Audre Lorde on guilt...

"I have no creative use for guilt, yours or my own. Guilt is only another way of avoiding informed action, of buying time out of the pressing ned to make clear choices, out of the approaching storm that can feed the earth as well as bend the trees.

“The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism”, p.130

162 posts

Glad that blogger counts my total posts to this blog: makes me feel a little less like a complete slacker. Here is # 163:

I'm sitting here going through a plastic crate of old crap from my mom's garage, mostly from high school. It's oneof those half entertaining, half who-the-hell-was-I-then kind of things. Highlights so far include a Pizza Hut Employee of the Month nametag, circa April 1992 or so, a bunch of old swim team ribbons from age groups 9-10 and 11-12 (I actually won a first in breaststroke once!) and some high school report cards.

I'm doing all this while watching Apocalypse Now Redux (cherry stuff!) and drinking decaf with orange liquer (generic Grand Marnier, since it's $20 at the state store compared to $40 for a fifth of the real Grand Marnier.)

Back to the mill now!

Back from the depths of non-blogdom!

I've been busy traveling, and also had other things that had to get done, and partially, kind of forgot about the blog. Maybe I'll post more regularly, or maybe not. Anyway, today's post is, appropriately, about homebrew, namely my most recent brew, S3: Super Summer Saison.

I brewed it in mid to late July, tasted the first bottle today, and overall, I'm tentatively pleased with it. It came out reasonably true to BJCP style for Saison, see:

http://www.bjcp.org/2004_BJCP_Guidelines.pdf
16C: Saison

It came out to roughly 8.7%, a tiny bit high for style, but I think my gravity calculations might need adjusting, and it might actually be between 8%-8.5%. I used Wyeast 3725 (Biere de Garde), and adjuncts included a pound of dark belgian candi sugar, and a pound of raw turbinado sugar.

My tasting notes:

8/8/06, first taste, 12 oz bottle, cold (from friedge overnight). Opens with moderate carbonation hiss.

APPEARANCE: pours hazy medium orange with small head, dissipates fairly quickly. small layer of yeast sediment in bottom of bottle.

AROMA: tangy, slightly wild, hints of phenolics

TASTE: tangy, fruity, finishes slightly sweet and fruity, then in the aftertaste, notes of bread/biscuit? (not in a papery way, though)

MOUTH: tingly carbonation, finishes somewhat viscous

OVERALL: pretty decent for a farmhouse style saison, especially when I've never brewed one before (or really, anything like it.) definitely drinkable, though far from perfect.

secondary taste as it warms: good, more tangy and wild up front, more fruity esters and phenolics in back.

thoughts... next time I'd probably use a less powerful and wild yeast (it fermented from 1.070 to 1.003 in 68 hours!), and try to find ways to reduce the phenolic taste, since though it's appropriate for the style, isn't my favorite flavor.

Passings

I'm looking out my big front window, across the traffic driving too fast through one of the few north-south thoroughfares on the near west side of SLC, at the open green park across the way, which is punctuated by the harsh beige of the baseball diamond's infield.

The incident for my first posting in a long time was laughing out loud at a person in a bear suit riding a harley northbound up the street. Yes, a full-blown bear suit. Just as I was realizing that this was probably the Utah Jazz mascot, the Utah Jazz promotional van drove by behind the bear.

I spent the last few days working with the next door neighbor to transplant a chain link fence to fix the boundary between our houses. If I do say so myself, it looks pretty damn good for the work of a couple of amateurs with no specialized tools.

The skies are purple and grey and full of thunderstorm potential, it is 80 degrees, down from yesterday's low 90s.

Today I planted a strawberry plant, and I'm about to transplant a small shrub plant that a neighbor gave us.

Today I made hotel arrangements to go to Des Moines for a long time, good friend's wedding reception.

Today I changed out the tires on my bike, from 41/40 all purpose/all season to 26x1.25" touring slicks for low rolling resistance summer riding. I then cleaned and oiled the bike, which was desperately needed. I'm about to recalibrate my bike computer.

Today I sprinted to the post office to mail two packages, riding hard to get home before thunderstorms began.

