More garden pics

Okay, it's a little lame, as these are actually about two weeks old, and the cabbage and broccoli in particular are roaring. Maybe I'll take some more pictures today, in between installing a wall-hung table in the kitchen, mowing the lawn, thinning the lettuce, and so on.


This is the lettuce, spinach, and broccoli bed. Lettuce mix is in the top left corner, spinach on the left in the middle of the bed, and broccoli in the bottom right. All were grown from seed.


This is about halfway through thinning the spinach. Unfortunately, the thinned spinach tasted pretty much like eating grass in elementary school. I have higher hopes for the end product, which is tearing along post-thin.


And this is the bed in the driveway circle. Clockwise, from top left corner: broccoli, rosemary, fennel, green peppers, broccoli, tomato.

Okay -- back to everything else I have to do.

Vegetable gardening in Anchorage is:

a bit of a challenge.

Cool spring temperatures have made the outside sad, and the and are struggling as well. The and are starting to creep up, though, and of course the is rocking and rolling, as are the and , which I need to go thin and transplant now.

Aloha

Packing up to leave our resort experience, we had a mini-fridge full o' stuff that we needed to do something with.

Of course, we chose the logical route, and coined the Kitchen Sink Tropical Drink:

1/8 bottle Maui golden rum
3/4 mini (shooter) bottle Johnny Love vodka
unknown amount watermelon juice from fresh Hawaii watermelon
juice of one squeezed lime
pineapple-orange-banana juice to taste

It's pretty wicked.

Flying out tonight, after one more day wandering around Oahu. More reports later!

Moose, on the ruuunn...



This moose was hanging out between our driveway and the street, and got spooked by something. You can see one of the new raised bed gardens in the lower left corner; happily the moose was content to eat the new green underbrush that is popping up everywhere.

Need to pack soon for a week in Oahu. Yeah, life is rough. We should have planned it better, though, to observe the rule that Alaskans should vacation during the winter, not the summer.

On a related note, the tourists are already wandering aimlessly around the tchotchke shops of downtown Anchorage, and walking out into traffic without looking, and Moose's Tooth is already whacked. A recent Wednesday evening at 5:30pm had an hour wait for four. We opted instead for Organic Oasis which had about four tables taken. Much more pleasant.

BREWING BOOT CAMP!

3B: Beyond Boston Barleywine
OG 1.103, FG 1.020, ABV 10.9% (a balance between american and english barleywine styles, like Rogue Old Crustacean: hoppy but also malty sweet)

Middle Child
projected OG 1.045, FG 1.004, ABV 5.4%
(the second and third runnings of 3B, the boil included a pint of my sister in law's habanero jelly. the resulting beer is actually quite tasty: think Wynkoop's Patty's Chile Beer, but not as spicy)

SDS: Schizo Disordered Stout
OG 1.076, FG 1.019, ABV 7.5%
(secondary was on four ounces of French oak chips soaked for nine days in Jim Beam)

Drop the Ball DIPA
OG 1.084, FG 1.009, ABV 9.8%
(let's just say the process was a little less than smooth. okay, we were drunk. a total of about 5.8 ounces of hops in the boil, and dry hopped with another ounce of Columbus)

AB: Alaskan Bastard
OG 1.080, FG 1.015, ABV 8.5%
(another installment in the bastard series, and the first one made in Alaska)

Go to the Dentist! Amber Ale
OG 1.060, SG 1.015, ABV 5.9%
(still in primary, as I want to pitch onto the yeast cake)

and about ten days after brewing boot camp:

May Day Proletariat Porter
OG 1.088, SG at secondary 1.017 (current ABV 9.2%)
pitched onto the SDS yeast cake

some documentary evidence that this madness actually occurred:

fortifications... Rule #1 is no joke!

getting ready to dough-in Go to the Dentist! Amber Ale

the end of a vigorous boil, with wort chiller

four days, six batches... and we even avoided acute alcohol poisoning!

the second chief deputy assistant brewer steps up to the plate for a little brewing baseball... diligent application of Rule #1 will do that to you.
EDIT, EDIT, EDIT. AHEM.

cleaning salvaged bottles from the NW regional judging of the NHC

kegerator, with three of the batches force carbonating

Another month, another post

Busy busy busy! Sacramento was good, got a lot of work and drinking done, but came down with a cold that was a bit of a damper. Looking forward to Hawaii: we fly out Saturday for a week.

