. With all that anticipation and build up I'm pumped to have all the ingredients in hand and can't wait to get brewing. I feel like each brew we do we learn a little more about the process the ingredients and how they all work together. I feel like our base of brewing knowledge continues to grow and we become more confident with each brew we make. I have a really good feeling about this one. Prosst!

Holly Jolly Christmas

2011 marked the 4th year the Amazing and Wonderful Wife and I put on our Christmas Day brunch at our lovely and modest homestead. Each year we invite all our loevd ones to celebrate Christmas without worrying about exchanging any gifts, just partake of the yumminess and enjoy yourself. In years past we've served mimosa's, coffee, (staples to all our brunches) warm apple cider with cinnamon and store bought egg nog. This year we wanted to do something special so we made our egg nog from scratch and damn was it good. We cut the recipe a little and used 3 cups of half and half instead of 3 cups of heavy cream. It still had a dozen egg yolks over a cup of sugar and 3 cups of whole milk so it still makes cardiologists very happy. My brother mentioned over dinner just before the big day that we should do bloody mary's. We didn't have it in us to tinker with our menu (go shopping for more things at the last minute) to get the fixings for them. However we like the idea of keeping the brunch new and fresh so we landed on the idea of making a signature beverage each year. So our tentative plan for next year's beverage is you guessed it, bloody marys. For now we're just basking in the warm glow of another wonderful Christmas day brunch and enjoying the best this time of year has to offer.

Oxford Companion to Beer

Here at S & S Brewing Co. we (see I) have been looking for a clearing house of information on beer. A catch all go to source of information dangling at my fingertips where I can go for all things beer. I want the end all be all for every lick of information there is to know about beer. The search for this holy grail came to a brilliant and triumphant close yesterday, thanks be to The Amazing and Wonderful Wife.

Yesterday I celebrated another year, another ring on the tree trunk. On these occasions gifts are given to celebrate the day you joined everyone else on the 3rd stone from the sun. Such was the case yesterday when The Amazing and Wonderful Wife handed me a hefty gift and was almost giddy for me to open it. After the paper was torn away and my eyes fully swallowed up what the mighty tome on beer I have just been given, I realized this is it. THIS is what I've been looking for. What is it exactly? Well the jacket says it far better than my paltry vernacular and command of the english language could conceive of. "A truly groundbreaking work, The Oxford Companion to Beer is the most comprehensive reference book ever published on the subject of the world's most popular and diverse fermented beverage. Garrett Oliver has collected the vast knowledge and research of more than 165 beer experts from more than twenty countries. The result is a complete compendium of the world of beer, comprising more than a thousand entries, many of them covering subjects that have scarcely been written about before now. From the specifics of the brewing process to beer history, from hop and barley varieties to profiles of beer-producing countries and regions, and from beer styles, food pairing, and glass to barrel aging, dry hopping, and bottle refermentation, this book covers virtually every subject of interest to the enthusiast, brewer, or food and beverage professional. Not only are the entries expertly written, they are also attractively illustrated, with numerous photographs, postcards, etchings, paintings, advertisements, stamps and brocures. The outstanindg eclectic collection of images, some of which date back to before Prohibition also inclues a full-color insert."

It goes on to elaborate on the depth and breadth of the knowledge assembled - "There are over 200 entries for hops alone, covering their histories, genealogical lineages, growing habits, flavors, and uses. Some entries reach back to the beginnings of human society and others bring us right up to the moement, expounding on such cutting-edge subjects as the recent use of wild yeast strains by craft brewers." Oh ya. The Amazing and Wonderful Wife has yet again reinforced why she is The Amazing and Wonderful Wife. (She also set the bar pretty damn high for herself for Christmas!)

Just because.

The Amazing Wife and I had a wonderful Thanksgiving at my brother and sister-in-laws house, they fried up a big ol' bird and whipped up the fixings to go along with it. My sister-in-laws family and my parents were there and everyone had a grand ol' time. The Amazing Wife and I decided we wanted to have a similar celebration but without all the work involved. We also wanted some kick ass left overs. Ya. So we roasted a nice chicken and did it up with all the fixings. We also busted out our fine china and crystal glassware that we received as wedding gifts. We drank our last bottle of Polaris, a wheat stout aged in bourbon barrels, from Rising Tide Brewery. We even got a stussied up for the event. The cause for the celebration? Our life together is damn good.

The tides continue to ebb and flow

And the world continues on its merry way around a flaming orb. Such is the way of things. Such is ka. It's been quite a while since we did the 'I hope this brew is good' dance for our weizenbeir. The dance looks like the 'I have to PEE' dance with less urgency. All our dancing and prancing paid off for the weizenbeir was a raging success! It was dark gold and more flavorful than we anticipated. It also had more body and richness than say a pilsner, perfect for a late summer day. A lot has happened in and out of the land of S & S Brewing Co. since then...come with me as we step into the Wayback Machine...

