Author: cdwan

One more cool thing: Kate LeDonne sent me a copy of her new book: Nothing in Particular as thanks for a mention on the ‘ole livejournal. I haven’t even cracked the spine yet, but this makes it triply true: Go buy the book!

redmed and I are going to be in Michigan this weekend. The first part will be a wedding in the Western part of the state. We’ll probably get to Ann Arbor in time for a pre-scheduled dinner on Sunday night. On Monday, I will be under my own power for most of the day, and I wouldn’t mind seeing people. Anyone up for breakfast at Flim-Flam, or similar?

technolope and capital_l: Are you still up there? Where do you hang out during the day. I should log in for several hours and pretend to work, at some point.

I went back to the grape juice merchants and got 6 gallons of Pinot Grigio. For this one I’m changing the plan a little bit. I added 5 crushed “Campden” tablets to stabilize the juice (kill off the native flora). Once that’s settled for a day, I’ll add a culture of the wine yeast of my choice.

The red is definitely slowing up. I may rack it into a carboy this evening, just so I can take a look at it.

I’ve also identified a potential kegerator. A friend is redoing his kitchen and just wants an old fridge to be “gone.” I can make that happen.

FYI: I got home around 2 this morning. I actually made the flight I was supposed to be on, though it involved a flat out sprint from the end of the ‘E’ concourse to the end of the ‘C’ concourse in Charlotte.

I’m stuck in an airport in Newport News, VA. My connection was cancelled. I’m headed to Charlotte, NC, in the feeble hope that the new connection will not also be cancelled. My goal is to get to Boston, so I can drive for an hour to get home. All the people I know in Boston are out of town. I would also accept getting to providence, and taking the train to Boston to pick up my car tomorrow. The airline rep asked if, since I was willing to go to Providence instead of Boston, how I would feel about New York.

I am having trouble accepting that my current foul mood is due to any “causes and conditions” within myself, or with anything other than the weather.

In other news, for my birthday, I would like two tickets to do this: India Trek.

Why is it that every single time I receive a rental car, the stereo EQ is set to “max bass, max treble?” This setting sucks.

There are two possibilities:
* The people who clean the cars like it that way
* There is an individual who travels around just in front of me, screwing up my car stereos.

In other news, I have a Grand Marquis this time. The woman at the rental counter said it was that, or a bicycle. All she had.

I had my toothpaste taken by a security screener at the airport today.

What a day for the fermentables. Brewed a batch of the Dark Cherry Stout and got it into primary. Also, messed with the wine. I got a packet of wine yeast (Montrachet, thanks for asking), pre-soaked it in a quarter cup of water, opened up the bucket, dumped the juice from the original bucket into a sanitized one that I’ve used before, and added the yeast. It’s now merrily bubbling under a vodka filled airlock, rather than under a dangerously swollen plastic lid. Plus, I messed with it, so I’m much happier. When I opened the bucket, the juice was effervescing. It was awesome.

On to the real success of the day: The kegging worked, 100%. The uncarbonated batch of Imperial Stout was remarkably easy to clean up and pour into the keg. Think “dip, open, dump, dip, open, dump.” Then, I just followed the directions on the keg. Got things sealed up, and temporarily brought the pressure in the keg up to 30PSI. This accelerates the process of dissolving CO2 in the beer. You dispense with just enough pressure to push the beer out through the serving hose … but maintaining it under pressure keeps the CO2 dissolved. I was supposed to wait 24 hours, but I employed a technique known as “shaking the keg” to “vastly increase the surface area available for the gas to dissolve.” That done, waited a few more hours, dialed the pressure back from 30PSI to 10 (just following the instructions at this point), and poured myself a lukewarm, but fully carbonated pint. The old “dump it in a chilled mug” trick cooled things down enough for me to declare unmitigated victory.

I’ll work on refrigeration later.

A bunch of babbling about my life

Sitting in Hahvahd squah, while redmed has her job interview. Go, redmed!

Good times last night with technolope and capital_l. The only down side is that my abs still hurt when I laugh, so an evening of laughing and laughing was sort of painful. We ate cheap chinese and discussed (among other things) the megaton standard for US currency. Truly, our economy is braced, stabilized, and guaranteed by unimaginably overwhelming explosions. Nobody will call us on our debts because we would blow them off the map. Why not print it on the money?

And now: the news