The Reality of Things

2 canadian beer mix
1 bewitched red beer mix
2 golden wheat ume
1 mellow amber ume
filled up the 6 gallon bucket
og 1.042

Had a very fruit like smell to the dilluted wort.

For this experiment I bought a corned beef brisket at sams club for about $2 a pound.

I soaked it in water frequently changing the water to remove the salts (sodium nitrate) that it was cured with.
Buying the corned beef was an attempt to short cut me having to do my own curing with sodium nitrate or potassium nitrate.

I soaked the meat about 3.5 hours changing the water frequently when it became cloudy. I worked the meat around with my hands in the water to help the salt release from the meat. It showed evidence that they had injected the curing solution so I was trying to help that salt come out.

Once I was done with the soaking I dried the brisket very well with paper towels.

While it was soaking I mixed up a pastrami spice mix to rub onto the outside.

1 TBS. fresh ground Juniper Berries
3 TBS. fresh ground black pepper - very coarse ground (like pepper mill -- what I used)
1 TSP. Granulated garlic
1 TSP. fresh ground mustard seed

since the juniper berries have moisture and oils the make kinda a sticky mess, to help that I divided the mess and mashed it in with pepper and mustard in a mortar.
After the juniper was all mixed in with drier spices I combined them all in a jar with a lid and shook them to blend well.

I let that sit in the jar together while the brisket finished soaking.

Once dried I transferred the brisket to aluminum foil, put on my nitrile gloves and started shaking the spice mix onto the meat and pressing it in with my weight.
I would work it in by hand and then flip it over and put both hands down and use my weight on top of the meat to help push the spices into the underside.

After working the meat for about 10 minutes flipping and pushing, I loaded it up into a pre-heated electric smoker box with a chunk of mesquite.

I plan to let that smoke for 2-3 hours on 180°F heat.

---Later edit 01-16-10---

The mesquite proved to be a little strong for the meat. Ended up taking about 4 hours to get up above 140°F.
I plan to try a small piece of oak on the next round.

SG = 1.012
OG = 1.044

If the starting gravity of the wort is 1.044, and after fermentation, the gravity is 1.012. Subtracting the second from the first gives us the weight of CO2 that left the vessel. That is equal to 0.032 kg/L. Then you multiply by 1.05 to get the weight of the alcohol in the container. That is 0.0336 kg/L. Now that you know both the mass of the solution (1.012 kg/L) and the mass of the alcohol (0.0336 kg/L) you can calculate the percentage of alcohol by mass by dividing the two. This gives 0.0336/ 1.012, which equals 0.0332, or 3.32 percent.

So at this point when bottled the Wit Beer is 3.32 percent alcohol by mass /0.79 = 3.68 % alcohol by volume.

Made with 2 pie rated pumpkins roasted in the oven, pureed, and cooked with pumpkin pie spices fermented a few weeks.

We shall see how it taste next week.

1 C. Sugar
1/2 C. Light Corn Syrup
1/2 C. Water
1/2 tsp. Salt
2 Tbs. Butter
1 1/2 C. Pecan Pieces
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/4 tsp. Cinnamon
1/4 tsp. Cayenne Pepper
2 tsp. Butter Flavoring
Candy thermometer
Stir together sugar, corn syrup, water, butter, salt, and butter flavor. Bring to simmer on medium heat and place lid on pot for one minute then remove lid. This will steam all sugar crystals on side of pot and they will slide down into mixture. Place a candy thermometer in pan and continue to cook on medium heat stirring frequently until candy reaches soft crack stage. Add nuts and mix through, continue to cook until mixture reaches hard crack stage. Remove from heat and add baking soda. Mixture will foam, make sure you blend baking soda into candy completely. Pour on to a non stick cookie sheet or lightly buttered baking sheet. Spread to 1/4″ thick or less while mixture is still hot, candy will start to harden quickly. When set and cool brake into pieces and store in air tight container.

it is GOOD! Could use just a touch of vanilla I think.

Today I became a licensed private pilot.

Today goes down as the day that I completed my pilots license!!!

Check ride wasn't too bad. The examiner scheduled to meet me at the airport at about 8:30am, I was there about 7:45am, so I had a few minutes to calm down and reexamine my materials.