The Amazing and Wonderful Wife and I celebrated our first anniversary!! We took a mini vacation to Castine a beautiful seaside town steeped in Revolutionary war history in Down east Maine. Thankfully you won't stumble across Castine by just getting off the turnpike, it's hidden away in a tangle of state routes and country roads. We were pleasantly surprised to find few people elected to be there when we were there. We wandered around the 'town' and checked out all the cool old buildings, we got stussied up and had a wonderful dinner at a local restaurant. We stayed at a really cool old inn The Manor Inn. Tom and Nancy were super welcoming and wonderful hosts, we highly recommend the place. While we're on the topic of our anniversary the Amazing and Wonderful Wife made me a sweater for our anniversary! She measured one of my t-shirts to ensure the fit, knew what color and style I liked and whipped up a masterpiece. If you haven't seen the pics of me modeling it in GQ (I trust there are precious few of you in this group) you can see the finished product here.While you're admiring everything grab a cup of coffee and peruse the other blog posts, the Amazing and Wonderful Wife is a very insightful and articulate writer.

Also on the celebration front we've had Mr. Cecil for a year! His name is actually Cecil but the outstanding dog trainer we worked with gave him the nickname of Mr. Cecil and it stuck. We've put in a tremendous amount of work to make him a healthy happy balanced puppy and it has finally paid off. He finally got the all clear from his heart worms this fall so we started to bring him to local dog parks and nature trails. We let him run around off leash and visit with other dog friends and sniff everything he can get his cute little nose near. Since we've started our weekly excursions we've seen a dramatic shift in his personality. He's more relaxed when he sees other dogs on our walks and is clearly more comfortable in his own fur. A happy healthy balanced puppy makes for very happy dog parents.

Last but not least the beer. S & S Brewing Co. Ya. We're rolling full steam ahead on the heels of success. We're down to the last few bottles of our autumn creation a caramel apple brew. We started with a dortmunder as a base and added carapils chocolate and black malted barley to the brew to give it a sweeter more complex flavor profile. As the name implies we also added apples, a 1/2 a pound of McIntosh to be precise. The apple taste was very subtle when we first opened them up but disappeared a week after we started drinking them. With Christmas knocking on our door this can mean only one thing. Yes. Just one. Our annual Christmas brew Christmas Cookie Ale makes it move to bottles today and should be ready just in time to celebrate Christmas with the jolly bearded guy in a red suit and Santa Claus. We want to recreate the brew we made last year with a couple small changes. We really enjoyed last year's version but we want the cinnamon and vanilla to shine a little more. We added a little more of each and at a different stage of the process. Even if it doesn't get to where we want it it's still going to be a great beer. We also have some designs for our next creation, an oatmeal chocolate stout. We're looking at going all grain for that monster, but to do that we need a lauter tun. I've found some plans to build one for a minimal cost however we're hoping to find one or a way to get one for even less.

Weizenbeir

There is a lot riding on this beer. No, really there is. You see, the past two creations from S & S Brewing Co. have been total disasters. Like the bottles exploded before we had a chance to properly enjoy them kind of disasters. The most recent one, a Belgian Triple added insult to injury and tasted pretty bad, at least the little we could get from what was left of it. So even if we wanted to risk losing an eye the taste wouldn't be worth it. Ah well.

Well we are more focused and driven to creating a brew that we wouldn't be afraid to bring to a friends house now. We want this one, we need this one to be a success. We need our brewing mojo back. We're paying super close attention to sanitizing everything and crossing our lower case f's and dotting the lower case j's. The brew process is almost half way done and there hasn't been any, "that's not right..." so far so good.

The brew itself is a weizenbeir a nice crisp light refreshing  brew  perfect for summer. We should know in a few short weeks if our bubbling golden creation is a winner. Stay tuned. Happy 4th of July!

One foot in front of the other

It's a piece of advice I've heard when someone is talking about doing some grueling activity like running a marathon or hiking the Appalachian Trail. 'Don't think about the distance you have left or not knowing what's around the next corner, just keep putting one foot in front of the other.' It sounds a bit trite when you think about it, (Really? I thought if I stopped and stood around the answer to all my questions would leap out of that rabbit hole) but it's true. It's easy to get bogged down in the minutia of the hunt, the great migration, and you need to remind yourself to stop thinking about it and just do it.

The temp agency sent out a cattle call email last week about a position that would suit our family extremely well. There were 2 slots available for an initial skills test, the 2 slots filled on a first come first serve basis. I thought it was unusual that a job requiring a skills test be sent out as a cattle call and slots filled on a first come first serve basis. I put my questions aside and pounded out the phone number and landed the first slot. I was told the test would cover basic office environment skills like navigating the Internets, setting up appointments, composing word docs and transferring calls, all things I'm more than capable of doing. I felt confident about my chances and pleased with myself for being johnny on the spot, I was the first in line. I had an easy time with the test and met briefly with the person that would be doing the hiring and felt good about our brief exchange, further bolstering my soaring hopes. Today, I called the temp agency to follow up on everything. The great news is that I did extremely well on my test (not surprised) and that I was a pleasure to meet with. Also, nice to hear. Well, they promoted someone from within to fill the position. Not nice to here. Sure that's great for the person that has the job, I'm sure they're very happy with their new surroundings and change in daily routine. They're probably telling their friends and family about their new job, their new boss, maybe even talking about their new desk. Their co-workers are probably making those lame office jokes 'You're leaving us behind??' or 'You're leaving us?! Don't you like us? Hahahaha!' Everyone is a damn comedian.

This is the second promising job and interview I've been on in 2 weeks. Both of them are jobs I'm capable of performing and excelling at. Both would work well for our family, for different reasons. Both meant work. Both meant a chance to get out of house and see what the hell John Q. Public is up to these days. Both said, "Thanks for your interest but we're moving forward with someone else."