We finally got the raised bed gardens planted: three with vegetables, one with mostly herbs. Picking up the topsoil in bulk was a little sketchy: a front loader dropped a little over a cubic yard into our trailer, which is rated for something like 1250 pounds. Thing is, a cubic yard of topsoil weighs about a ton, give or take for moisture content. Fortunately, it was a relatively short drive.

We shoveled all that topsoil in, then added about another 1.2 cubic yards of Organic 5: basically compost.

Here are some images post-planting:

broccoli, red cabbage, and green peppers

herb bed

tomatoes and basil

direct sown seeds: onions, red peppers, basil, spinach, and salad mix

some lemon balm, marigolds, and willamette hops in the background

Headed out

Turns out there is, indeed, free wifi throughout the Anchorage airport (at least the C concourse in the South Terminal; haven't tried B. And to hell with the North Terminal.) Slow as molasses, but there.

Flying to NYC tonight, on a miserable redeye to PDX, then to MSP, then to LGA. Ugh.

TGS was in town last weekend, and we brewed like a wildfire. An american amber, a barleywine, a DIPA, a foreign export stout, a bastard batch of randoms and leftovers, and a second runnings batch that will probably suck called Middle Child.

After the trip to NYC, I'm headed to SMF for a week in mid May, then J and I fly to Hawaii for a much needed vacation at the end of May. Should be good, though my back already hurts a little from all the flying.

Okay, back to podcast listening and trying to stay awake until my flight boards.

Kodiak redux

Nice day. Woke up in time (8:45) to have the bar area with the continental breakfast practically to myself. I lingered for a while reading A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini . It's deeply mediocre and overrated, but it's the book I brought, and it's not so terrible that I'm willing to put it down two-thirds in.

I spent a couple of hours working on my brief for the case that I'm here on while watching the Red Sox game, and then walked around (downtown) Kodiak. It was pleasant, a little chilly, and I went back to the hotel to call Kodiak Island Winery to see if they were open yet for the summer. I got the disappointing and sad news that they aren't sure if they're going to open at all this year due to health issues.

So I got a sandwich and headed out to Fort Abercrombie State Historical Park and had some nice walking, hiking, and touching the cold water in a very different part of the Pacific than the one we were in a month ago.

Catching AS back to ANC in a couple of hours, and then bearing down on this brief. More absolutely may or may not come soon.

Rarrr

I'm in Kodiak. Since I'm actually here for work, and Kodiak isn't that big of a place, I'm not going to say what kind of work. However, massive super duper bonus points (and a prize of an unspecified but undoubtedly beer flavored nature) to anyone who guesses what (specific) kind of work it is from this clue: the last time I was in Kodiak, I was doing the same type of work, for the same (ultimate) supervising attorney.

After a pleasant if bumpy at the end flight from ANC this morning really early, I had a decent breakfast and got some good work done. I then went back to my hotel, the Best Western, which is billed by Moon, Lonely Planet, and I think Frommer's as the nicest hotel in town. If so, well, hmmm. It's perfectly nice, but about the quality of a standard 2.5 star or low 3 star in any other (city.)

Great meeting for the work. Enough said.

Then I headed over to Kodiak Island Brewing Company, and had a nice chat with the super friendly brewer, Ben, who was kind enough to throw a couple tastes and a pint my way despite the fact that he was hoping to be closing soon. It was damn delicious: his Tripel IPA, run through a Randall. He seemed impressed that I know what Randall is, and I mentioned having had something from a Randall at, I *think* it was, GABF.

Okay -- I need to choose from a virtual non-plethora of options for dinner before everything closes on a Saturday night in the off-season. Maybe more later.

Busy busy busy

Somehow life gets much busier when you wake up one morning having no children, and then at 3:30pm, have a 17 year old foster daughter.

Insert the usual negligent blogger apologies to my vast readership -- I know, I know.

In other news, I did manage to get some beer kegged: the Four Directions (a DIPA with rye), and the Bog Monster , for which the recipe is here.