He got there about 8:15am and we got started shortly after. About 2.2 hours of questions ensued with a few breaks. My instructor figured he asked many questions because of my low flight time (48.7 hours total when I went into the check ride). Other people speculate that maybe he was enjoying talking to me. We chatted about rules, regulations, good ideas, bad ideas, experience levels, rules of thumb, and a few other things. He seemed to spend a good bit of time with the special VFR rules maybe even up to 30 minutes we talked about different aspects of special VFR. By the time we got to the section where he wanted to examine my planned cross country trip, I figured I was doing pretty good. I got the feeling he was impressed that I had weight and balance calculations for the takeoff and landing parts of the cross country flight. He ran through some for instance cases with the numbers on my cross country nav log. I was glad to have my old trusty hp 48gx with me, I whipped out all the calculations he wanted. Then he decided to focus on asking me some questions about the VFR sectional maps. Again that was fairly easy. I answered most of his questions very quickly. A little hesitation on a few items and he offered some help where I was able to complete the answering of the question. After we were done he stated "good oral.... very good oral...." and walked out of the room.

He ran through what he was going to be expecting on the flying portion of the exam. He said we would hit a few landings first, short field, soft field, and any others he might want to see. Then we were going to takeoff and fly the first leg of the cross country trip. If my math looked good on the first or second leg then we would knock off that and move on to some flying maneuvers such as: steep turns, stalls, turns around a point. He said if you get that all right then that will probably be it, or I might want to see some thing else.

So we got ready to go, we got out to the runup area and he explained that I can try to do the soft field and short field in one go if I want to. I decided to try it, although I got the short field part right, I did not quite get the soft field part on the first landing. -- touched down a little hard for a soft field. He did compliment me on the fact that I had NO BOUNCE at all even though I came down a little hard. The next go around I nailed the soft field landing, he was said he liked it -- right down the center of the runway. Next takeoff he told me to prepare for the cross country portion. We took off, I noted the time. we headed on out on the first leg. Got that all completed, he had me use the GPS for ground speed and calculate the time to my waypoints. All the math worked so we knocked off of that and headed up north. Added a little altitude and he wanted to see my steep turns. First to the left. One full turn, then to the right and about halfway through he said good, roll out on heading 270. (that was only about 3/4 a turn to the right) I got the heading, then he asked me to do a poweroff stall. I went through the procedure like we were going to land, carb heat on, throttle back, flaps in (I was going to go full but he only wanted about 30 degrees) then I pulled back on the yolk and a few seconds later we stalled, recover was quite simple managing the rudder properly. We leveled back out. Then he took control for a minute he turned us around asked me where I would land with the engine out. I picked a couple places and then he pointed out a grass landing strip. I wasn't able to just pick it out of the blue, but he obviously knew where it was. Then he gave control back and said to turn around the barn/hangar at the grass field (do a ground reference turn -- except we were about 3000' -- normally the ground reference turns are 600-1000 agl so this was a little new for me ) I turned around the barn about 180 degrees -- made a U turn basically, and he said ok thats good enough and asked me to do a power on stall. I pulled the power back, got it down to 60 mph, and went full power and kept the nose high, stall horn was blarring and we were not stalling. He said some thing to the effect of ok stop torturing the plane, and level off. He said boy this thing doesn't like to power on stall does it ? I said no we had had trouble getting to the power on stall. He informed that stalls don't hurt planes and I wasn't really torturing the plane. Then he took over and wanted to show me how to fly with the plane stalled -- fluttering I think he called it. He was having me pull the elevator to the stops and hold it ... as he kept control with the rudder. After he got done playing with my plane. He said "ok take me home". He had me make a call to downtown island traffice to announce where I was what I was doing and my intentions. After that point he pretty much took over the radio, chatting with other pilots about what they were doing. I swung back around made a 45 degree entry to the downwind on runway 8 and he told me that my flap motor has failed, he wanted me to land with no flaps. I asked him if he was trying to get me to do a slip to land, he said no do whatever you want, show me how you would land without flaps. I came around on base slowed it down a bit.... little more challenging without flaps... and as we were coming in he said using a slip might be a good idea you are a little high.... I did the slip, got down nice and smooth on the runway missed the center line by just a touch, but steered back over to it. We got off the runway and he said great lets go park. We went back to the rear tiedown area. he asked if he could have the controls a minute and park it for me ... I said sure... then he parked it backward and told me to shut it down. I said great except you parked backward. I think he might have gotten a touch embarrassed, I pulled up spun around and right back onto the tie downs. Went through the shutdown checklist. Soon as I took off the headset - he stuck out his hand and said congratulations. I got real excited then. He said I gotta run in to the restroom, you finish putting up your plane and meet me back in the school to get your papers done.

