Letting it Slip

My dad always used to respond to my comments about time passing faster and faster with this: "You wait until you're my age."

Several weeks ago I reconnected with an old high school friend using facebook. Yeah, I used to steer away from those social networking type of websites, but I'm starting to understand their appeal. Anyway, next thing I know, several weeks have passed and I still haven't responded.

This weekend my honey and I went to Tahoe with some friends and stayed with my mother-in-law in her new house. It's got a great view and even better decks. I like that house. The boys went mountain biking and I stayed home and read with the yummy mountain air. Pix here. I might actually get to ski on a semi-regular basis now that we can combine visiting her with skiing.

In other news, I finally bottled my experimental Ginger Beer. I was quite rushed though because I was getting picked up for the previously mentioned trip to Tahoe.

The plant starts that I started a couple weeks ago are doing great! I'm so excited to get my garden going for the next round of food.

I bought a violin a couple days ago too. My honey recently purchased a guitar and has been playing it tons. He plays in a band called Macaroni and the Cheese and wants me to join the band too. So I went out and got one. We'll see how it goes.

This past weekend we had breakfast at this new place. It's only a couple blocks from our house and it's another new breakfast spot! I love this! Our neighborhood is changing so much. It's getting better and better. If only we could afford to live there one one income..

My Honeypot got a guitar

He's been playing and fiddling with it for days now. I think he's a fan.

I had a crafty weekend. I attempted to strip the dye out of two pairs of pants worthy of "reworking." This is the first time that I've ever not been successful. It's almost like no dye came out at all, even though the bath it was in turned dark grey, like normal. Something went wrong, but it's unclear what went wrong.

I also dyed this skirt that I love. It's purple with some tie-dye flair. (I had stripped the dye out of it several months ago.)

I also made another batch of beer. This time it's a ginger beer. I added some tea and saaz finishing hops. It's my first time making anything quite like this.

Sometimes yar comes over and we have a limited number of games that the three of us can play. We added another one to the collection. It's called Citadel.

Whirl Wind Weeks

It's been a really busy couple of weeks, and it will probably continue to be until we are out on the playa. No time to blog!

My friends Mari, Nathan, Dora and Amelia arrived on Thursday the 7th and stayed through Wed the 13th. They are a really cool family! They were making the rounds visiting friends and family. They arrived early because they were passing around sickness and didn't want to infect some of the older folks at one of retirement communities that was their previous stop. It's tough being a kid and being sick, but they seemed to handle it pretty well. They're really sweet girls!

Yesterday I went to our new Colo and helped rack a bunch of our new servers. It was lots of fun. I really enjoy hands on stuff besides the programming that I do. It was also really cool and interesting to see all the parts of the Colo on the tour that I did. They have 9 generators that each generate 2.2 Mega Watts each. And there's a 50,000 gallon tank of diesel underneath the building. It's pretty crazy, indeed. I think that place could power a small city. I'll try to get some pictures up when I get them. They're trapped on a co-workers iPhone currently. Here's a tour of a Colo I found online - they're probably all the same.

Next up is trying frantically to finish up all the projects I want to do for Burning Man. We're leaving in 8 days and I'm going to be working for 5 of them. Tick Tock.

I finally got to start drinking my last brew batch last week. It's good. I'm happy with it.

Burn, Baby Burn

My life "theme" has recently changed. It used to be "If it doesn't burn, it's not food." My current theme is "Food is a vehicle for hot sauce."

I love hot, spicy things. I eat some form of very hot spice around twice a day. I've gotten to the point where I use hot sauce like other people use oil and vinegar on salads or ketchup on eggs. Most of it's just not that hot any more.

We were in the city last weekend and we walked by a local grocery store. Why not buy some groceries here? (as opposed to getting back to the east bay and doing it.) So we did. And they had new hot sauces! So I bought four new bottles, and two of them are very hot! I love that.

I'm really enjoying learning about the various spicy peppers. Each one affects your mouth in a different way. Some will slowly ramp up to their peak of hotness, others will be very very hot quickly and fade away just as quick, others will only affect the tip of your tongue, while others still will only affect the back of your mouth. Yum.

Yesterday I finally got around to bottling my new beer. I'm very excited to drink it. I realized that I get so excited when I brew beer that I have historically felt the need to use hops in all the phases of brewing. And I think for my beer tastes now, it's not such a good fit. This might explain my lack of home brewing recently. But this beer only has finishing hops and has lots of blueberries. I'm guessing it's going to have only a slightly more complicated taste that bud, or something along those lines. And that might just be perfect for me now.

Oh, and as a side (for those of you who may be following this blog) I've lost 15 lbs since starting these CRON angled food changes during tax season. It's very exciting. (And I really haven't had a headache in many, many months too - thankfully.) 8 more to go and I'm done.

Crafty Weekend

This past weekend I brewed a blueberry IPA with only a finishing hops. I realized during the Anchor Brewery tour that when I homebrew, I use too many hops for my tastes. That's pretty silly. So this time I refrained from using hops much and used a blueberry extract instead. I love the smell of hops, especially when I'm brewing. I don't much like to drink hoppy beer though. Perhaps the Moss Street Brewery is being resurrected?

I also started making costumes for our Circus Cafe Burning Man theme camp. I have this really fun tutu made out of a variety of colors. And I have so many more ideas of things to make.

I've had a really hard time motivating to work this week. I wonder why that is. I still love my co-workers, but I just don't really want to work much. I suppose to be more specific, you could say that I'm no longer "obsessed" with work. I'm enjoying my summer.

Oh, yeah, Yar - I have appropriated your sweatshirt. It's very warm! You better come over and visit soon if you expect to get it back.