Today I got an e-mail that an important friend's mother died after a long illness. It was gut wrenching.

Now the sun is coming out. Time to transplant plants.

Everything is better with beer...

Much stress, packing for a month or more away, trying to get taxes done before leaving, and doing several work things.

A Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter, 9.5% ABV, makes it all better.

Taxes: jesuschrist I hate non-resident/part-year resident returns. It amazes me how much more straightforward the federal 1040 is than state returns are (including Utah, California, Colorado), and the NR/PY are just preposterous. I mean, really, really ridiculous: can't they avoid me doing yet another schedule when 99.9% of people will end up with the same number at the end as the beginning?

And today's funny note: the self-appointed tax crusaders in Utah are taxing us at 7%, while the notorious tax and spend liberals in California are taxing us at 6%... grh.

Perhaps more updates will come during the sidewaysdownunder adventure. Or, perhaps not!

The comment I just sent in to NPR's Fresh Air

I just listened to Terry Gross introduce her guest for today's Fresh Air, James Burrows.

She very prominently stated, in both the teaser and the show's intro, that the U.S. Comedy Arts Festival in Aspen "IS SPONSORED BY HBO". Why the commerical endorsement on our belovedly non-commercial NPR?

Is HBO underwriting this episode of Fresh Air? If yes, it should be so stated. If not, they shouldn't be getting a free commercial.

-[dangr], Salt Lake City, Utah

Bad day

Not every single thing that could be going wrong is, but it's close. First, I was lazy about the laundry, and threw some rags in with the clothes. Problem was, the rags had been used, in part, to clean painbrushes, and so they smell like solvent, so all the clothes now also smell like solvent. We'll see what the second round of laundry, with hot water, extra rinse, and a $750 super fancy pantsy washing machine does.

Out stupid car is in the shop, after we had to pay to have it towed there. (Turns out the shitty Hyundai 10 Year/100,000 Mile Protection Plan that the previous owners paid $1250 for only covers towing until 50,000 miles. Go figure.) I just got the call back from the dealer service department, and they think it was just flooded, since when he tried to start it and floored the gas to start it, it started right up. Ummmm, yeah. Whatever. Then he goes on to tell me that the mechanic recommends new plugs & wries, since the ones in there look like the originals (?!?) to the tune of $160, a new air filter for $37, the 60,000 mile service for $540, and here's the whopper: a new timing belt for $329! And while they're in there doing the new timing belt, might as well do all new drive belts for another $80. Fuck.

Then I opened up a beer to drink while I do the taxes, a Full Sail Old Boardhead Barleywine, and it's basically skunk. It's not bad, but it's not sweet at all, and tastes like a boring old APA or something.

Then my mp3 player wouldn't connect correctly to the computer. Fortunately, though, I can just take out the SD card and change around the songs on that.

Ugh. Maybe I should just go back to sleep.

a haiku, in honor of our impending downundersideways adventure:

wine we will drink much
sing dance scream, live life loudly
yes, much to be had

i know, it's slavishly observant to the 5-7-5 haiku hegemony. but so be it: WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

W5: Wacky Westside Winter Wheat Wine

Brewers: d & j
Style: Wheat Wine / Barleywine / Experimental
Type: Partial mash
Size: 5 gallons (4.135 gal. boil, topped up to 5 gal. for primary)
Color: ~7 SRM (projected)
Bitterness: 59 IBU (calculated w/ Rager method)
OG: 1.110 (actual)
FG: 1.024 (projected)
Projected alcohol: 11.47% ABV (8.89% ABW)

GRAIN:
7 lb. Maris Otter Pale ($1.50/lb)
7 lb. Schreier American White Wheat ($1.25/lb)
1 lb. Muntons Torrefied wheat ($1.50/lb)
Partial mash: 65% efficiency (estimated)
Post-sparge volume: 4.135 gallons

BOIL:
60 minutes
boil volume approx. 4.135 gallons
22 quart (5.5 gal) stockpot, 18/10 stainless steel

SUGARS:
6 lb. Wheat extract syrup (bulk: $17)