I got the plane put up and went inside the flight school where the guy that runs the place and another guy were there. Head guy says I understand congratulations are in order. I said ok ....thankyou. They still looked like they had seen a ghost. I was like what ? They said he said you were an excellent pilot. I said ok ? Brandon says "he doesn't say that very often" So Jerry shows back up we go print out my pilot license, and he tells me congratulations, he signs my log book, gives me a copy of my temporary license.

That was it!

I can fly whenever I want. (with weather and FAA rules as my limitations)

I bought a plane!
Registration number N8436U

Flight Aware Tracking for the flight I made home (an any other subsequent flights that I get radar tracking on)

Picture of N8436U

N8436U after I got home

and a picture before I bought it

N8436U

I flew alone today on my first solo flight. I flew a Cessna 172 with tail number N52434.
IT WAS GREAT.

It was a nice calm day super clear sky with a touch of haze, visibility was over 10 miles.

My instructor and I started out the day with a couple touch n goes. Next we had a go around (aborted landing attempt) (just for practice).
We followed that up with a couple power off landings (simulated engine out emergency).

Then Bart hopped out and let me go ALONE!

After the 0.7 hours of instruction time, I got 1.7 hours of alone time.

This all started when my mom gave me a gift certificate for flying lessons for Christmas. Here I am nearly 3 months later flying alone.
Couple crazy things happened up there, like the battery pack for my noise canceling headphones fell out of my jacket pocket and jammed between the door and the seat at which point it began making a horrible screeching sound in the headset. I had just lifted off the ground when this happened, and there was quite a bit of traffic I was trying to keep up with flying around the airport, so I needed to fix the screech fast and safe. I first tried unplugging the mic jack - no luck. Next I tried the headphone jack - no luck again, still screeching. It was at that point I decided that it hand to be the fault of the noise canceling, so I reached in my pocket to turn it off, and the battery pack was gone! Just chasing the cord down from my headset I found the pack between the seat and the door. When I pulled the battery pack up into my lap, the screeching instantly subsided. Very distracting for a few seconds though.

Traffic around the airport was some of the heaviest traffic I have flown in so far. At one point there were 2 people on long final approach and 1 person on base about to turn final approach in front of the first guy on final. I was out on the downwind leg a little more than halfway down to the turn to base leg. The guy on base decided he would abort the turn to final and let the first guy go (he had the right of way anyway). Then that guy that turned off final swung back around and called final. The 3rd guy out was saying he was about 3 miles out just as I got straightened out to the base leg. I asked permission to take final ahead of him, he said it was ok, so I turned into final approach. The guy behind me called out that he was going to do a aborted landing and go around just as I made the call that I was clear of the runway, so in turn he decided he was actually going to land instead of go around. That was about the most confusing it got while I did my laps around the airport pattern.

IT WAS FUN!!!

To start at the beginning, I recently got a PS3 (with some nice financing options on the sony style website it was affordable).
I have been disappointed with the games coming out for Wii. I am not sure if it has to do with popularity or what exactly.
Seems the more popular a console the more crapware comes out for it. In general though you get some really good stuff in with all the crap,
and there are some good games for Wii, but there seems to be a lack of GREAT games. A lot of quick play stuff (games composed of minigames).
So with the lack of substantial games, I turned to the competition -- debated over 360 or PS3 for a couple weeks...
The 360 seems to be hitting its hardware limit, but the PS3 seems to be just getting started, so I went with PS3. Some games I wanted to play are 360 only and some were PS3 only,
and the decision was not so clear. Jon has a PS3 and thought I should go that route (which is what I ended up doing). Came down to free online play and technological advancement I guess.

With the PS3 I ordered a couple games, Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Little Big Planet. Stopped by a used bookstore (which deals in used media of all types)
and found a couple more games for a substantial discount, one of which was Metal Gear Solid 4.