It's been almost a year since I last left the house daily for a pay check. Since then I've stayed quite busy, planning our wedding, helping break in our adopted dog, remodeling our bathroom. I've also done some substitute teaching gigs and temporary office work for the temp agency. In between I'm a Stay-at-Home Dad sans the chillins. I take care of our dog, do the laundry, the dishes, run errands, go grocery shopping and do whatever else I can to help keep the house running smoothly. I enjoy doing all of those things and keeping the house running smoothly, everyone is happy when the house runs smoothly. However we have things we'd like to do with our lives and fortunately or unfortunately money is involved with them. It's basic math more money coming in the door means the quicker we can achieve our goals. While I'm not having a lot of luck on the 'pay me for my efforts' front I'm at least getting to the interview stage, I'm getting very good at telling strangers that I'm awesome. I'm still sending out the resume and hoping someone wants to hear me tell them how awesome I am, and then offer me a job because they are so enamored by my awesomeness. I'm also taking the opportunity to give back to the world, to enrich the lives of others and satiate my appetite for being productive in a new way. I'm exploring a couple volunteer opportunities, one is with a local children's museum, and the other is with a local non-profit group that maintains a series of nature trails and walking paths in and around our fair city. Sure they wouldn't pay me for efforts, but I could get out of the house and do something different. It also helps when someone asks 'What have you done with yourself in the past year? Well, I've done all these things in my personal life and I've also been volunteering at such and such a place doing this that and the other thing.' I have no idea when I'll join the ranks of those that get paid for their daily struggles, I hope it's soon. Until then I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

And with these hands

We will spur the dawning of a new age, a novel way of life where happiness bathes the masses and peace is for sale (and lots of people are buying)...or...something. So the Tremendous Wife and I are passionate about living a simple lifestyle. We have a rain barrel to collect rain water so we can water robust vegetable garden and not drive up the water bill. We recycle everything that is recyclable and we have a compost bin that that is routinely fed all appropriate food scraps, lawn clippings and the such. This black gold then ends up in our garden to help our veggies thrive, and the scraps from them end up in the compost bin and, you get the picture. If we can use what's already available and around us to create the things we want in our lives, we're going to do it. We've started making our own beer and have made some fine brews and some forgettable ones too. Our next brew looks like it'll be an Imperial Blonde Ale, a well rounded crisp beer perfect for the summer. We've made our own mayo and our own bread, both of which were pretty tasty. We've laid off making our these for the time being. We consume a lot of each and producing both by hand would likely be more costly than to buy it from the store, hence defeating part of the purpose.

Our newest endeavor is one perfectly timed for summer, ice cream. We received a Kitchen Aid stand mixer for one of our wedding gifts and also received an ice cream maker attachment. This past weekend we kicked some of the space killing clutter out of our kitchen so we could give the KA our permanent home. Our first creation was a pumpkin ice cream that tasted like pumpkin pie sorbet, good but not great. The Amazing and Splendid Wife did a lot of researching and found a recipe for...wait for it...chocolate and peanut butter ice cream. We whipped it up and had to forcibly restrain ourselves from eating the entire batch all at once. It lasted 2 days. We're already planning on making another a batch today or tomorrow, hopefully a double batch. It has little dollops of chilled peanut butter mixed in at the end, ooooohhh my. With this stuff on hand it's not worth it to leave the house, for anything. Just be a shut in, unhinge your jaw and start shoveling. Then happiness and peace will befall the masses.

Exploding peas

We all knew it had to happen eventually, the gray dismal rain and cold that was haunting us for far too long had to make way for it's bigger and better sibling, summer. The arrival of all the mosquitoes, black flies, heat and humidity has been a a kick in the pants for our garden. We have peas, spinach, lettuce, beets, string beans and 2 spindly under performing thus far, tomato plants.

The peas with their new fence installed have exploded. I don't mean, wow all of them are sprouting and starting to grow leaves, I mean they have grown 4+ inches in a week. Ya. Some are slowing down but some are eating their wheaties and gunning for 8 inches of growth in a mere 2 weeks. Maybe all they needed was a little sunshine.

Climb away peas

For those of you that don't hang your hat and lay your heads down at night where we do, we've had 2 weeks of grey cold rainy days and cool nights. While it's perfectly normal in Iceland and we do love Iceland, this is not ideal gardening weather in these parts. Well, we have work to do on precious garden, so 48 degrees and rain be damned we're gardening. Yesterday we spread some of our own home grown compost in one of the vegetable garden beds and all the flower beds. The Amazing and Wonderful Wife planted more seeds in the vegetable garden while I mowed the lawn for the first time this year. It felt good getting outside and getting dirt under our fingernails.

Despite our abysmal stretch of weather the garden is looking good. We have some spinach and lettuce popping up, and our peas are starting to find their groove. Last year we planted peas from a seed packet that was 2-3 years old and weren't quite sure if they would germinate, let alone produce any vegetables. We were so 'eh, they're old, they won't grow' about them we didn't put up a fence to support them. Well, after a few weeks they started to grow and we figured it was just a fluke, they weren't going to do much, they wouldn't produce anything we could use. By the end of the summer we had eaten more peas then we ever have and gave away bagfuls of them. Without a fence to support them, they grew up, and then fell down and grew across the ground towards the fence that protects the garden, crawled up that and then fell down, and grew up the fence again. They did exceptionally well without a proper fence to support them and we were still up to our eyeballs in them. Well we love peas and honestly, we're greedy. We want MORE. We want a juggernaut pea crop that will blow away our prior record.