HOPS:
2 oz. Fuggles (4.6% AA, 60 min.) ($1.50/oz)
2 oz. Willamette (4.0% AA, 60 min.) ($1.25/oz)

WATER:
bottled spring water (SLC's water is ridiculously hard) (~$0.80/gal)

SANITIZING:
* B-T-F iodophor 12.5ppm for carboy, siphoning equipment, and lid; rinsed with water boiled for 30 minutes
* One Step powder (one tablespoon per gallon) for utensils, hydrometer, thermometer, miscellanous tools

COOLING:
in tub full of snow; approximately one hour 25 minutes to 80*F; after siphon temperature was 64*F at yeast pitch

YEAST:
Pitched at 64*F.
WLP007: White Labs 007 Dry English Ale liquid vial: chosen for high attenuation, high flocculance, high alcohol tolerance.
Yeast starter made 24 hours in advance with 4 cups spring water, 4 tablespoons Muntons light DME, boiled 30 minutes, cooled to 68*F, transferred to growler, liquid yeast vial (out of fridge for approx. two hours) pitched 5:30pm, three piece airlock with vodka.
Noticeable fermentation 6:55pm; at 7:30pm ferment bubbles 4/minute at approx. 65*F air temperature.
LAG PHASE approximately 24 hours.

PRIMARY FERMENTATION VESSEL:
Ale Pail bucket; three piece airlock w/ vodka
(Better Bottle being currently used for wine secondary)
Actively fermenting as I write this, 2/22/06 11:20am, approximately 36 bubbles per minute!

the Boss?

So, I'm sitting at my computer, listening to a CD set from the library. And see, because I'm a little unoriginal and lame, it's the Essential Bruce Sringsteen.

Okay, see, it's like this: my childhood was Springsteen's anthem rock period. I was born the year Born to Run was released. I was seven years old and far too musically immature to know or appreciate the magically poetic Nebraska. Born in the USA, perhaps the most misunderstood song of an era, came out when I was nine years old.

It wasn't until 1995, when a friend, mentor, and practically hero of mine (M.H.) gave me a mixed tape (remember those?) with the title track from 1995's masterwork The Ghost of Tom Joad. This song awoke in me an immense appreciation for Springsteen, and caused me to discover Nebraska, and go back to actually listen to and understand Born in the USA.

Other tracks on that tape, which oh! how I wish I could track it down, included Richard Thompson's extraoridnary (and underappreciated!) song Beeswing. I have a hard time explaining (and understanding) how much this tape changed the way I listened to music, and what music I listened to. Another CD sitting in the pile on the kitchen table is Richard Thompson's Action Packed: The Best of the Capitol Years.

But I digress: Springsteen. While he put out a fair amount of mediocre, commerically viable but artisically lacking music, I confess here that I like his music enough to have all three discs from Essential. If that's lame, well, that's just too bad.

Pictures from the long weekend

We didn't get a lot of different things done this weekend, but we did brew, clearly the most valuable use of our time. We made a winter wheat wine, cheekily named W5: Wacky Westside Winter Wheat Wine. Here are a few images from the day:

This is J looking at the yeast starter, trying to find active fermentation. It was there, albeit a bit slower than the night before.


This is the various pots of strike water and boiled, sanitary rinsing water.


Why buy ice to cool down the boil when you have a yard full of snow, and a bathtub just begging to hold it?


And completely unrelated: here are the cool icicles on our next door neighbor's house.

ummmm, i think they're even serious...

WHEAT OR POTATO WINE

BEETROOT WINE

It's been a long time, been a long time now...

Since I posted, that is. I know, you missed me. Right? I've been to Georgia, and back, by car, through many national parks (pictures may follow.)

Working on the wine I'm making now, and we're both working on the house that we're getting really goddamn sick of.

Here is a photo of today's thing that the morons who previously owned out house did to it.



See, I knew we needed to replace the 220 volt receptacle to the stove, as it was loose. Well, it turns out it had been loose for a while, 'cause the fucking idiots who used to own the house had worked on it. As you can see in the image, the plug part of the receptacle joins a metal plate which holds it in place. (The metal plate in the middle of the plug thing should be snug up to the front of it.)