I finally started playing it a couple weeks ago.
First impressions were like good grief there are a lot of cut scenes.
The game counter says it took me about 30 hours to beat. The game counter stayed counting while I had it paused - which was probably upwards of 10 hours.

So with cut scenes and everything I would estimate 20 hours of actually playing. Definitely worth the price of admission - lots of story that was fairly entertaining.
We had the original metal gear game for NES, many years ago (1987 is when it came out - so 21 years ago - wow that makes me start to feel old).
I would say we still have the cartridge around somewhere. So I had a little of the background of the story. I was missing a bunch of the filler story between the original and the latest.
Konami did a good job filling in the story. I was quite impressed with the whole thing - it was essentially a 20 hour movie where you got to act out the battle scenes in first person.

The game was not so much about the killing as it was about getting through undetected. I was not so sure about it before I played, but afterwords I have to say it is a really great game.
Like I said though its more than just a game - it was entertainment!

Not sure how much replay I will give it. I beat it on stupid easy level, instead of anything remotely hard - but if it was any kind of difficult I probably would not have beaten it.

This caulks up the tally to some abysmally low amount of games I have beaten like 6 or 8... But I like the fact that the end of the game was attainable for a non-hardcore gamer such as myself.
Maybe I can finish out Little Big Planet next...

Bolt Diameter	Head and Wrench Size
	Hex Bolt - Lag Bolt - Square Bolt	Heavy Hex Bolt
#6	1/4	-
#8	1/4	-
#10	5/16	-
#12	5/16	-
1/4	7/16 or 3/8	-
5/16	1/2	-
3/8	9/16	-
7/16	5/8	-
1/2	3/4	7/8
9/16	13/16	-
5/8	15/16	1-1/16
3/4	1-1/8	1-1/4
7/8	1-5/16	1-7/16
1	1-1/2	1-5/8
1-1/8	1-11/16	1-3/4
1-1/4	1-7/8	2

We woke up early, It was like 6:30AM Vancouver time I think. Karin was calling us to talk to us.

We talked to her and then Kimberly wanted to go to Tim Horton's for breakfast. We walked down there and I got an apple juice and a breakfast sandwhich. Kimberly had a coffee. Kimberly said it was very good coffee, but not the best ever. (her evaluation of coffees is always entertaining to me)

I was not feeling super great (not enough sleep for all the activity I think)

So we returned to the hotel, I took a nap for a couple more hours and Kimberly went exploring.

Kimberly wanted to go shopping at a few of the botique stores before we got on the boat so I got up and we went walking.

We visited the drug store again to buy some liter colas and a couple other items we were now missing from our luggage (just stuff we neglected to pack - like chap stick and hair spray).

We visited the Lush store and a few other stores.

We got a call from Jon and Teri asking if we would like a ride to the boat pier. That sounded like a good idea so we agreed to do that and we finished up shopping and headed back to the hotel to check out.

-- Amazingly my cricket phone which has the package with 30 minutes of US roaming was working in Vancouver--
I was very glad I had the phone... as free wifi was hard (impossible) to come by....

Corey and Nadia showed up with Jon and Teri, We got all the luggage put in the car and headed down to the pier. Nadia had a port pass because she worked for the port authority so we were able to get in with no issues. Not that I think we should have had much problem anyway though.

As we pulled up to the boat, it was HUGE like a 13 story building floating on the water.

Notable was a gang plank sicking out of the side of the boat opposite to the side that it was docked on... it was way up in the air like 4th floor maybe and went to nothing -- I though of "if they have a problem with you they are just going to make you walk the plank"

We stopped and some guys immediately took our baggage and put it in some cages for transfer to the boat. Note -- on a cruise if there is anything in your bags that you might need for the next 8 hours or so -- do not give the bag to these guys as your bag may not show up in your room for a long long time (I ended up going to dinner in shorts because my main bag with all my clothes did not show up with our other 5 bags. It was at our room after dinner though)

We went through check-in - all went pretty smoothly. Waited in line and line and another line to get on the boat. They took our pictures for a picture to try to sell us later, and then as we boarded the boat they took our picture to go with our seapass card (room key - on board credit card)

We finally made it into the 3rd floor "lobby" of the ship large marble staircase there. We were greeted with champagne. After a moment of looking at it all they offer up someone to show us a mini tour and then to our room. We accept and they show us a few things in the area, including the Olympic restaurant - which required a reservation and additional fee for dinner (not some thing that we chose to participate in)