The peas we planted this year have just become tall enough to topple over if they don't have anything to hold onto so today was fence day.

I bought some 6 foot tall wooden stakes and hammered them into the ground at the outer edge of the raised garden bed, at the end of each row of peas. Then I marked a line on each stake, every 4 inches. Once they were all marked I took some string and tied one end to one steak and tied the other end to the other steak, repeat until you're done.

Once they were all tied up I took the peas and stood them up against the string so they can start to climb up instead of out. Here's a little before and after action:









Oh and the compost. Oh the compost aka black gold. We have a compost bucket in our kitchen and we drop all our fruit and vegetable scraps, left over coffee and coffee grounds and egg shells in it. All of that plus all our yard clippings end up in the bin, left to slowly decompose into rich jet black worm PACKED vitamins-for-our plants awesomeness. We dug into our compost bin yesterday for the first time this year and were absolutely giddy to see each shovel full teaming with worms. Our neighbors were probably a bit worried and confused to hear us loudly exclaim across the yard "Look at the all WORMS! Hi worms! This is great!" Hey, they're excellent for our garden, which means they're excellent for us.

To the Promised Land!

The Wonderful and Amazing Wife and I have recently returned from our 2nd international excursion in 6 months. While there are no more trips planned yet, we're digging our mini-streak of jet setting. This time we paid a visit to the promise land, the land of beer and Oktoberfest, the land of schnitzel: Germany. This was my third trip and the Wonderful and Amazing Wife's first trip over. Here's a little taste of what we crammed in during the 8 days we were in country.



We stayed in Göllheim, a very old very European looking town, neat place. This is just a house around the corner from where we stayed.





This is a church that was right across the street from where we stayed, parts of the church were built in 900 A.D.



This is a little vineyard we stopped at on our first day there. Beautiful countryside, rolling lush green hills, heavily speckled with wind turbines (we heart renewable energy!) awash in sunshine (except for that day)
and grapevines.



Falkenstein, it's a castle built in 1135.




The Amazing and Wonderful Wife and I chillin' in what we believe was a chimney in the ol' castle.



Remnants of one of the walls of Falkenstein.





Porta Nigra (the black gate) built by the Romans over a thousand years ago, in the town of Trier, which is the oldest town in Germany.



This is an old tower in the town of Donnersberg, I don't remember how old it is. I'm guessing it's been around longer than anything around here. The stone steps inside were worn down in the center from people walking on them. Or from shoddy construction. We mustered up our mustard and pushed through our fear of heights to go the top.



View from the top of the tower.









Standing in the castle looking down on our minions.



The Spanish are coming!







A very old roman coffin that's hanging out in the center of Göllheim.



We're in Germany!!!

Cat in the Hat

So I finally started my new job! I'm a substitute teacher at a local school for pre-school through kindergarten age kidlets. I've decided to go in a new direction career wise and am interested in being a teacher. I figure that being a substitute is a good way to test the waters and decide if I want to pursue it further and make a career out of it. So far so good. Each day I learn something new about how to communicate life's lessons to them in a way that they understand. I'm also finding it's a fun challenge and I'm eager to keep doing it. I've been working the past few days with kidlets in the 4-5 years old range and have found they're all pretty good eggs. I've also found I'm not nearly as tired as I thought I would be after spending several hours with a room full of toddlers.

Yesterday as nap time was winding down, the kids that woke up before nap time ended were allowed to draw quietly while the rest of their classmates finish their nap. I didn't want to disturb the ones that were sleeping and there were only a few that were awake, so I decided I would join them at the drawing table. I put pencil and crayon to paper and rocked out a pretty decent freehand of the Cat in the Hat. I brought it home because I'm kind of proud of my little pic but we don't have a need for it around here. We do have a 6 year old niece though....hhhhmmmm. I decided to write up a little story about running into this cat with a brightly striped hat in the backyard and sending the little story with the picture to our niece. Here's what I came up:

Hi 6 year old niece,

A funny thing happened to the Amazing Wife and I the other day. We were sitting at our kitchen table eating our dinner, when we heard Moxie meowing excitedly. We looked around the kitchen and didn’t see her. We checked the living room and the bedroom, and still we couldn’t find her.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“Maybe she’s in the green room”, the Amazing Wife said.

We walked into the green room and voila! We found Moxie staring out the window looking at a cat in our backyard. We thought the cat looked interesting, so the Amazing Wife and I went outside to see what was up with the cat.

When we got outside, we noticed the cat had a brightly colored hat on its head, and a red tie around his neck. He was carrying a blue umbrella in one hand and a fish in a fish bowl in the other. He was a nice cat, so we introduced ourselves. We told the cat that Moxie would like to hang out and play with the cat wearing the brightly striped hat.

“If you wish, you can come inside and join Moxie for some tuna fish”, we said.

The cat paused for a moment and said, “I’d love to but I am just passing through, I have some things to do with my friends Thing One and Thing Two.”

We were sad that the cat couldn’t stay with Moxie and play, but we understood that he had to go.

“Come back soon won’t you?” we asked. “You and Moxie would have lots of good fun that is funny, when the sun is sunny”, we added.

“That I will do and I’ll bring my friends Thing One and Thing Two!” exclaimed the cat.