Okay, I'm going to the open house at King Career Center so I have to run. Busy busy busy.

Swords into plowshares

Sometimes people wonder what Plowshares is about, and don't really track when people start quotiung Isaiah 2:4 and Micah 4:3 (that's the bible, for those who were wondering. See also Joel 3:10, part of the Jewish Tanakh. No, I'm not religious.)

Here's an excellent, incisive, and delightfully tongue-in-cheek introduction to the concept of beating swords into plowshares, from The Pinky Show .

Currently I'm sitting at O'Hare, after a great five days in NYC. I'm watching the snow blowing horizontally, and wondering about my flight (complimentary upgrade to first class!) to Anchorage. The open bar at the Continental/Northwest lounge is helping immensely.

The Great Alaska Beer and Barleywine Festival

We attended this evening on the house, since we're volunteering tomorrow night.

The beer? Well, a few were amazing, a few fantastic, some excellent, many average/mediocre, and a depressing number hideous.

One barleywine smelled and tasted profoundly like dill pickles. Yes, really. The volunteer pouring the beer and the random "beer connoisseur" standing there all agreed. Big, big dill pickles.

It was most disappointing to see great breweries, who do great beer, and especially do great specialties, not bring out anything particularly interesting. I kept saying that I hoped they'd be brining it out for tomorrow's Connoisseur's Session. I sure hope so.

The first hour or two was really quite pleasant: after a small early rush right at opening, it really was mostly people who genuinely wanted to taste the beer, and not just get fucked up. Then, Team Meathead showed up in force. Packs and packs of the morons. Simultaneously, the bimbo fools in repulsively tight jeans showed up with high-heeled OPEN shoes, no socks, no tights, no nothing. Bare feet. It was about 19 degrees outside when we walked in.

Ahhhh. For free, it was great. For $30? Not likely.

Handy (or not) online candidate selectors

Since all those people in Iowa and New Hampshire seem to just have such a darn hard time selecting their candidates until the day of their caucus/primary, it's lucky that the internet has a number of tools you help you sort out the various forms of riff-raff you can vote for.

I took the Washington Post's Candidate Selector, Democratic Edition. It has a horribly clunky interface, and is immensely frustrating in that the pap answers provided by the campaigns often presented no real meaningful distinction between the candidates (hmmm...) Anyway, apparently I should vote for John Edwards:



I guess I'm a sucker for a multi-millionaire waving a neo-populist banner of a new-speak international proletariat, errr, middle class. Problem is, I don't vote for people, ever, who believe the state should murder its own citizens.

Well, actually, all these of those rotten fuckers believe that the government should murder its own citizens.

Never say I'm not an optimist, though: I went ahead and took another candidate selector, at selectsmart.com .



The interface was quite a bit nicer, but the results are extremely suspect. It got correct my likely vote: Dennis Kucinich, but I find it simply bizarre that it claims that Hillary Clinton agrees with me just six percent less than Kucinich. And I'm pretty much positive that I'd rather have Stephen Colbert over Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, and Mike Huckabee, even though Colbert was left in the dust.

Reading in 2007

Though of you who know me personally know that I have just a touch of obsessive compulsive tendencies. (HEY! I HEARD THAT SNICKER!)

One of the ways that this manifests is that every book I finish, I write down in the back of my journal: date, title, author, number of pages, and place (primarily) read.

To paraphrase a certain NPR show, let's do the numbers:
total pages: 13,279

total books: 32
(I'll spare you opening the calculator: that's an average of 414.9 per book)

countries books were read in: four

longest book: 1382 pages, War and Remembrance. (Notably, it was the mass market paperback edition, while other editions are as few as 1042 pages. I enjoyed it, but no, it didn't make me run out and get Winds of War which War and Remembrance is written to follow.

shortest book: 98 pages, Peak Oil Survival: Preparation for life after gridcrash by Aric McBay.

A little more qualitatively:

Best books: probably Coming into the Country by John McPhee, and A Man in Full by Tom Wolfe. Though to be honest, it was kind of a slim year for good books, since many of my books came from a free lending library (read: books other people discarded.)