Finally the guide takes us up to the 7th floor, and we walk and walk and walk some more down the hallway of doors. Our room was in the front of the ship in the middle of the ship. We got to the room and the first impression is "wow this room is small"

Two twin beds pushed together made up the bed. with a night stand on each side. a small desk was waiting with ice and some glasses. We had a small table and a could chairs. (you could hardly walk around any thing without bumping into something. And then later on when you add in your luggage and clothes the moving room is gone. it gets down right crowded. Bathroom was small with a simple toilet, sink and shower. Bathroom probably took up 1/4 of the room in the suite.

We decided to go exploring on the ship. We walked all around, there was an offer for a giveaway at the spa, so we went to turn in our entry forms. I wanted to get a coke cup so we went to find that. $5 a day for all you can drink coke which came with a neat little insulated cup and a sticker that went on my seapass card.
$5 a day x 7 days was $35 but then they added a 15% gratuity charge so the total came out over $40 for a week of all you can drink coke --- I was getting cokes for anyone and everyone that wanted one for that price.

We walked all over the ship, found deck 13 - which had a sign that said it was reserved for topless sun bathing -- that sounded neat when it was warm in Vancouver -- but then you had to consider that 80-90% of the boat was dinosaurs whom you would not want to see topless and then every day after we left Vancouver - you pretty much needed a jacket to be out on the deck. (the deck would probably be used on a cruise to a warmer location such as Hawaii or Caribbean)

Kimberly bought a bon voyage mixed drink in a nice collectors glass. We had a little bite to eat at the poolside cafe - Quesadillas that were quite good, although after watching them make them I decided that if you just asked they would probably put chopped steak and whatever else you asked for on the quesadilla instead of just the stuff they had for quesadillas ( later in the voyage we put this to the test and it was very successful - delicious steak quesadillas)

We explored for quite a while. We had dinner at 6 in the main dinning room. There was a mandatory safety briefing at 5 and you had to be present to win at the drawing in the spa.

So we went to the safety brief to go over how to wear your life jacket, and what to do in the event of an emergency. We went to Muster Station A, which was in the Main Theater on the 4th and 5th floors. This couple sitting behind us was arguing about where the muster station was. The one lady (who was correct) was saying that you were supposed to report to the theater in the event of an emergency - the man just kept saying this is not the real muster station - you would go to the life boats in the event of an emergency (which was WRONG) ... they went on and on through the entire briefing. Finally we all funneled out to the lifeboat stations and they made a few announcements about in the event of a real emergency we would probably be at different boats and .... It was a bunch of info that most people probably forgot as soon as the safety brief was over.

We went back up to our room and stowed our life jackets in the closet. We then headed out to the spa for the drawing -- we did not win anything - bummer.... During the drawing the boat started pulling away from the docks. There were a couple of people on treadmills (which were right up against the front windows -- and apparently the movement of the boat was disorienting for the runners as they kept wobbling and grabbing the side rails of the tread mill and the boat spun around out of dock and got underway.

Then we headed down to dinner. We were escorted to our dinner table where we would be eating our evening meal each day of the cruise.
Our table had Jon and Teri, ourselves, and Mark, Robin, and their two children Ryan and Nina.

Our waiter Marlon was there to help us into our chair and give us a menu. Then our assistant waiter Selvin showed up to get us water and deliver bread.
Marlon and Selvin would come to take very good care of us each evening at dinner.

At first I was overwhelmed with the daunting array of silverware and stemware on the table. We had appetizer fork and knife, salad fork and knife, soup spoon, entre fork and knife. Dessert spoon, coffee spoon. Water glass, wine glass (and some nights a champagne glass would show up)

Took me 3 days to figure out how all the silverware worked.

The menu was also crazy -- You were presented with appetizers, salads, soups, entes, and desserts. Marlon told us to order one from each category. So Jon Teri, Kimberly and I worked together to try all the different appetizers and stuff -- which we found out later was unnecessary. You can order as many of anything on the menu as you would like ... if you want to try all the appetizers then order them all they will bring them out for you. if you want 3 lobster dinners on lobster night -- just ask for them. (but our great waiter Marlon anticipated us liking the lobster and brought extra without us asking -- one reason he was so great)

We got up early. Really really early - like 3:30 AM took my last home shower to wake up a bit before we traveled.

