Rainy day

As the morning light crept into our room, my wife signaled to me, 'It's raining outside.'
Snuggling next to one another for warmth, both of us awake, we planned our day.
Our communication isn't verbal, but we think along the same lines. A silhouette of an ASL hand sign and a bit of one handed gestures. The light isn't enough to read by, but we can make out shapes in various shades of gray.
She had to get ready for work. I should start the coffee. Perhaps I should make her some eggs for breakfast. Comfortably warm under the covers, both of us knew we had to brave this Saturday.
The weatherman called for snow yesterday. There's another 50% chance this morning. My network of friends report flurries in Dallas and a dusting up in the Hill Country. In all likelihood we will get a drizzling sleet. Oh goody, icy cold and treacherous.
Nobody has cookie sale booths to attend.
No team practice or competitions.
Cars are in working order again.
Birthday cards got sent out.
There's a whole laundry list of things that we accomplished this week... including the laundry.
Does this mean today I will get a chance to sit down and (gasp!) write? I'm gonna try. Life happens. We all know this. Sure there are things that need to be done. Leaf raking. grass cutting. House cleaning. Repairs, projects and attention grabbing must-fix-now things. I have to actually fight for days like this where there is a six to eight hour window for me to bang away at the keyboard.
It's 9:30 and I made sure the wife had enough pressure to get her through the day. That sounds bad when I say it like that. Both her car and mine have a tire with a slow leak in it. The difference is her car tells her the tire pressure, I have to go about it the old school way, which is how I like it. Sorry, this last few weeks there has been numerous examples of needing exact gauges and reading devices. Thermometers, both for my truck and my brewing. Accurate tire gauges, alarm clocks showing the actual time.
The computer on her car may or may not be right about the tires. One more device to make a simple thing complicated. Or as my favorite Starfleet engineer would put it; 'The more complicated the machine, the easier it is to clog up the plumbing.'
I'm doing that one off the top of my head. Perhaps not the exact wording, but close enough.
And on a similar note Leonard Nimoy passed away yesterday. Star Trek was the first science fiction show that captured my imagination as a child. You can make the case that it was imprinted upon me at an early age, and you'll get no argument there. I've always been in awe of the way he portrayed one of my favorite characters, Spock. People I know have said they wanted to become doctors, scientists or engineers because they saw Star Trek as a kid. While I never had the impulse to dress up and regularly attend the conventions along with the hard core fans, I was and continue to be appreciative of the stories. Many of the concepts of the show carried over into life and I try to embrace those ideals to the best of my abilities.
People may think that's a bit stupid, but I don't agree. The farmer in Russia, a construction worker in Serbia, a longshoreman in Alaska, their lives are different. One isn't better than the other, simply different. They each have qualities that make life interesting.
Whatever we choose to be in life, try to be your best. If you want to be a woodworker, be the best carpenter you know how to be. Find something you like to do and do it passionately. Most of all, don't give up. No one hits a home run the first time up at bat. We all goof up from time to time. Don't beat yourself up. Get up, dust yourself off and learn from the experience. Most importantly keep trying to improve.