And that was that, off went the cat with a brightly striped hat. We don’t know what his name is or where he came from. It’s been a few days since we saw the cat, and Moxie still wants to play fun games with the cat. We’re trying to find the cat and aren’t having much luck. We didn’t have a chance to take his picture, but I drew this picture of the cat from what we remember of him, have you seen him?? Moxie would like to hang out and play with the cat that had a brightly striped hat!

Ya, I could get used to this job.

Reykjavik to Belgium

Awhile back S & S Brewing Co. took a stab at our first lager, a black lager. Lagers require a constant cold temperature to properly ferment and because of the extra hand holding involved we felt this would be a good test of our brewing chops. We brewed it at the end of our bathroom renovation and wanted to name it for something having to do with the new room where you get clean. "New Toilet Seat Lager" or "Black and White Hex Floor Tile Lager" doesn't roll off the tongue, so we put the name conjuring process on the back burner while putting the finishing touches on the bathroom. We decided to hang some nice pics of nature and landscapes from our honeymoon in Iceland on the wall when it hit us. Iceland is covered in volcanoes and black volcanic rock, we have pics of beautiful Iceland in our marvelous new bathroom, and our newest brew is a black lager, how about calling our black lager, Lava Rock Lager!? Perfect! We opened the first one and the beer started gushing out of the bottle and all over the kitchen. Not a good start. It wasn't as clear as it should have been for a lager either, also not good. All that aside it tasted ok. We figured we'd just careful about opening them and make our way through them as quickly as possibly to get rid of them as quickly as possible. One fine weekday morning the Fantastic Wife and I are having breakfast when we hear a loud pop sound, we looked at our furry 4 legged children, suspecting one of them knocked something over, nope, they're both relaxing quietly on the living room floor. It sounded like it came from the basement...where the Lava Rock Lagers are lying in wait....oh no. One of the Lava Rock Lagers exploded. The gushers had progressed to bottle grenades, the ultimate death knell for home brews. Seeing as one went we had to get rid of the rest to avoid having them all blow up on us. As hard as it was to pour 15 beers down the driveway it wasn't all pain and suffering, a couple of them shot a plume of beer 1-2 feet into the air. A little research tells us that the gushing and subsequent boom boom condition is caused by contamination at the bottling phase and we think we were able to pinpoint the exact moment it all went wrong, (lack of sanitizing after syphoning.)

So, fast forward to a couple days ago, armed with new knowledge about being super extra clean with all that we do we bottled our Belgian Triple. We think we got this one right, we'll have to wait and see. We're wrestling with a fistful of ideas for our next batch, right now the front runner is a caramel apple ale. The contenders include a vanilla porter and chocolate hazelnut porter. We have some brews we want to do for the warmer weather, something light and drinkable like a pilsner, but they actually need warmer weather to ferment properly. By warmer I mean in the mid 60's. We keep our house in the high 50's during this time of year, so we have to wait for Mother Nature to get her head in the game before we can start brewing them.

Finalmente! Endlich!

It's done! We finally finished! The project that we thought would never end, pushed our buttons and pushed our house closer to the 21st century, has come to a glorious close. Yes, the bathroom is done. Well we finished some time ago, close to 2 months ago actually. So without further ado here are a few pics of before during and after.












After this one we decided that our kitchen is going to wait until next summer, this summer is all about kayaking, hiking, camping running around the beach with 1 of our furry 4 legged children, (the other is a cat and would not jive with being outside) and spending time outside these 4 walls and generally having a great time. That being said we have decided we're willing to conquer rebuilding our shed this summer. Our current shed, which we've affectionately named Fred, isn't large enough to accomodate our canoe or kayak. They live at my Mom's place and we'd like to bring them home.

wie geht's?

Sehr gut! Some time ago I had mentioned in passing to the Fantastic and Spectacular Wife that I'd like to learn German so I could chat with my Aunt Uncle and two cousins that hang their hats in the German countryside. They all speak wonderful English so it isn't a matter of being able to communicate with them, I simply want to have the ability to converse with them in their native tongue. And it would also be cool to be able to order a meal or get around a town, or when we ask where the bathrooms are hopefully we don't tell them we're riding a train with purple chickens without pants. Being ever so attentive The Fantastic and Spectacular Wife made a mental note and bought me a No Nonsense Knowledge, German Made Simple book for Christmas. In between rounds of wrestling with Project Make Our Bathroom Less Ugly I've delved into it to see what I can do.

So far I've been trying to memorize definite and indefinite articles and some basic vocabulary. So far so good. We communicate with everyone over there through email primarily, and now my cousins who are both teenagers are reaching that age and have just joined Facebook so my paltry knowledge of the grammar and syntax is receiving an early stress test. I've swapped a message or two with one of them and his reply in English made sense with what I wrote in German, so I didn't muff it too horribly or he's just being really kind. I'm going to have to double down on the reading because we've just bought tickets to go visit them. Our trip is perfectly timed with the confirmation of my youngest cousin. I don't fully understand the social significance of it to the German culture other than it's big. I also know that it happens when you're a certain age - 13, and it's through the church regardless of your attendance record on Sunday mornings. They both attend public schools and I believe they, the schools, are often involved too. Everyone gets all dressed up in their Sunday best and shuttles off to the church for the ceremony. After the ceremony itself wraps the day turns into a massive party complete with lots of time in front of the camera, more awesome delectables of the solid and liquid type than one can handle, and gifts of cold hard cash being bestowed upon the confirmed one. The cash is intended to be a jump start on savings for college or some sort of post high school education. Teaching people to save for their future from an early age, what a crazy idea.

