baycityblues (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} baycityblues) wrote,@ 2007-10-22 13:44:00 |
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pretty good
first off sorry i haven't written more. actually more accurate is sorry i haven't felt like writing more. sometimes i get carried away with myself and i seem to have done it with writing. i decided it's so enjoyable (and it usually is) to write this blog, that i should write "seriously" or some such thing. so i sat and tried to...hell i don't know what...write the great american novel or short story or some crap and i got myself so worked up i didn't want to write anything.
so i stopped writing that and waited for it to go away and now i have a few things to go on about.
i want to go out for a while this afternoon because it's actually like a sunny day with blue skies and it's really nice outside. as far as i can tell this may happen for a week or so and then the sun will come back in april or may. i'm not complaining (not a lot anyway). it's way better than the weather is in new jersey. and the rain isn't quite as annoying somehow.
i'm so relieved that i was able so quickly to come to terms with having made a mistake and able to grok how i feel about our standards. the fact that Tonya agrees only emphasizes how lucky i am. i'm a damn sight happier with work now and i can see that our callers are too. (and i turned off those horrid ads that yahoo marketing wrote for me. i mean, i don't blame them. i DO appreciate their work. and they DO get clicks. more clicks than mine do. but it isn't the kind of traffic that we want and it isn't the type of caller who wants what we offer either). i just refuse to run ads like that anymore. if you didn't see them, good.
yesterday we went to see the Portland Center Stage's production of Cabaret. Tonya hadn't ever seen it, but I've seen the movie and two other productions of it. the one thing i remembered going in was that it's LONG. but i enjoyed this production immensely and really wasn't bothered by the length at all (even though i'm not sure they chose the best chairs possible when the built this theater). someone i didn't really know, though apparently everyone else in Portland does, named Storm Large. she (or maybe more accurately, the people who cast and produced the play), seem to have gotten a whole bunch of crap because she isn't somehow a real enough artist for them. or she was (GASP) a rock singer with an attitude. or maybe because she's good looking and tattooed. i'm not really sure. but i thought she did a hell of a job.
interesting side note was that we saw Woody Harrelson at the play. Tonya told me that he's filming around here somewhere. i felt kind of sad for him in a way. he's trying to avoid getting beset by assholes, which i can certainly understand (dispatch on a friday and saturday night and you'll get it. and those guys at least aren't showing up in person). but the first act is over an hour and a half, and like i said, i wasn't so certain about the chairs, so you want to stretch your legs at the break. but he's a celebrity and people are going to recognize him. so he comes outside with the smokers (proudly exiled to stand directly in front of the door and smoke in everyone's face with no ashtray in sight), even though he doesn't smoke. then he pulls up the collar of his jacket and pulls his hood down over his head. by now, of course, everyone standing outside smoking knows exactly who the hell he is and everyone backs five feet away. he's facing the street and the max train goes past and the people on it stare at him. so he turns around and so does everyone else outside, and he just stands there alone in an empty circle for ten minutes. weird and sad in a way.
Tonya had her first read through and met the other actors in her play and seems real happy with all (well almost all) of them. i think i'm as excited about it as she is. i can't wait until they start rehearsals and put tickets on sale and have links for me to push on all of you. i feel like a stage mom. i keep going "so what do you have to do to get an equity card?" sigh. she didn't just get a stage mom, she got a jewish one.
i don't remember how much i told you about the last batch of beer but it came out good enough that i am going to really have to watch myself now. the ocd part of my personality could show itself here. it was brewed as an attempt to knock off (and here's some hubris) a Rochefort beer, specifically a Rochefort 8. yes i know. and no it doesn't taste quite like theirs. they've only been doing it since 1595. but why not shoot high. i think mine is too sweet. i think there's no way to make that beer anyway, though i guess if you're good enough you can come close. mine is nice and people seem to like it but there's no way it's a Rochefort. it ended up strong at about 9.2% abv. i brewed it as a partial grain brew but that's being generous to myself, as it's a small amount of grain and a non fermentable one (carapils) at that.
i used munton's amber and some light dme. also a pound of candi sugar. Wyeast 1388 (i used two activator packs). i used styrian goldings for 60 and 30 and finished with czech saaz for 10. two weeks primary, two weeks secondary. the best ones spent four weeks warm and at least a week cold for bottle conditioning. they tasted more...blended...than the ones that spent two weeks warm and two weeks cold. that's why you try both ways. so you learn.