Best non-fiction book: The Big Eddy Club: The Stocking Stranglings and Southern Justice
by David Rose.

Worst book: hands down, with almost no real competition: The Informers by Bret Easton Ellis. In fact, it's certainly in the top five worst books I've ever finished, and could make a good solid run for the top spot in that list. (As my mom told me in the seventh grade, and I've repeated many times since to many people, I firmly believe that life is too short, and there are too many great books out there, to finish crappy books.) The Informers made the potential runners up for "Worst book" look like pinnacles of great literature, including such horrific, formulaic pap as Pacific Vortex! by Clive Cussler, Code of Honour by Harold Coyle, and Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Betrayal by by Eric Van Lustbader.

I mean, in any reasonable year, The Bourne Betrayal should absolutely be the worst book I'd finish. But didn't I tell you it was a tough year for me and good books?

Glacier Twelve Days of Barleywine, and me:

I did reasonably well; below is my end tally for the twelve days:

THE 1ST DAY OF BARLEYWINE – DEC. 10, 2007
1. 2001 Big Woody Barleywine aged in steel. (9.88% alcohol by volume)

THE 2nd DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 11, 2007
2. 2003 Big Woody Barleywine aged one year in American oak wine barrel. (10.75% alcohol by volume)

THE 4th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 13, 2007
1. 2004 Big Woody Barleywine aged steel. (10.75% alcohol by volume)
2. 2004/2005 Wine barrel/Hungarian barrel Big Woody Barleywine blend. Aged one year on the respective oaks. (10.75% alcohol by volume)
3. Cask conditioned selection.

THE 5th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 14, 2007
1. 2005 Big Woody Barleywine aged in virgin American oak barrels for one year. (10.75% alcohol by volume)
2. 2007 Razz XXX. (10.00% alcohol by volume)

THE 7th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 16, 2007
1. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine aged one and a half years in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery. (11.16% alcohol by volume)
2. 2006 Russian Imperial Stout aged two years in Ukrainian oak barrel. (9.20% alcohol by volume) Gold Medal winner and People’s Choice award at the 2006 Bistro Barrel Aged Beer Festival, Hayward, CA

THE 8th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 17, 2007
1. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine - Double Barrel. Aged 19 months in Jim Beam barrels and then one year in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery that were re-toasted to our brewer’s specifications (11.16% alcohol by volume)
2. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine - Triple Barrel. Aged five months in Jim Beam barrels, then five months in Ukrainian oak, and then seven months in additional Jim Beam Barrels. (11.16% alcohol by volume)
3. Cask conditioned selection.

THE 11th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 20, 2007
1. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged in steel. (11.03% alcohol by volume)
2. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged ten months in American oak wine barrels from the Honig Winery. (11.03% alcohol by volume)
3. Cask conditioned selection.

THE 12th DAY OF BARLEYWINE – DEC. 21, 2007
1. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged in Jim Beam barrels for ten months. (11.03% alcohol by volume)
2. 2007 Russian Imperial Stout aged ten months in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery. (9.20% alcohol by volume)

CASK BARLEYWINE
1. 2007 Big Woody Barleywine aged in steel for one year. (9.85% alcohol by volume)
2. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine - Double Barrel. Aged nineteen months in Jim Beam barrels and then one year in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery that were re-toasted to our brewer’s specifications (11.16% alcohol by volume)
3. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged ten months in American oak wine barrels from the Honig Winery. (11.03% alcohol by volume)

CASK: all of the above, repeatedly. . .

It was a good run. I'm deeply pleased.

Glacier Twelve Days of Barleywine, and me:

I did reasonably well; below is my end tally for the twelve days:

THE 1ST DAY OF BARLEYWINE – DEC. 10, 2007
1. 2001 Big Woody Barleywine aged in steel. (9.88% alcohol by volume)

THE 2nd DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 11, 2007
2. 2003 Big Woody Barleywine aged one year in American oak wine barrel. (10.75% alcohol by volume)

THE 4th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 13, 2007
1. 2004 Big Woody Barleywine aged steel. (10.75% alcohol by volume)
2. 2004/2005 Wine barrel/Hungarian barrel Big Woody Barleywine blend. Aged one year on the respective oaks. (10.75% alcohol by volume)
3. Cask conditioned selection.