I got this

For starting the day off near freezing, it sure warmed up nicely. As I dropped off my truck at the neighborhood mechanic, I decided to walk home. Calling out to my mechanically minded friends, we determined the water pump wasn't working. Using the last of my paycheck, I bought a new pump and a belt. Might as well replace that while I was at it. Simply put, I didn't have the tools to access what needed to be done. Also since I've never done it before, it would take a bit longer for me to do it than all the hours in the day. The days aren't that long yet.
Exercise like that is good for a person. The street I took ran by the golf course and had a bike trail. One intersection also boasted a dead skunk, but we won't go into that. I was thinking about the bike trail. San Antonio isn't a bike-friendly place and I wish it were. One day I might get a three-wheeled trike so I can get out of the house more often. I miss biking and exercising for pleasure.
With the latest batch of mead underway, I can concentrate on things that I've put off for far too long, namely writing. I've tried to write something... anything at least once a day. Replacing the thermometer last week ripped me right out of that. Then things kicked into overdrive at work. People are panicking all over the place. We're getting a lot of stuff. Time for jack-of-all-trades man! Put things away? No problem. Set up a display? Can do. Construct a steel girder shelf designed to hold major appliances? Yep. 
Got home in time to cook for the girls. One had a church group meeting and the other said, 'I'm not hungry. What's it going to take guys? Perhaps I'm tired from jumping around like a crazy person. I need to slow down, but I don't see that happening for another week or two.
One thing my Clark Kent job is good for, I can do the tasks before me, but I can still think about future projects. 
Do I want to bottle the mead in something other than wine bottles? Bigger than a beer bottle, smaller than a 750 ml. wine bottle? 
Are there any advantages in a disabled person starting a business?
Is that abandoned office building a few blocks over zoned for commercial use?
These are pieces to a puzzle that need to be put together in the right order. Right now I'm at the stage of developing recipes and seeing what people like. I've got my eyes peeled for contests and tastings in the area. Later in the year, before summer kicks into high gear, I'm going to hold a tasting. I'll invite friends and people who can help get the word out. Perhaps getting an award or two wouldn't be a bad thing.
The main thing is this all takes time. Creating the mead takes the most time. Budweiser can produce it's beer in 28 days. I think that shows in the quality. Mead can take anywhere from six months to a year. With a few modern techniques I can bring a quality mead to the table in a few short months. Okay, four to six months. Let's not push that.
The reason I talk about my mead is that it's sitting right next to my desk. Without turning my head I can see the elderberry bubbling away and smell the orange.
"Dad, what's that smell?" my daughter said as she crinkled her nose.
"Would you rather it smell like beer or fruit?"
She walked away shaking her head. Life is not all pretty flowers and bunny foo-foo scents.

Snail's pace

Yesterday was pretty  depressing. My truck has been acting up and I needed to fix some things. A quick look under the hood confirmed my fears. Antifreeze spitting out from where the thermometer connects to the engine. Not good. Red specks of a torn gasket told me all I needed to know. I've replaced thermometers on other cars before, this shouldn't be that different. Indeed it wasn't. Okay, I had to walk to the local auto shop because I didn't have the right socket wrench or extender, but that's fine. Scraped the old gasket off with a razor and spatula, followed by brushing the (part that I don't recall the name of. Let's call it a flange bracket because that's what it resembles.) Let's see... nice shiny part with no bad greasy gunk on it, check. New gasket and new therm, check. New intake tube connecting radiator to engine, check. Bolts on really tight to make a good seal, check. Filled up with new antifreeze. That's where it went wrong. I didn't put the antifreeze in the reservoir. That fooled me for about 12 hours. Filled it up this evening and took her for a spin around the block. She's no longer red lining, but the damage has been done.
Post script: the water pump isn't working. That's next on my fix it list.

That was five hours of work and almost nothing to show for it. Somebody else could have done it faster, I know. My patience was worn out from that Saturday afternoon.
To keep myself from getting totally bummed out, I wanted to do another thing I've been putting off for a bit. I present to you the orange mead.

One orange crammed in there. Don't ask how I'm getting them out.

A friend gave me three pounds of wildflower honey. Good thing it doesn't go bad. It was crystallized, but that means I just let it boil for a bit more. One orange, cloves, a cinnamon stick and some raisins. Two months to clear up. Every person who's made this before says to let it age in the bottle a month or two. This batch will be ready come mid-June.
I know what you're going to say, "You should of peeled them first." No, I'm following the recipe. They specifically say not to lose the peels. Flies in the face of convention, I know. This is the area between culinary science and art form. Stay tuned for details. I then went and got some more honey to start the elderberry mead. If I want it in time for summer, I needed to do these things now. One of those times you can't procrastinate, but you need patience while making it.
It has been several hours since that last sentence. The orange mead is bubbling away furiously. Seriously, the mead thinks it is a soda. The elderberry mead is a strange shade of purple. Whereas the Prickly pear is a ruby red, I now have orange-yellow and purple-blue to add to the collection. 
I'm putting out the call now for more bottles. My wine rack is almost complete, but I'll need a place to put this eventually.