we're going to have people over for thanksgiving and i'm very much looking forward to that. our last thanksgiving we made enough food for 12 people even though it was only the two of us. with a lot of people we'll probably end up making three turkeys and a pot roast or something. i wanted to brew a beer for thanksgiving, but i couldn't brew some crazed high gravity beer again. it just wouldn't be ready on time. so i brewed a stout from a recipe in Charlie Papazian's book The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. It's also a (barely) partial grain, using a little bit of roasted barley, but it uses a lot less malt extract and uses dark dme. Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale. Cascade hops in the boil and Saaz (i wanted Willamette but they were out. and i keep thinking maybe i should have gotten Fuggles instead. i'll find out soon enough) to finish. Papazian said it would be ready to drink in 21 days and i think he's right. tomorrow will be a week in the primary, and it looks to me as if visible fermentation is basically done. we'll move it to the secondary for a week, then bottle, and it will have a couple weeks in the bottle before thanksgiving. i'm expecting (aiming? hoping?) for approximately 5% abv (the og was 1.054). i did a much better job of cooling down the wort this time than i had the first couple of brews. i had the sink prepared with ice and water and had plenty of extra ice at hand. but this is where i have to watch.
see, i'd love to get into whole grain brewing. but this means i need a mash tun and a lauter tun and this is either super expensive or hobbyist made for the most part. for example, a lot of people use converted gott or rubbermaid or even igloo coolers for which they build a false bottom and drill holes and make strainers and a whole bunch of other stuff i'm not qualified to do. or you could go completely insane and buy this little beauty, the Brew-Magic System by Sabco. you'll note they hide the price on the next page. that's so your wife or girlfriend won't look over your shoulder and see you ogling something useless that costs $5070. but it's nice, huh? hehe. i think i'm going to set something up with polarware brewpots and a conical fermentor, though i don't think i can justify The Fermenator! it's also nice though isn't it?
i also have been looking at setting up an internet radio station. i'm not really certain if i want to do it as part of Bay City Blues or if i want it to be my own. i've bought my own name as a domain name and have been considering doing the station there as a hobby (at least to start) rather than having it be part of work. i've been considering moving the whole blog in fact. i've also been considering changing it to wordpress (i am SOOOO sorry i didn't start with wordpress), so with any luck i can have myself doing all kinds of crap that won't make any money. hehe. guess i should rethink some of this. i'd probably use www.live365.com, mostly because it looks to me to be by far the easiest way to set a station up. and if i do want it to be part of work (or even if i get into it as a serious hobby), they have some arrangement where your monthly fee to them covers ALL licensing and royalty fees. that's a big deal to me because it takes one huge headache away.
i smell lunch cooking so i'm going to go now. everyone enter the football competition and everyone make a phone sex call!!
later.
howard
Read more
first off sorry i haven't written more. actually more accurate is sorry i haven't felt like writing more. sometimes i get carried away with myself and i seem to have done it with writing. i decided it's so enjoyable (and it usually is) to write this blog, that i should write "seriously" or some such thing. so i sat and tried to...hell i don't know what...write the great american novel or short story or some crap and i got myself so worked up i didn't want to write anything.
so i stopped writing that and waited for it to go away and now i have a few things to go on about.
i want to go out for a while this afternoon because it's actually like a sunny day with blue skies and it's really nice outside. as far as i can tell this may happen for a week or so and then the sun will come back in april or may. i'm not complaining (not a lot anyway). it's way better than the weather is in new jersey. and the rain isn't quite as annoying somehow.
i'm so relieved that i was able so quickly to come to terms with having made a mistake and able to grok how i feel about our standards. the fact that Tonya agrees only emphasizes how lucky i am. i'm a damn sight happier with work now and i can see that our callers are too. (and i turned off those horrid ads that yahoo marketing wrote for me. i mean, i don't blame them. i DO appreciate their work. and they DO get clicks. more clicks than mine do. but it isn't the kind of traffic that we want and it isn't the type of caller who wants what we offer either). i just refuse to run ads like that anymore. if you didn't see them, good.
yesterday we went to see the Portland Center Stage's production of Cabaret. Tonya hadn't ever seen it, but I've seen the movie and two other productions of it. the one thing i remembered going in was that it's LONG. but i enjoyed this production immensely and really wasn't bothered by the length at all (even though i'm not sure they chose the best chairs possible when the built this theater). someone i didn't really know, though apparently everyone else in Portland does, named Storm Large. she (or maybe more accurately, the people who cast and produced the play), seem to have gotten a whole bunch of crap because she isn't somehow a real enough artist for them. or she was (GASP) a rock singer with an attitude. or maybe because she's good looking and tattooed. i'm not really sure. but i thought she did a hell of a job.
interesting side note was that we saw Woody Harrelson at the play. Tonya told me that he's filming around here somewhere. i felt kind of sad for him in a way. he's trying to avoid getting beset by assholes, which i can certainly understand (dispatch on a friday and saturday night and you'll get it. and those guys at least aren't showing up in person). but the first act is over an hour and a half, and like i said, i wasn't so certain about the chairs, so you want to stretch your legs at the break. but he's a celebrity and people are going to recognize him. so he comes outside with the smokers (proudly exiled to stand directly in front of the door and smoke in everyone's face with no ashtray in sight), even though he doesn't smoke. then he pulls up the collar of his jacket and pulls his hood down over his head. by now, of course, everyone standing outside smoking knows exactly who the hell he is and everyone backs five feet away. he's facing the street and the max train goes past and the people on it stare at him. so he turns around and so does everyone else outside, and he just stands there alone in an empty circle for ten minutes. weird and sad in a way.