Well, it had come loose, and the fucking morons decided to take wood screws (see the wood screw sticking through the metal plate), and tried (unsuccessfully) to screw the metal plate back on to the plastic receptacle plug (do you see the word wood anywhere in that transaction?) Then they wrapped the screws in electrical tape (which you can see dangling off.)

How much does a new receptacle cost, you ask? About four bucks. Stupid fuckers.

By popular demand

Several regular readers have asked for (demanded) pictures of the house. Here are some, from various stages of progress:

This is the front room, early on, cluttered and full of stuff:



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In the two bedrooms, previous bozos (owners) had put in asbestos popcorn-texture ceilings. We had them tested, and it was really a very small concentration of asbestos, and it was of a type considered the "better" of the two major types, crystotile, rather than amphibole, which is believed to stay in the lungs longer and therefore result in increased toxicity.

Nevertheless, we decided to drop false ceilings in both of the bedrooms, and seal it off. We went through all the analyses about sealing vs. remediation vs. removal, and decided for overall health concerns, both ours and any workers we'd have coming in to do actual removal, that sealing it off made the most sense.

To do it, we put up 2x4s across the ceiling, and then finished, primed 1/4" plywood:

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Before dropping the ceilings, we decided to provide a warning for future owners who might be tempted to tear out the ceilings and popcorn:

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Here is a big whole in the wall from crumbling plaster in the back bedroom that J re-plastered. The plaster-on-lath construction was in remarkably good shape in most of the rooms, but certain parts needed repair.

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Here is J repairing small holes in the front bedroom:

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Here is the rear bedroom after extensive painstaking scraping, multiple layers of wallpaper stripping, patching small holes and gouge marks, and cleaning the remaining crap off of the walls. Much of this work was done by A over a not-so-entertaining Thanksgiving visit.

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Here I am painting yellow onto the walls in the front bedroom. I like to sit down. I tire easily.

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Here are the rear bedroom walls after being primed with tinted primer (tinted a sort of bluish grey so that the main paint, called Dill Pickle, will go on easier. My conclusion after using four different kinds of primer in different areas is that all primer sucks. I mean, it helps the paint stick better, which is nice, but it sucks, and peels easily, and is generally just a pain in the ass to work with.

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Here are the beginnings of the abovementioned Dill Pickle, in the rear bedroom:

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The floors have endured about 93 years of abuse, and here is one example of what the looked like (this in the rear bedroom):

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Here is me laying the foam underlayment for the laminate flooring, which provides both a moisture barrier, and some cushioning under the flooring (which makes it really pleasant to walk on.)

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Here is the result of all the hard work of painting and laying underlayment:

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And here is the front bedroom, with a stack of flooring acclimating to be laid in the front room (a big task, as the front room is 15'x26'.)

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Here is a glass block wall that I built for the tub/shower. The bathroom is designed in a really peculiar way, with the sink next to the window (on the other side of the glass wall in this photo), then the tub/shower, then the toilet next to the door. It's kind of ridiculous to have it laid out like this, but moving all the plumbing would be a very expensive and in-depth operation which would require a plumber, so we're just making what we have look nicer.

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And perhaps most importantly, here is the fuel for all this hard work (this is an actual photograph of our fridge at the house, without any special arrangements made.)

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A story about December 19, 2004

I got a phone call a year ago today from my brother, S., which he has said since he doesn't remember. He called from my parents house and said "I've got some bad news." I had just talked to my mom that morning, about another brother being sick, so I thought I knew what it was. I said, "Yeah, I know, I talked to mom this morning." He replied, "Oh, no, some other bad news." I knew instantly what he was talking about.

My dad had been diagnosed with lung cancer eleven days prior. Bad cancer: staged at least at "IIIb", and according to the pulmonologist, very likely a stage "IV". Even now, talking about the details is difficult. Last night, I laid in bed with my wife until 1am, talking about him, looking up at the ceiling, crying, remembering. I chose to talk about the happy things, the funny memories. The details of the cancer and the death: some are still too raw.