Confessions

There's a guy at work who is technically my boss, but he's an okay individual. I consider him a friend and at times he vents his frustration about being a department manager and the inane politics that go along with any chain store. Seeing that he was really at the end of his chain, I offered one or two of my beers that was going to come out this weekend.
"I"m sorry, I can't. I'm an alcoholic."
There is no correct response to those words. The very phrase, 'I'm an alcoholic', leaves a lot open to interpretation.
"That's cool," I said while nodding. I was going for acceptance there.
A few of my friends will describe themselves as alcoholics and I think that's a brave thing to admit to others. 
The left side of my brain says that it's all a case of willpower. Alcohol creates a psychological craving. Your body isn't actually dependent on it. A person has to find it within themselves to say no when someone offers them a beer.
The right side of my mind reminds me it's not that clear cut. For whatever is going on in an individual's life, people often seek solace in the numbing effects. Folks often say, 'it makes my problems go away.' That's a little lie we tell ourselves. The problem doesn't go away, the body disconnects, the mind retreats. We leave our cares and the mantle of responsibility, in some cases permanently.
My neighbor down the street couldn't face the fact that her husband passed away. Everywhere she looked, the house, the children, the furniture, reminded her of the man she was in love with.
She basically drank herself into the hospital. 
In what happened to be the greatest act of love and preservation of their sanity, the kids moved out. After the last DUI fueled car crash, the daughter was able to get her mother the help she needed.
Now hitting rock bottom and admitting you need help is often the best thing for you. It helps you  put a guard rail up so you know not to over step those bounds again.
Between a teetotaler and a perpetual wino there has to be a middle ground. By no means am I exempting myself from this examination. I've gone off on some historic drinking binges. Thankfully, I knew enough to not drink and drive. There were times where I blurred that line, but I consider myself lucky in that nothing bad happened. Hopefully I've smartened up some.
An acquaintance asked me if I was an alcoholic since I made my own brews. It's a fair question. The effort I have to put into making the beer doesn't equal what I'd get out of it. Let's do the math.
It takes 6 weeks to make the beer. 42 days. The batch that's coming out totals 46 brews. Spread out, that comes to one beer a day, two on a Saturday. Not enough to fuel a raging chugging contest. The mead is exponentially stronger, but the temptation to finish off my remaining nine bottles is next to nil. I gave most of them away. Remember I started with 24, lost two because of popped corks. I drank two. The other eleven I gave to friends and family.
If I had to put it on one reason that I don't drink heavily is because I consider it a waste of money. Why buy that bottle of wine when your kid needs shoes? I guess I've always prioritized like that. Family first, don't be a drunk.     