This will be my third trip there, the Fantastic and Spectacular Wife has been to Europe but not Germany. My first tour was back in 2001 just after I graduated from college and the second was for the elder cousin's confirmation back in 2007. This will also be the first meeting of the branch of the family from across the pond and the Fantastic and Spectacular Wife! We're over the moon excited for our trip and have already starting talking about the sights and the food and all the family we'll get to see and meet, and of the course, the beer. Oh the beer. This is the promise land for beer. The country holds a month long celebration of beer every year, the Germans KNOW beer. We're secretly hoping and dreaming we can glean some sort of magical insight into how they make such outstanding beer and then apply that to our very own creations. We're familiar with the famous brewing law, the Reinheitsgebot, the "Purity Law". It's said to be one of the oldest food regulations in the world and still exists today unchanged from the original. Ye Olde Google tells me it was ordered by Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria in the year 1516 and declared that beer should only be brewed from barley, hops and water. Thanks to the regulation, Bavarian beers then became leaders among their peers and other lands of Germany also enforced the regulation. Today, yeast is also recognized as a vital ingredient, but it was a brewing element whose effect was unknown at the time the law was written. Back then, brewers would just use the yeast that was present in the air. Even today the Reinheitsgebot is still the most important law affecting brewing in Germany and German brewers still observe strict compliance with the Reinheitsgebot. Even if we don't have some sort of divining moment of inspiration or epiphany we'll have a marvelous time with friends family and drinking our research!

Perfect 48

S & S Brewing Co. has had some early success with our first 2 creations, our Dark Horse Porter and what will be our seasonal brew Christmas Cookie Ale. Ready to explore the next brew frontier and eager for a challenge we've decided to take advantage of the cold weather and test ourselves and rock out a lager. We have just brewed a fine (we think it will be we haven't actually tasted it) Black Lager. We're capitalizing it because that is the brews name....for now. It was suggested to me by someone on Facebook that we name it after something having to do with our newly renovated bathroom. I think there is some potential there, we just need to explore it a bit.

Lagers are tricky for homebrewers to make because they require a constant cold temperature during fermentation, right around 45-50 degrees. Usually most homebrewers will toss the carboy in an old fridge, but we don't have one of those laying around. What we do have is colder than a fridge and its abundant. Mother Nature has released Old Man Winter, her icicle ridden child upon us without his dinner. He helps keep our basement stay at a cool 48-50ish degrees in the winter and with the winter we're having now the mercury isn't going much higher until July. While the basement itself is probably sufficient we don't want to risk losing our precious creation. We created our own fridge by tossing the carboy into a bucket with a hole in the bottom and put that in a big plastic tray. Now and then I head outdoors, grab a bunch of the white stuff and drop some around the carboy to make sure it stays cool. After shoveling out the driveway today I took a gander to see how our fermenting child is doing, lo and behold it's resting at a lager perfect 48 degrees.

Vestiges of sanity

It's done....almost. The bulk of the missives here have been gasconade about all the work we've done on our bathroom and ya know what? It is FINALLY paying off. The pay off isn't elaborate or immense, it's simply that we almost have our bathroom back again. Sure, we're immensely proud of the fruits of our labor and all the tricks and methods we've learned along the way. We've enjoyed or maybe I should amend that, I have enjoyed, seeing the guts of our house. It was a thrill to find a pile of old razor blades in between the walls underneath where the old medicine cabinet used to be, and the measurements of the dimensions of the old medicine cabinet scribbled on the backside of the adjacent walls. Even the old blown insulation and shower pipes were interesting in their own way. Some of these things haven't seen the light of day in almost 60 years. But now if we lean forward sticking our arms way out in front of us we can almost break the finish line tape. We tiled the final wall of the shower yesterday, so now we have to wait 24 hours for the whole hot mess to dry and then we can grout it/caulk the seams, seal the grout, hang our shower curtain and for the first time in almost 2 months take a shower in our own shower. Oh and we have to hang crown moulding too. Compared to hanging backerboard and drywall on uneven walls or installing a pedestal sink that has a pedestal with 12 inches of open space in the back for access to the pipes (as opposed to the traditional fully open back pedestal) and leveling floors, crown moulding will be a damn picnic. We're running the moulding around the perimeter of the entire room including over the shower tiles. The tricky part will be wrapping the trim over the edge of the tile onto the wall itself. Normally most people would opt for something different but hey this is what we want to do. So we're looking at possibly cutting a return at the edge to wrap the moulding over the tile. Oh and the tile is about 1/8 of an inch thick. I'm damn handy with the miter cuts but that is splitting hairs. We'll see, maybe I'll uncork my finest miter cut yet. Anyway, we can't do anything else in there until the adhesive cures, so we have to wait a little longer before we can return to a realm we once knew: Normal.