Tonya had her first read through and met the other actors in her play and seems real happy with all (well almost all) of them. i think i'm as excited about it as she is. i can't wait until they start rehearsals and put tickets on sale and have links for me to push on all of you. i feel like a stage mom. i keep going "so what do you have to do to get an equity card?" sigh. she didn't just get a stage mom, she got a jewish one.
i don't remember how much i told you about the last batch of beer but it came out good enough that i am going to really have to watch myself now. the ocd part of my personality could show itself here. it was brewed as an attempt to knock off (and here's some hubris) a Rochefort beer, specifically a Rochefort 8. yes i know. and no it doesn't taste quite like theirs. they've only been doing it since 1595. but why not shoot high. i think mine is too sweet. i think there's no way to make that beer anyway, though i guess if you're good enough you can come close. mine is nice and people seem to like it but there's no way it's a Rochefort. it ended up strong at about 9.2% abv. i brewed it as a partial grain brew but that's being generous to myself, as it's a small amount of grain and a non fermentable one (carapils) at that.
i used munton's amber and some light dme. also a pound of candi sugar. Wyeast 1388 (i used two activator packs). i used styrian goldings for 60 and 30 and finished with czech saaz for 10. two weeks primary, two weeks secondary. the best ones spent four weeks warm and at least a week cold for bottle conditioning. they tasted more...blended...than the ones that spent two weeks warm and two weeks cold. that's why you try both ways. so you learn.
we're going to have people over for thanksgiving and i'm very much looking forward to that. our last thanksgiving we made enough food for 12 people even though it was only the two of us. with a lot of people we'll probably end up making three turkeys and a pot roast or something. i wanted to brew a beer for thanksgiving, but i couldn't brew some crazed high gravity beer again. it just wouldn't be ready on time. so i brewed a stout from a recipe in Charlie Papazian's book The Complete Joy of Home Brewing. It's also a (barely) partial grain, using a little bit of roasted barley, but it uses a lot less malt extract and uses dark dme. Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale. Cascade hops in the boil and Saaz (i wanted Willamette but they were out. and i keep thinking maybe i should have gotten Fuggles instead. i'll find out soon enough) to finish. Papazian said it would be ready to drink in 21 days and i think he's right. tomorrow will be a week in the primary, and it looks to me as if visible fermentation is basically done. we'll move it to the secondary for a week, then bottle, and it will have a couple weeks in the bottle before thanksgiving. i'm expecting (aiming? hoping?) for approximately 5% abv (the og was 1.054). i did a much better job of cooling down the wort this time than i had the first couple of brews. i had the sink prepared with ice and water and had plenty of extra ice at hand. but this is where i have to watch.
see, i'd love to get into whole grain brewing. but this means i need a mash tun and a lauter tun and this is either super expensive or hobbyist made for the most part. for example, a lot of people use converted gott or rubbermaid or even igloo coolers for which they build a false bottom and drill holes and make strainers and a whole bunch of other stuff i'm not qualified to do. or you could go completely insane and buy this little beauty, the Brew-Magic System by Sabco. you'll note they hide the price on the next page. that's so your wife or girlfriend won't look over your shoulder and see you ogling something useless that costs $5070. but it's nice, huh? hehe. i think i'm going to set something up with polarware brewpots and a conical fermentor, though i don't think i can justify The Fermenator! it's also nice though isn't it?
i also have been looking at setting up an internet radio station. i'm not really certain if i want to do it as part of Bay City Blues or if i want it to be my own. i've bought my own name as a domain name and have been considering doing the station there as a hobby (at least to start) rather than having it be part of work. i've been considering moving the whole blog in fact. i've also been considering changing it to wordpress (i am SOOOO sorry i didn't start with wordpress), so with any luck i can have myself doing all kinds of crap that won't make any money. hehe. guess i should rethink some of this. i'd probably use www.live365.com, mostly because it looks to me to be by far the easiest way to set a station up. and if i do want it to be part of work (or even if i get into it as a serious hobby), they have some arrangement where your monthly fee to them covers ALL licensing and royalty fees. that's a big deal to me because it takes one huge headache away.
i smell lunch cooking so i'm going to go now. everyone enter the football competition and everyone make a phone sex call!!
later.
howard
Read more