Last cold snap of the season

We San Antonians are experiencing an arctic chill today and tomorrow. Lows in the 30's, highs in the 50's. I can hear everyone say, 'That's nothing.'
Well, that's the point. We're not going to hit the freezing mark. In fact, I turned on the AC this last weekend. Yep, if you switch from AC to the heater in one day, you live in Texas.
My lawn mower bit the dust last year and I sort of got away with using the weed trimmer and borrowing a friend's mower. That won't do for this year. Some time soon a new mower will arrive at our stately mansion. Well, new to us. Let me run down my contacts and see what shakes loose.
This last weekend I found a recipe for orange mead. That will go in one of the two smaller jugs.
My next big batch of mead will be have elderberries in it. A good friend of mine dared me to. 
The German wheat with honey will be ready for tasting this coming weekend. I'm going on record that one case will not be touched. I'm sure that 5 or 6 from the second case will be given to friends or myself, but the rest I will be building up my summer stock.
Also I discovered the term for not-on-purpose carbonating the mead: bottle bombing.
You never know if it's going to go off.
So what should I make for my next batch of beer?
Thus far, I know what it shouldn't be.
-No pilsner
-No watery piss yellow color
-No light beer
-Not a stout or bitter
-Not an IPA
I'm willing to go with a light colored ale like the Witbier I made last year.
Perhaps I should try the Scottish Ale again, only this time make it alcoholic.
-No non-alcoholic beers while we're at it.
-Chocolate flavored beer is interesting during the holidays. All the time? not so much.
Dragging my notebook to work with me has sort of yielded results. I've written two chapters that tie up loose ends. What bothers me is that I now have another loose thread with a character who won't be seen until the third book. That's good and bad. I can insert lines throughout the second book to string things along.
Re-numbering chapters, getting a fresh set of eyes to read it and catch the things I missed... my laundry list of things I need to do. One hour a day isn't cutting it. The writing feels choppy and disjointed. I'm only beginning to find some sort of groove when I have to pack it all up and get back to work. 
And writing is work. Make no mistake, the mental focus required for this is daunting. A lot of things are going on that require my attention (and money, let's not forget that.) I'm hoping my vehicle makes it to the weekend where I can get a good look at it. A slow leak in one tire, replacing the thermostat and an oil change that is overdue. All these things I can do, but the world has to stop while I get this done.
Now I'd love to have that little pause button for the world, but that's not going to happen. It means I can't do the other stuff. So while I'm fixing the truck, the book doesn't get done. I can start a batch of mead this weekend before I dive into the grease engine. Speaking of which, I should go out there and have a look at it before heading to work.

The bell curve

The other day I went to the chiropractor. A pinched nerve in my neck was causing my hands and arms to fall asleep if they stayed in one position for too long. That could be problematic when driving or banging away on the keyboard. I'd put it off longer than I should have. He fears I may have permanent damage from pulling the heavy loads at my Clark Kent job.
Which leads me to another question. Is my work trying to kill me? The simple answer is of course, yes. There's a circular argument there.
They argue that they spend X amount of dollars on safety items. Gloves, goggles, safety belts.
Speaking from experience, those belts and gloves suck. The velcro comes undone whenever I try to inhale. The gloves are made from the cheapest products and often fall apart two weeks after put them on. It's actually better for me to purchase my own gloves. That way they actually last a full month. These items that are provided are the cheapest way to meet the work law requirements.
It's like building a house out of straw. Technically the straw house is shelter. The house is guaranteed to stand up to the sunniest of days and calmest of winds. Good luck when a little rain starts to come in.
The safety items must work well in order for us to do our jobs. I personally handle tendon slicing metal weekly. I also deal with skin dissolving chemicals as well.
Now I take extra precautions when handling the hydrochloric acid. My father once worked in an electroplating factory. The caustic chemical smell that burned my nostrils as a child is something that will remain in my memory for a lifetime. This isn't a bad experience, it just makes me extra cautious around the dangerous stuff.
The last pair of gloves I possessed bore crisscross lines from the sheet metal I put away. Like tiny little hashtags on the fingers and palms of the glove, except where the holes were. Usually I'm careful to grab the metal with my protected fingers. Go ahead, try and pick up a two by four with only three fingers, I dare you.
One time I replaced the gloves every time they tore or the stitching came loose. I went through three pairs in one week.
Either I'm working too hard or the gloves can't stand up to working conditions. I think it's a bit of both. 
We work our fingers to the bone, suffering nerve and muscle damage. Curtailing our health... and for what? There has to be something better than this.

What's going on?

The weekend was spent busily scrubbing bottles while doing laundry. I also answered texts in between cutting and sanding my wood project. I can multitask like that.
I always clean and sterilize more than I'd need for the batch because the chance of a bottle breaking are pretty good.