We got to the airport about 4:15 - the counter didnt even open until 4:30. Finally we got our tickets - checked our bags and got through security. Got on the plane and flew to Atlanta in about 27 mins of air time.

We got into the airport and headed to the concorse with our connecting flight. There we saw the Budweiser brewhouse, but Jon wanted to get his friend in Vancouver some cigarettes from the duty free store. We headed down to the last concourse to visit the duty free shop. Kimberly found a Starbucks and decided she needed a coffee. We got that then went to find the duty free shop. Prices were fair in there. Jon got his friend a 200 pack of cigs. Then we returned to budwieser which wasnt actually fully open, however they did have an overpriced omlette station open, so we ate some omlettes.

Next we headed on over to the gate where we ran into a bunch of the family. Seemed like half the plane belonged to our family.

First thing I noticed when I sat down was that my seat screen was in a never ending kernel panic - while most of the other screens were blank, so I figured no big deal they all seem broken. Well that was NOT the case. Just as soon as they announced they would be showing a video, almost all the screens started booting up, while mine just stayed with the never ending kernel panic. ( and kept with that for the next 5.5 hours )

We watched a couple movies on Kimberly's screen - starting with 'Drillbit Taylor' and then 'definitely maybe'.
We landed in Vancouver, and went through customs - which seems to have neglected to stamp either of our passports. Then we exited out into the lobby got about $60 changed to canadian $. We got out to the front of the airport and stood there debating the best way to get Jon, Teri, Kimberly, and I to our two different hotels.

After figuring some rates we decided to get a limo, which speedily took Kimberly and I to the Sutton Place Hotel. We got out and the limo left to take Jon and Teri to their hotel.

Our hotel was pretty fancy. As soon as we got out of the limo they guys grabbed our bags and put them on a kart. We went and got checked in - which took no time at all, so then our guy directed us to our room 821. The room was pretty fancy.

We got settled a bit and then decided we should go down to chinatown and look around - maybe get some lunch.

So we started out walking down toward the bay (north) and then took a right turn down hastings street. Everything was going pretty good until we walked out of the "nice" part of town into the less nice part of town. Kimberly saw some people doing drugs and stuff. We finally got down to the street we were supposed to turn down to get to chinatown and a guy walks up next to us, holds up a gallon size (or whatever size they are in canada) ziplock and says "what do you guys think ? I just bought this for 3 dollars) -- it was a good size bag full of weed. He kinda showed it off a minute as he walked along with us, and then we diverged paths. We walked around china town a bit, we went into some of the open air markets and looked at the spices. We went into a grocery store type market deal and got Karin some ramen noodles in a Chinese looking package. While we were checking out we asked the lady -- who didnt speak much english -- where was a good place to eat. She asked us what we liked. We tried to explain we had not really had real Chinese food, just American version of Chinese food, and we did not know what exactly we might like. So she finally directed us across and down the street to HON's House of noodle. We walked in and it looked promising. It had kind of a cafeteria layout with big tables and chairs, the sign said to please wait to be seated, and spend your US dollars here.

We waited to be seated and we got seated next to an old Chinese lady whom was eating soup with chop sticks -- how on earth she was eating soup with chop sticks I cannot begin to explain, but she was doing it and it was just neat.

We inspected the menu for a good long time and an older waitress came by to ask what we wanted, again we explained not knowing anything about real chinese food. Basically she said you (pointed to Kimberly) want this one (pointed to item on menu) and you (pointed to me) want this one (pointed to another item on menu) ... We ordered those items and they were GREAT. Kimberly got sweet and sour Mango pork, I got black pepper chicken. It was all delicious.

We walked around a bit after we were done eating. We went to the Chinese Heritage Museum (which had lots of pictures, and a calligraphy exhibit upstairs) and walked through the gardens, all very pretty, and neat.

Finally we headed back down to our hotel. Stopped by a drug store to pick up a few items since I had conveniently left my TSA liquids bag sitting on the counter in the bathroom at the house when we left.