I got to spend several weeks with him in the weeks just prior to his death: J and I went up for Thanksgiving, and it was clear that I should stick around. While numerous medical appointments stand out in my mind, the better memories are sitting in his office, talking, reminiscing, getting information, talking about what he wanted to happen when he died.

A bittersweet, but funny exclamation happened one day, in the midst of a conversation about distribution of ashes. I asked him if he wanted his ashes to be spread anywhere, and after something thinking and some discussion, we came up with two places he wanted: Monterey Bay, where he spent much of his adolescence, and Galway Bay, where he spent much of his imagination as an adult. In response to one or another of these questions about ashes, and who he wanted to be sure was invited to his wake, he exclaimed, "HEY! You're planning MY GODDAMN DEATH, aren't you!?!" We laughed, since, horrifically, that's exactly what we were doing.

Laughing was so important, so therapeutic, especially in those last weeks. We did a lot of it: sitting around in the family room in the house I grew up in along with my siblings, we'd start making a joke out of something or other relating to death, and dying. My dad loved, loved to laugh. My entire immediate family loves, loves to laugh. We still do it, about my dad, when the grief gets to be too much, or even when it doesn't. I was sitting around in that same room, playing poker with three of my brothers, a few months later. My father's ashes were sitting on the table we were using, and S., the same brother mentioned above, said, "Goddammit, c'mon, dad! Bet or call!"

I honestly don't know if all this laughter is to forestall the misery, the grief, of losing a father (a husband, a brother, a best friend) too early, too young. Or some other kind of coping mechanism. Or because he loved to laugh, and we all learned a lot of our laughing skills from him. I hope that a lot of it is the last.

Busy, busy

So, I just got some shit from a disgruntled regular reader, who shall remained unnamed, but who has previously been known in these pages as TGS. The really ironic thing about the aforementioned shit I was dished is that it pertained to my failing to regularly update this blog. This, from TGS, who has put her blog on hiatus! The hypocrite!

As I write this, I'm so damn tired I think I might fal asleep typing. Happily, leonard Cohen is crooning me awake. The snow is falling fairly heavily outside, really only the second real snow of the season.

We've been busting our little butts on the house, and it's starting to really come together. We have both bedrooms close to done: painted, laminate flooring laid, and ready to move stuff in to.

Now we only have a few things to do: the front room, the bathroom, the kitchen, the dishwasher installation, putting in a new toilet, fixing the leak from the current toilet that is old enough to have developed a stalactite in the basement, and on, and on. The joys of home ownership!

I'm just hoping that when I pull out the toilet that I don't find that the leak has damaged the subflooring. That would really, really suck.

The project I most look forward to, and which feels farthest away, is building a little wine cellar in the basement. I'm thinking I'll get to that in about 2026.

Here's a neat map from the BBC about the beautiful trend in South America towards leftist governments. There is hope!

Off to bed now, hoping that I don't fall asleep while brushing with the electric toothbrush.

p.s. Tomorrow will be one year since my father died, both too quickly, and too fast. It gets a bit easier as time passes, but not much.

Somewhat better

... is how I'm feeling. It no longer feels like I'm swallowing glass when I swallow, but rather mere gravel. We have two ceiling panels up in the house, with about seven to go. Two of the ones going up today are hassles, since they require me re-wiring the ceiling light fixtures through holes I cut in them.

The happy upshot of all of this is that the lead paint test came back negative as to interior paint. A positive result would have made scraping and stripping all the layers of paint and wallpaper a genuine nightmare.

I'm hoping to post some pictures later of the work in progress. The ones I'm really looking forward to posting are, of course, the "after" pictures.

coxsackie virus and home renovation: not a pleasant combination

Named after Coxsackie, New York, where they were discovered, the coxsackie viruses are part of the enterovirus family of viruses (which also includes echoviruses, polio, and hepatitis A viruses) that live in the human digestive tract. ( reference .)

All I know is that this is what Dr. Smartypants thinks I have, and that I have a miserable, awful sore throat, so bad I can barely talk above a whisper without seriously aggravating it.