If you look close, you can see the chipped glass on the bottle neck and the cap in my daughter's hand. I lost 5 bottles this way. That's okay I suppose because I made 46 beers.

I was asked to write an article for a craft beer forum that I regularly visit. I know it's an informal setup, but I've asked how they'd like the article delivered. As an attachment? Do I simply cut and paste it to an e-mail? I've been in too many predicaments where a writer gets dumped because it's in the wrong format, font, or one too many submissions. Yeah, I gave this online magazine two stories thinking they could choose which one they liked better. I got a lovely rejection and politely told not to submit anything to them again. Oh well, that's how the cookie crumbles. So I will give them the article when and how they want it. In the meantime I thought I'd share it with you all. This has some brewing terms in it, but this is for a home brewing audience. This is what happened the second attempt at making beer.

Not the way I planned

A little over two years ago a microbrewery fell into my possession. Three carboys, four buckets, and a green storage container full of tubes, brushes, chemicals, and dohickeys. Like any proto-brewer, I read up on what I could find and even took a class offered at the local home brew store.

I picked up a beer making kit from the store and nervously began my first wort. I'll be the first to admit an old copy of Papazian's 'Joy of Homebrewing' was open on the counter for quick reference. My fears were for naught. The Oktoberfest brew drew praises from my circle of friends, but with the beer quickly disappearing, I needed to make my next batch.

Wanting a brew that I would enjoy, I selected a Scottish Ale as my next brew. Even if you make a tiny mistake, the beer will generally forgive you. Seeing me tear into my brewing supplies and making a mess of the kitchen, my wife and kids put their feet down.

“Dad, the house reeked of beer the last time.”

(I didn't think that was a bad thing, but that's me.)

“The stove took forever to clean,” said the wife with the stern I-dare-you eyes.

Fearing the couch and I were about to get reacquainted, I compromised by promising to clean up my own mess and let the carboy sit in a dark corner of the garage where I could monitor the fermentation. Out of sight, out of smell. Delicate feminine noses need not be offended.

Earlier in the day I heard that a cold front was heading our way, but brushed it aside by assuring myself I could easily move the carboy inside if the temp dropped. If your weatherman is anything like ours, they have been known to make a mistake or two. Mother Nature isn't as forgiving as hops or malt.

Sixteen hours after pitching my yeast, the temps dropped so fast I was left wondering if I wasn't in some cheesy sci-fi movie. I pulled the carboy inside, but the bubbles escaping the airlock were a noticeably slower. Fermentation continued for a few more days, but never picked up to the rate of my previous batch.

Keep in mind this was only my second attempt at making beer. Should I add more yeast? Was it too late to start over?

A little unsure of myself, I kept the temperature above sixty-five and hoped for the best. Racking and bottling went off without a hitch. Pouring a sample into the tube thingy, I lowered the hydrometer. It sank to the bottom of the testing tube along with my hopes and reputation as a beer maker. What did it mean by .990? Was I reading this thing right? 

By December 30^th my Scottish ale was ready for tasting.

Priming and carbonation had taken place, perhaps not as much as I wanted it to, but it wasn't flat. In fact it tasted pretty darn good! My friends came out of the woodwork for a sample of my latest batch. No one shows up for brewing day (or bottling day for that matter), but word gets out when I have a beer that needs to be tasted. Since that time I made a rule: If you want a beer, you need to show up for bottle cleaning duty. Perhaps I should make it that for every five bottles cleaned and sterilized, you earn one beer.

The second beer held less carbonation. The third had more. By that time I noticed I didn't have a buzz. Several beers and trips to the bathroom later, I felt completely sober. The Horror! New Years eve was right around the corner and all I had to show for it was non-alcoholic beer? The shame would scar me for the rest of my adult life.