THE 5th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 14, 2007
1. 2005 Big Woody Barleywine aged in virgin American oak barrels for one year. (10.75% alcohol by volume)
2. 2007 Razz XXX. (10.00% alcohol by volume)

THE 7th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 16, 2007
1. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine aged one and a half years in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery. (11.16% alcohol by volume)
2. 2006 Russian Imperial Stout aged two years in Ukrainian oak barrel. (9.20% alcohol by volume) Gold Medal winner and People’s Choice award at the 2006 Bistro Barrel Aged Beer Festival, Hayward, CA

THE 8th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 17, 2007
1. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine - Double Barrel. Aged 19 months in Jim Beam barrels and then one year in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery that were re-toasted to our brewer’s specifications (11.16% alcohol by volume)
2. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine - Triple Barrel. Aged five months in Jim Beam barrels, then five months in Ukrainian oak, and then seven months in additional Jim Beam Barrels. (11.16% alcohol by volume)
3. Cask conditioned selection.

THE 11th DAY OF BARLEYWINE - DEC. 20, 2007
1. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged in steel. (11.03% alcohol by volume)
2. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged ten months in American oak wine barrels from the Honig Winery. (11.03% alcohol by volume)
3. Cask conditioned selection.

THE 12th DAY OF BARLEYWINE – DEC. 21, 2007
1. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged in Jim Beam barrels for ten months. (11.03% alcohol by volume)
2. 2007 Russian Imperial Stout aged ten months in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery. (9.20% alcohol by volume)

CASK BARLEYWINE
1. 2007 Big Woody Barleywine aged in steel for one year. (9.85% alcohol by volume)
2. 2006 Big Woody Barleywine - Double Barrel. Aged nineteen months in Jim Beam barrels and then one year in American oak wine barrels from the Silverado Winery that were re-toasted to our brewer’s specifications (11.16% alcohol by volume)
3. 2008 Big Woody Barleywine aged ten months in American oak wine barrels from the Honig Winery. (11.03% alcohol by volume)

all of the above, repeatedly

It was a good run.

Outside my window

I actually have a whole series of images from this perspective, but today's is the only one I have handy. (In part, this is because the previously trustworthy of our computing life, the eMachines desktop, is starting to die. It's got the dreaded "running super extremely unbelievably slow" problem, and regularly has to be hard-shutdown, and restarted. I've backed up almost everything, and am about to resort to extreme measures.)

Anyway, here is what it looks like right now:



The ridge of snow up on the rail shows two amounts of snowfall in the last 48 hours. I shoveled in the evening on Monday, and then again midday yesterday. The taller amount of snow shows what we have received since Monday night, the slightly lower amount since Tuesday afternoon. Pretty scientific, huh?

Anchorage's bore tide

A good explanation can be found here. For those considering a visit, this would be less than a half hour drive from our home.

What's So Special About the Turnagain Arm Bore Tide?

Well, it’s huge—one of the biggest in the world, actually. Also, all other bore waves run up low-lying rivers in more southerly latitudes. The Turnagain Arm bore wave is the only one that occurs in the far north and the only one bordered by mountains, making it the most unique and most geologically dramatic bore tide in the world. It’s also amazingly accessible: you can see it by road along its entire 40- to 50-mile length. And it’s a wildlife-spotting opportunity: harbor seals often ride the tide into Turnagain Arm. Beluga whales may come in a half hour or so later once the water gets deeper.

Tattoos and Chinese characters

My friend Brian has this really extraordinary tattoo that wraps most of a lower leg: "non-violence" in fourteen different languages. This got me to thinking about Chinese characters, which led me to this really excellent website explaining and discussing Chinese characters and language.

No, mom, I'm not seriously considering getting a tattoo. But if I do, I'll send a picture to you right away.

On a happier note :

Bog Monster is actively fermenting. At least in the sweet wort, the peat flavor isn't nearly as profound as I thought it would be. The whole shebang ended up with a vastly higher OG (1096!) than I intended, as it boiled for almost an extra half hour while we screwed around with proofing the Safale US-05.