We're working hard on getting the house ready to move in to, including dropping false ceilings in two bedrooms, laying laminate flooring, and painting nearly every interior surface outside of the kitchen and bathroom (which will come later.) It's a huge amount of work, but we're doing it right, and remediating the sloppy work of 93 years of bozos who didn't do it right. (Example: on one bedroom wall, there were at least SIX layers of wallpaper and paint that had to be removed to get down to the plaster.)

We have had multiple moments where we had to make a decision along the lines of "do we really want to do this? are we really going to stay in this house long enough to make it worth it?" Each time, we've decided to do the right thing, which always means more work. I think we'll be glad we did in the medium and long term, but it's a real shit of work right now, and I feel like we're personally contributing to the retirement plans of Home Depot executives every day.

All of this is made more of a pain in the ass by my sore throat/coxsackie virus, which I've been medicating with near constant applications of chloraseptic lozenges and throat spray. Even with this, it often feels like I'm swallowing glass shards.

I couldn't resist:

Talking a little more about Initiative 901, which I wish California would follow suit on (since, as this article notes, the statewide smoking ban effectively made the patio seating at most restaurants death dens, which Washington's 25 foot buffer will hopefully prevent.)

But here is my favorite quote from the article:

"I'm a phone call away from selling," said Alan McWain, owner of The Spar Cafe and Tobacco Merchant in downtown Olympia. "The general public doesn't appreciate my type of business, and my type of business caters to smokers. If you can't go to a smoke shop to smoke, where the hell can you go?"

Yeah, NEWSFLASH: the general public DOESN'T SUPPORT YOU, OR your type of business. Did you really just figure this out? Really? And oooohhhhhh, threatening to sell your merchant of death business? Oh, gosh, say it ain't so! As for your rhetorical question, I hear that in Christian verions of hell, smoking might be a distinct possibility. Give it a shot!

a new morning in america!

Most of the day-after-election-days in the last decade have been profoundly sad events for me. Today is a delightful change in this trend: Guvna Dumbfuck (aka Arnold Schwarzenegger) saw all of his outrageous, stupid powergrabs lose in the utterly unnecessary special election. (And as an amusing aside, the stupid fucker almost wasn't allowed to vote.) Lucky for him, when he's denied his right to vote, unlike normal citizens, he merely has his handlers pull out a cell phone: "a quick call to the Los Angeles County Registar-Recorder Office confirmed that he had not voted previously, and he was allowed to vote by normal ballot, said Kristin Heffron, chief deputy for the office."

Despite Dumbfuck being able to vote, better informed and more intelligent California voters (where were these people when Dumbfuck was elected?) turned down his sillyass initiatives for a state spending cap, to restrain union politics, to lengthen the time it takes teachers to get tenure, and in a breathtaking power grab, to allow three retired judges to take over legislative redistricting (to get them DeeMoCratz out of running Cowleefornyuh.) All of the remaining four statewide initiatives were also rejected, including one requiring parental approval for a minor's abortion. Yay! Democracy! Really, the only bummer loss in California for me is Prop 80, which would have done a somewhat mediocre job of re-regulating the energy pirates.

In other beautiful news, Washington state voters passed Initiative 901, a change which will actually let me go into the formerly repulsively smoky bars of Seattle starting in thirty days. Called the nation's most stringent smoking ban in public places, the more I could ask for is: ban smoking entirely, everywhere, within state boundaries. No: I don't think it's okay for people to smoke in their cars or homes, around their children and friends. No: I don't think it's okay for the rude, disrespectful people who live in the apartment directly below me to smoke and blow it our their windows, into mine. No: I don't think it's okay for the people at the Tractor to smoke out on the sidewalk in front of TGS' squat.

In other great election news, the democratic gubernatorial (why has that word eluded the newscasters this morning?) candidate in Virginia won. Now, I don't much care that Democrats won, but the race was being cast as a referedum on President Dumbfucker's presidency, since he made a last minute campaign stop for the republican. (Note to strategists: stumping by the stupidest, least effective, most dangerous president in recent history: dumb idea.)