"Season" or no "season," forgotten or omnipresent, I personally have been incredibly busy. I am, however no philanthropist, and the reasons for my engagement have been entirely selfish. So, without further ado, I shall proceed to catch you up on my various works in progress that have been devouring all my time.
To begin at the beginning: the promised homebrew update! β1 was simply fantastic! It probably came out a little more intense than the recipe intended, but intense is always good. Checking back at my original notes, I wrote, "Light, crisp, fruity, beautiful golden-brown colour. Tastes of apples and grapes. Not at all skunky. Yum! Nicely carbonated, too. Fantastic as a summer beer. Definitely a make again in the proper season." Ah, but with regards to the carbonation, the first few six packs were highly carbonated, almost like a Belgian farmhouse ale, and the last few have been barely fizzy at all. At first I was thinking that I had over or under filled the bottles, but upon closer examination, I was too consistent in that regard for that to be the case. The best I can come up with, is that I didn't mix the bottling malt into the beer thoroughly enough. So, I'm thinking, if some of the bottles ended up with more sugar, they would also be more carbonated than their less-sugared brethren. Other than that, it was fantastic.
In fact, it was so fantastic, I'm currently fermenting a porter (β2.) Actually, it's not really fermenting anymore, I'm just procrastinating the bottling. (I don't know why, but I HATE bottling. There's no real rational reason, especially after the last very successful round. Oh well, maybe I'll get over it.) The recipe is called "Goat Scrotum Ale" (can you tell it was chosen by my darling husband?) and it has just about everything in it. By everything I mean malts, barley, chili peppers, juniper berries, grated ginger, and (here's the kicker) real whole hops! I had used the pellets before, but this time I went all the way, and I couldn't be more stoked. Just seeing those little green flowers in my pot on my stove was pretty exciting, nevermind the smell!
It's that smell that has me thinking my next brew will be a super super hoppy. I'm thinking a Victory Hop Wallop or maybe a Terrapin Hopsecutioner. In any case, it will be loaded with Cascade hops, which by the way are certainly my favorite hop of the moment and may yet transcend categories to become my new favorite flower.
Also in the category of long-promised updates is my Ren Fest costume. I have spent a large chunk of the last month working on the construction of my faire attire. The bodice of my dress is complete, and I'm nearly finished with the whole dress. I'm contemplating altering it, but if so I'll wait until I'm actually through with the dress first. In the boot department, I found that making them would be very difficult and cost me as much as buying a pair. That fact pooh-poohed my plan for a few days, but then I looked harder. I found a faux suede pair in the style (and my size!) I wanted for about half the cost of the least expensive pair of real leather boots I'd seen. So that was that. I abandoned the construction plan and forked over the $30. At this time, I'm taking a break from the sewing, but I'll post pics when the ensemble is complete, never you fear.
Alongside of my more productive hobbies, I have also picked up what I consider to be a purely useless waste of time. That said, I thoroughly enjoy it. I really do feel guilty about saying this, but thanks to Christmas, we now own a PSP and a PS3 and I love them both. I've been a fringe gamer-girlfriend/wife for a long time but I've really only played a few games, and those were mostly in a party-type setting. By that I mean I've sat on the couch and watched my boy kick ass and been just as into it as he was, but rarely have I been inclined to kill some sprites myself. But thanks to Patapon and Fairy Tale Fights, it is now a known fact that I like brutally maiming and slaughtering cute enemies. I know, I know, what a waste of time and money. And in truth, I don't play that much, due more to the fact that I suck than any kind of self-control or other higher motivation. Actually, the gaming phase began with a Samurai game on my husband's iPhone. I do not suck at slashing the life out of angry sword-wielding basket-wearing bad guys. I beat that game. (Yes, I am proud.) But that was the end of that. I beat the game (admittedly on easy) and I have no inclination to go back and play it again. This leads me to think that I lack some of the obsessive drive to qualify as a true budding gamer. We shall see.
As if that wasn't enough sitting around like a lump, my old passion has again rekindled in my tiny little lump of coal heart. That is to say, I have been and am again a devourer of books. My major holdup on this point has been a lack of supply. If one is a voracious reader, one needs a constant and consistent supply of new material. Books are unfortunately expensive, and a library card requires some amount of adherence to a schedule. (For some reason, the moment I introduce a schedule to my life, things that I have been chomping at the bit to do suddenly go unfinished. I think I like to pretend that I'm entirely lawless.) So I have been at an impasse. Enter PaperBackSwap. This simple little online book club has made it possible for me to give my read books to someone who actually wants them, and get books I want without time constraints or undue expense. It's a pretty nifty concept.
Whatever the reason, the sitting on the couch eating ramen, dried cranberries and chocolate, drinking beer does definitely make me feel like no less than Jabba the Hut. So despite the cold, Spoot and I have been geocaching and hiking frequently. If you've never heard of geocaching, I seriously recommend checking it out. The basic gist of the game is that someone hides something (a cache) and posts the GPS coordinates. Using those coordinates, you go find it. Every cache has a log book for the finders to sign, and some have space to trade small items. After you find the cache, sign the log, trade whatever you're going to trade, celebrate, etc, you re-hide the cache for the next seeker. The effect of playing this game is that I find myself poking around in holes in trees and the like because there really may be something in there. Actually, our first found cache was a complete accident. We were on the way back from the beach and stopped in a state park for a while to stretch our legs. While we were roaming about, Spoot the curious little monkey started poking in a very cool looking hole in a rock and found a camoed pill bottle. Huzzah! Our first cache. Every find after that has been deliberate, and out of four attempts we've found three caches. It really is absurdly fun.
Somewhere in the midst of all this wide and varied madness, I've also been working and sleeping. Phew! Reading back over it all, it sounds exhausting, but somehow doing what you love is never exhausting in the same way as just endlessly working. Sure, being busy is tiring, but being busy doing what you want to do? Now that's the life.
P.S. I did notice that bisexuality did not make an appearance in this post, and I am sorry but it is already quite lengthy. Really. One has to draw the line somewhere. Fear not, dear reader, I shall not let you down for long. I have the material, so stay tuned for more episodes of my bisexual hodge-podgey life.
0 comments:
Post a Comment