1 Step Forward and 2 Steps back

Or maybe it's the other way around, I guess it depends on your where you're standing. So the bathroom is still under construction, quell surprise. We had a super productive weekend, we got the second wall of the shower tiled and installed all the window and door trim as well as all the baseboards. We even hung our trusty new medicine cabinet. But now our sink is leaking. It's a pedestal sink and it's not just any pedestal sink. Most pedestal sinks have a pedestal that is fully open in the back. But ours, ours a special, so very special that it has 2 small openings near the top and the rest is all enclosed. So to do any work on the pipes requires you to take apart the whole sink. I've installed it and taken it apart several times now trying to clear up the leak and have been met with early success only to strike out a couple hours later. The most recent attempt resulted in one of the best plumbing jobs I think I've ever done, everything lined up perfectly and fit nice and smooth. I turned on the water and let it run, no leaks. Voila problem solved. I felt like we were on top of the world, walls were getting tiled, sinks were working rabbits were jumping out of the toilet and turning into 100 dollar bills. Then we returned a few hours later and found a small puddle at the base of the pedestal. We hadn't used it in hours and it was leaking. Neato. I wanted to turn the thing into a planter and never water it. I wanted to deny it the one thing it was created to do as if that would somehow solve my frustrations. I've checked all the slip nuts, hand tightened all of them, and tested them for leakages and can't feel any water leaking out from any of them. I even resealed the base of the basin and the drain pipe, still no water there. I don't want to call a plumber for a multitude of reasons but I'm just about done with this damn thing. There are only a few parts to it and they're all dry and clean, I'm beginning to wonder if I didn't line up some pipe inside just right or something. We've been busting our asses on this bathroom and are finally getting to the finishing touches stage and now the sink gets a case of diarrhea. Eh. At least we only have one more wall to tile.

And....Go.

They say you get the dog that you need. I've heard this said about other things in life, i.e. a job, a promotion, a demotion, all sorts of major life events. I don't know if I fully agree with all of those, I don't know if you get the promotion or demotion that you need. I suppose in some ways it's true maybe the demotion or promotion spurs you onto something new, bigger or smaller, better or more enchanting. Long story short it does something for you. Sometimes it does nothing at all and it simply becomes your new reality. I feel that's often the case because most of those events are a result of decisions that are made by others. Sure you have some input directly or indirectly and sometimes you think what you're doing is valuable substantive input that will weigh heavily on the outcome only to find out in the end it didn't. Getting a dog though, that's something you and yours decide. The dog doesn't decide you get it. You might think it does "It ran right up to me and jumped all over me, it's a sign he/she loves me already!" No, no it doesn't. It's curious. Throw your ass down a well and see how much that dog really loves you. Is it sending a tweet to the Fire Department to come pluck you out of the well? Is it building a ladder out of twigs and rope it found laying around? Jeffrey Dahmer could have risen from the dead and walked into the cell and the dog would respond to him the same way it did to you. It's curious, it has little to do with it loving you by seeing you. So when you do decide to bring a dog into your happy little world they say it's the dog you need. It's karma or the universe working its magic with you and delivering some sort of message or lesson. Maybe you bring home a dog that is a couch potato and it's the universe telling you to slow down and appreciate the little things in life. Maybe you have an energetic happy go lucky dog that is going to be the kick in your craw to get outside and move around everyday.

The Fantastic and Loving Wife and I adopted a wonderful rescue dog named Cecil. Our furry charge is a teenager, he's only 2. He's afraid of just about everything, snow blowers, trucks, the cat, the vacuum, any loud noise and a whole list of other things. He also seems to have the amazing ability to change the size of his intestines and his bladder at a moments notice. We feed him the same amount of food each and everyday, he also goes for 2 walks a day. Ideally they're a half an hour at least but with winter wrapping its arms around us we have to cut that down because it's dangerous for the little guy. We can go for a walk and he'll come home and have breakfast and then lay down on his cushion in the sun and relax all day. Then we can take him for a walk at night and he'll usually poop and pee. Then, we'll come inside and he'll have his dinner and within 20 minutes he has to go outside to poop and pee again. 1. He just pooped and peed 15 minutes ago what else is left in there? 2. We went through this routine 11 hours ago in the morning and he didn't have to rush out and fill up the backyard, why now?

We've had our wonderful little furry child for 3 months now and I spend the most time with him, because I'm unemployed. Some days he's chilled out and mellow, other days he's a typical teenager. I'm a patient relaxed kind of guy and I found once we brought him home he was getting on my nerves like there was no tomorrow. I had no idea how it happened. How did I go from relaxed and mellow to plucking my eyes out after he whines for the umpteenth time in 2 minutes. I later concluded that he's a physical manifestation of my job search. Looking for a job is a job itself and to me anyway it feels like it's a rock in my shoe that I can't get out. It's always right there sometimes you step and it's shifted just enough that you don't notice it as much. Then you take a step that one step, and its like a boulder fell in your shoe. So I began to associate him and his various needs, trips to poop and pee every 10 minutes periodically, his need to leap around the icy roads while we try to traverse them, his need for constant attention at times, his need to investigate the cat, (the cat has told him in no uncertain terms she doesn't need him around for anything.) Then I realized that's only part of it, he's not the sole reason I got more frustrated all of a sudden.

I feel like I need to find a job and get back to work. Pretty simple. I know what I'm looking for and what I want, the economy and the companies that have the access to The Button aren't seeing it my way. "I'm perfect for this job, I have years of experience, why won't you call me for an interview at least!?" Seeing as things aren't going so well in my chosen field I'm branching out and looking at other things and things are finally starting to come around there. I'm still out of work but things are progressing. Progress. Progress is good. I felt since I've been out of work that while I'm here at home I'll do the things around the house that need to be done i.e. do the dishes, make dinner, tidy up here and there, take out the trash or buy groceries, you get the idea. It was monumentally helpful in planning our wedding I had 8 hours a day to do nothing but work on the wedding, it was perfect! When I joined the ranks of the unemployed I felt like doing things around the house pulled me away from finding a job. They're all wonderful things and they all need to be done, and since I'm home all day I should be the one to do them. But, that still didn't help me find a job so my frustration never really went away it just sat there just idling under the surface until Mr. Cecil came into our lives.