Briefly I considered pouring it all down the drain, destroying the evidence, but my friends were eagerly awaiting for me to bring my latest creation to the party. Reluctantly I brought the case of Scottish humiliation to my friends house.

No one noticed.

“Hey, this tastes great!” one person said as they chased it down with a shot of Jack Daniels. Indeed, my beer went well with whatever else they were drinking. They were all getting toasted as the ball dropped, but not from my beer. All the wives were giving me the evil glare of retribution. I had to break my secret to them. Pulling one aside, I told her what I'd inadvertently done. She even drank the last of the beers to be sure I was telling the truth.

“Your husbands are getting drunk, but not as much as they think they are,” I said.

The wife I'd confessed to went to her compatriots and called off the jihad on me.

But this I swear to all beer drinkers reading this, I will never, ever, make that mistake again.

One step closer

Every time I read about NASA and the 2016 budget increases my faith in humanity gets restored just a bit.
Our robotic explorer, Dawn, is approaching Ceres.
The largest object in the asteroid belt and not-quite-a-planet will finally get a proper picture rather than a blurry dot.
We're going to Europa! I'm betting we are going to find something very interesting under the ice.
New Horizons has begun it's mission to explore Pluto and the edge of the solar system.
Heck, we're still circling a comet.
We have a lot to be thankful for and I think my eyes will live long enough to see mankind step out into the solar system and colonize it.
This showed up on my desktop a few weeks back and I thought it was noteworthy. Great Britain's Beagle II probe that went missing in 2003? People feared it was destroyed when it landed. But fear not! It appears one of the solar panels didn't deploy or it got caught up in the communications gear. One snippet I read was it was programmed to collect data, it simply can't communicate it back to Earth. When we do get around to putting someone on Mars, perhaps they could have a thumb drive to download the data and get it back for us.
I don't think anyone could have predicted that would of happened. If anything, it says how well built the craft is to have survived the landing. It also proves Murphy's law does apply to space exploration.

What Sunday?

Seriously, I didn't know today was the Superbowl. The only important thing on my mind was next week The Walking Dead resumes. At times I think that's smart and at the same time hate it. On the one hand I don't have to go a whole year without seeing this show. They give it to us in small doses and leave us wanting more. The bad news is that what they do give us is over too soon.

I don't even know who's playing, let alone care about the halftime show/commercials.

Yesterday I racked the prickly pear mead and it looks like this:

Not sure if I've invented a new color

Looks pretty good, right?
The hydrometer reading tells a different story. The yeast didn't convert the sugars and there is next to no alcohol in that. My nose tells me differently. I'm reading up on various strengths of yeast and what they're supposed to do. The one I used for this batch suggests that this mead might be ready for consumption around six months from now... maybe.

What's bothering me is that all this may be a waste of time, money and effort. That's the small voice in the back of my head whispering doubts about what I'm doing. Everything is there, it simply needs time. As friends will tell you, I'm not the most patient person on the block. Having this as a hobby is my way of teaching myself patience. Making mead doesn't have a set end time. The final result may happen this time next year. Which reminds me. I need to go buy a Sharpie so I can write down brewing notes and dates on the bottle.
The color of this batch will change over the next month or two. In the meantime I am going to try another brand of yeast, one that will yield a drinkable mead in three to four months. There are recipes out there that will produce mead in one month. Eventually I'll get around to them, but for now I'm going to use the resources I've acquired so far. I'm looking at a can of elderberry juice that is going into my next mead brew. After I get that started, we'll see what there is to be done.
That should be a title. 'What there is to be done.' Actually I think that already exists in one form or another.

One additional note: Apparently I don't know how to read a hydrometer. I opened a dry mead yesterday. They managed to carbonate and improve the taste. Also it went straight to my head and gave me a buzz that lasted several hours. It is possible the hydrometer is broken somehow, seeing as it's glass I would have noticed. So mead production resumes, full steam ahead.