We had arranged to meet up with Jon and Teri, and Corey and Nadia for dinner. We walked around the hotel a bit to kill some time before then. We say that there was a free wine tasting on the wine merchant part of the hotel. So we swung through there where they sampled us about 4 glasses of wine for free ( thats like a half bottle each or some thing...) We both liked the "Conundrum" brand white that they were serving. They were charging a steep $39 a bottle (at least we both felt that it was steep...) ((seems the website MSRP is $24 a bottle))

Finally we meet up with Jon and Teri, and we go down to the Steamhouse brewery to eat. Kimberly and I ordered a pitcher of their witbier, while Jon, Teri, and Corey decided to take on the "Tower of Beer" -- A 3 liter massive vessel of beer - it even had its own tap.

Kimberly and I - still kinda full from the excellent Chinese food decided to get an order of Nachos to eat. It was huge.

We ordered up a 2nd pitcher of beer - probably not necessary. We eventually got it all consumed though.
It was a fun evening, and an interesting brewery. Reminded me alot of our own Downtown Grill and Brewery.

Our new Canadian friends got us safely delivered back to our hotel, and we pretty much called it a night since it was about 10 PM local time I think, which was like 1 AM our time, so we had been going for about 22 hours at this point. Tired...

Jax was in the tub and didnt seem to know many of the colors and Jacob came popping back in and said this thing was blue and that was black - then I said no what color is it ...
he said orange -- I said well its more like yellow ... he said ok ... then the next thing was green ...
and I point to the facet and Jacob says gray -- I said well I would call it silver, then jax points to the handle on the faucet and jacob gets a concerned look on his face ...
I said we will call that clear color ....
then I point at his tummy and ask what color that is... Jacob says "ummm white HAHAHA I am really really white... "
Then I had been out working in the sun and my skin was a bit pink (or maybe down right red) so I point to my arm and ask what color I am ... Jacob says "ummm hairy your real hairy"
... I was cracking up...

So lately we go to the gym a lot. I would say (based on my polar recorded numbers) I am averaging around 3000 calories burned per week for the past 8 weeks or so.

Early last week I had lost up to 13 pounds, but after some hearty Easter eating and a couple days of exercise I am standing at a 9 pound loss from 9 weeks ago.

The Nokia internet tablet (N810) I got for Christmas is great. Finally accepted the 7 day free trial for the GPS navigation software that came with it. My review of the software is that it is pretty good.
The streets are mostly accurate and the geo-coded POI's are fairly good too. Compared to microsoft streets and trips 2007 it is ALOT better. I have not played with a new garmin or tomtom or anything so I cannot really offer much comparison there, but it works better than microsofts stuff.

I bought a Neuros OSD tv recording device a couple months ago. The device works as advertised, but it is highly a product under development. The OSD part of the name is supposed to me Open Source Device or some thing like that. I have played with it a bit, root shell out of the box is nice.
It integrated right into my home network and records TV right onto any of the windows network drives on my network. Quality of the recordings is good for SD TV. The company (link) has talk about a HDTV device that they plan to bring to market in the next couple years. That sounds nice too. I bought it to use for tivo like recording when I need to record some thing on TV, and it works for that... Works well.

I slowed down on beer making a bit. A little bit time consuming -- just a couple hours every week or two to set it up and bottle it, but my weekends have been focused on putting a roof on the garage.
We decided on a metal roof in a charcoal gray color and we ordered it from lyon's roofing. At this point it seems I got exactly what I paid for, nothing less, nothing more.

Some keys for putting up metal roofing as a DIY project:
1. Pre drill the holes for the screws.
2. Use a mechanical cutting tool like a air nibbler for any custom cuts to the panels.
3. Cautiously move and stack panels, the paint comes off easily.
4. Spend extra time to make sure the first panel up is as square to the roof as possible, makes all the rest of the panels come out good.
5. Buy some magnetic nut driver bits for your drill/driver. (incredibly helpful to have that screw stay in the bit as you reach over to put it in the pre drilled hole)

I have pictures I need to put up eventually.

Bottled the witty monk beer today using real glass bottles that I got for Christmas from my sister-in-law.

SG at bottling is 1.010. The aroma from the brew smells very similar to the wit beer I made from scratch a few weeks ago.

Hope it tastes good!!!

bottled a regular cider sg was 0.994... lighter than water.

made a batch of witty monk (mr. beer premium mix) sg at start is 1.034 it looks like.

With the power of my new Nokia N810 Internet Tablet I can just write this stuff straight from the kitchen.