I was talking with the Fantastic and Marvelous Wife last night and told her what I was thinking, about Cecil being my job search and doing the things around the house while I'm happy to do them, I felt like they pulled me away from trying to find a job. I feel like its my job to find a job. She pointed out that yes, you should continue to try to find a job but that's not the only job you have right now. Your other job is Stay At Home Dad and that the house runs more smoothly with me home all day than it did when we were both at work all day. No, we don't have chillins, just a dog and a cat. But the dog as mentioned above can be a handful. And no, you don't need someone to stop working and stay home 8 hours a day with a dog. I am a Stay At Home Dad for him, for the house and most importantly for us. My job is the laundry, the dishes, cook the dinner, take the trash out, run all the errands that need to get done during the day, clean the place up. (And, work on Project Make Our Bathroom Less Ugly and at some undetermined point work on Project Make Our Kitchen Less Ugly.) She helped me to see that finding a job and working at a job is not the only thing out there. Keeping the house running is a big job that we spread out between us when we were both working. Now that I'm out of work, it's my job and Cecil is simply a part of the house. Cecil is still a physical manifestation of my job search (I feel he is anyway) but I now realize he didn't make me frustrated by his presence alone, he was just something that we couldn't control that took me away from working on finding a job. We can do the dishes another time, we can take the trash out later but we can't skimp on taking him for his walks or taking him outside to bomb our backyard. He's just a dog being a dog, and a great one at that. We are very very lucky we ended up with him. For all the things I throw out that he does, there's a massive list of things that he DOESN'T do. He really is a marvelous intelligent loving and cripplingly cute little guy and we love him to pieces.

After talking with the Stupendous and Magnificent Wife last night, I woke up today and feel better engaged in my task and ready to take it on. We got up super early and trekked into town to pick up one of our cars, stopped at the gym, came home and made breakfast and coffee for the Awesome and Spectacular Wife. Then I took Mr. Cecil for a sporty little jaunt, fed him his breakfast, rocked out the dishes, cleaned the sink and the rest of the kitchen. I then rocked out some laundry. I took a break for lunch and a little Wii bowling and Wii tennis. I absolutely pummelled the computer at tennis, it was vulgar. They didn't score one point until late in the second game in a best of three. After that I did some job searching, figured out what to cook for dinner and once I'm done with this epistle I'm shipping up to the grocery store. There is also some laundry to fold and put away too, so now I must be going, I've got a job to do!

Sparing

Project Make Our Bathroom Less Ugly has cleared its biggest hurdle, the floor is in! Don't all applaud at once, simmer down now. To get to this point we had to take the toilet out (and leave it out) for a few days while we installed cement board on top of the existing floor and then lay the tile. On TV laying tile looks as easy as making a pb and j. So not true. Here's how it really works for those of us that don't draw a paycheck from spinning a trowel. You get the thin set down and it sticks to the neighboring tile. Then it's too thick over here and way too thin over there so you spread it out. By now half the tiles you're going to lay are coated with thin set and you have tile spacers stuck to your fingers and maybe an errant one stuck to the dog. Then as you're laying it on the floor it catches the edge of a spacer and pulls the spacer down into the thin set underneath the tile but this isn't realized until you actually get the tile laid on the floor and sit there pounding on the high spot swearing wildly because it won't flatten out. Once the little bastard is found and removed and the tile is re-laid, you realize the thin set was put on way too thick and has oozed up in between and onto all the tiles. How that can be I spread it super thin over there? So you peel it up again spread the thin set around again, and drop it again. As you can tell by now the first round of tile laying didn't go very well. We had them all in but yours truly muffed laying a majority of the sheets of the wonderful hexagonal tiles, in the center of the room. It wouldn't be so bad if it was in the corner behind the toilet, but no, right smack dead center of the room. It was like it they were daring me to do something about it, "Hey there slappy, we're shifting to the left and the right and creating all sorts of awkward gaps! Touching! Not touching. Touching! Not touching." We ripped them out and taught the dog and the cat some new swear words, then drop $50 bucks on 2 more boxes of tiles. Part of the reason the tiles in the center went in poorly (well, 99% of it is my fault, the rest isn't, really!) is a ridge that runs right down the center of the room. I saw it before I put the tiles in but thought it would be hidden and not a problem. It was like a small mountain range running from the toilet out towards the wall. I tried sanding it down but that was futile so we bought some floor leveler and leveled it out, and what do you know it worked! The ridge is a lot less pronounced and the tiles went it much more smoothly this time around. My back didn't cramp up from being hunched over on the floor for several hours, the stream of profanity was almost non-existent and it just looks a lot better. We can't take all the credit for this, we did have assistance from a very generous friend of ours who used to do general contractor/home construction work.

Tonight we're going to grout it and provided that goes smoothly we can call the floor 'done.' Then Thursday is install our new pedestal sink, hang the mirror and medicine cabinet day. This weekend we're setting our hands to laying the shower tiles and you all know what that means....finally taking a shower in our shower. Oh ya and calling this thing done.