So my little orange cat is sitting with me.

Koda has been very good lately. Very attentive, very loving. I think that this is because he understands English and knows that he will be getting locked in the basement overnight at the new house. The last thing a person needs for a good night's sleep is to be annoyed by a 1/4 Domestic Shorthair 1/4 Maine Coon 1/4 Cougar 1/4 Siberian Albino Tiger.

the joy of U-haul

We need to be out of our apartment by Noon tomorrow.

U-haul called today and told us that we can have a truck, ready to pick up at noon tomorrow.

You do the math.

Furthermore, PC financial is slow slow slow, and we can't get keys released until we have our cash to close out of them, and they take their sweet time to get the bank draft out.

Crunch time

You know all those things that you hate about moving? Like how you do your spring cleaning because you have to, but you'll never have a chance to enjoy it because as soon as everything is clean you move into a new place that you have to clean again because who knows what kind of job the last people did cleaning up when they moved out and you don't want their evil germs infecting you with some horrible disease even though you already have a sinus infection that you got from all the dust and oven cleaner from cleaning your apartment for the first time in months because you knew you would be moving out and you would be cleaning anyway so you didn't bother to dust for a really long time and by the time you get to it it's really bad and you thought the stove was almond not white because it was so long since you cleaned it you didn't realize how bad it was?

Yeah.

That's what's up with us.

Plus the boxes. We have lots of boxes stacked up and my kitchen is disassembled and I can't cook. Pretty soon everything will be put away and we will be down to living in a little nest amidst boxes and asking each other questions like, "Have you seen the remote?" or "Have you seen the kleenex?" or "Which box are the cats in?"

Anteater to Zebra

This past weekend, Jenn and I drove down to Calgary to get away from the boxes and to see the new Anteater at the Calgary Zoo. Actually it was mostly to visit with family, because we probably won't get down to C-town again for a while after we take possession of the new house (9 more sleeps).

When we got back, we thought about cleaning, but went to bed early instead. Then last night, I bottled my "Big Brew" beers so that I won't have to move two full carboys. (I also might have beer to serve people when they help us move, I'll have to make sure that that box is the first to get off the truck and into the fridge.)

Speaking of helping us move, if you plan on doing so, kindly give us a toodle via e-mail and or facebook and or blogger to let us know how many we will need to BBQ/Pizza/whatever for.

Post # 150

At this milestone post, Jenn and Owen find themselves in a very different situation than they did when they first started to embrace the lifestyle online. Before they were poor students living in a fleabag apartment. Now, they are poor young professionals living in a fleabag apartment, but soon to move into a non-fleabag half-duplex. Since beginning this blog, they have been to the hospital several times for various reasons, celebrated birthdays, bought another cat, met new people, re-connected with old friends, traveled inside and outside the country, gotten a job, and generally sorted themselves out to a great extent.

Things are going well at the lifestyle household.

Windmill Tilt Volume 1

On Sunday, I took the easy way out on two of my 80 beers. Styles 15A and 16A, German Weizen and Belgian Witbier respectively. Both of these will be fermented from my proceeds of the "Big Brew" where the EHG gets together at the kind sufferance of the people at Alley Kat Brewing and seize their 23 hl system for a day, together with the expertise of the local brewers. I showed up a half-hour late for milling, but was there from mash in to mash-tun-cleanout. (I got volunteered to scrub the mash tun after the brewing was over, which is a bit of a sticky job requiring some elbow-grease and industrial strength cleaners.

Notwithstanding the fact that I did not have complete control over the brewing process, I learned enough on this project that I consider it appropriate to count these two beers towards my total.

three down, 77 to go.

Next up, Treewhale Housewarmer, an English style Old Ale in the style of Theakston's Old Peculiar. Style 19A. I will be brewing this monster on June 2, and I will be interested to test the limits of my equipment. Will I hit an OG of 1.070? Will I be able to brew a full 5 gallons of this beer? What will this mean for IPA and Imperial Stouts? Tune in in late June for the results of this entirely boring development.

I may be turning into a grownup.

I am a little annoyed that it is 6:30 on a weekend and I can sleep no more. I used to be a champion at sleeping in. I could sleep until well into the afternoon if I wanted. Now? Seven and a half hours after I go to bed, I wake up and can't get back to sleep. I don't feel un-sleep-deprived, but maybe that's the thing.

This is made all the worse by the fact that my cats follow me around and show off their ability to sleep 20 hours a day. Right now, Koda is sleeping in front of my keyboard, as usual.

Holy Crap! I am Finished University!

Ok, so I just couldn't bring myself to sleep any more, I am just too excited! At 1:30 today, I will officially be finished every last obligation I have towards my two undergraduate degrees! As of 1:30 today, I will officially be a university graduate! I am so glad to be done, it's been a long, long, long six years! And guess what? Apparently now, I am a teacher. Weird. It's the end of an era for me, and the beginning of a new one. I am in the mood to party and celebrate. Although, not tonight as I have to chaperone a youth event, and tomorrow I also have to chaperone a youth event... This posses a problem. I will update you all about the party situation as soon as there is one. But I feel I must leave you on this note: "Schooo-ools out for summer.....Schoooo-ools out forever...."

(Or at least until I get a teaching job...)

Only now have I recovered enough to discuss my weekend.

On Saturday, I attended a tasting of single malt scotch whiskies from the Islay region. We tasted 10 of them (no spitting allowed) and chased them down with very strong beer. The ultimate result of this was a blinding hangover by 9:00 PM. In bed asleep by 9:30, with Jenn dumping laundry baskets on me for folding, annoyed that I would be in such a state on a Saturday night. It was worth it.

For the record, I liked almost all of them. I still don't care for Laphroig. The Bowmore was nice, though.

Go Flames

That was awesome. It's about time that Calgary showed some of the grit that they need to to get past Detroit, or at least beat them up enough to kill their chances to advance past the second round after handily beating the Flames.

Another thing:

I have a new project. This is something akin to the Julie/Julia project in that it involves doing a whole bunch of things in a food/beverage nerd realm for no apparent reason other than to say I had done it at the end of the day.

I am going to brew every beer in the Beer Judge Certification Program Guidelines, and I am going to do it "All Grain" (ie. the hard way). I will give myself credit for the one I have already done in that way, which means that there remains only 79 categories to brew.

Needless to say, I will be giving myself more than 1 year to do this. After all, when Julie decided to cook each dish in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" she knew that she could reasonably consume more than one dish in a day. I cannot reasonably consume 400 gallons of beer in 1 year. To do so would require me to consume approximately a case of beer a day for a year. I find that to be an unreasonable expectation. At the same time, it would be illegal, as there is a 200 gallon per year limit on homebrewing.

I plan to have help, at least in the immediate future, both in the brewing and the consumption of the beer. I have a certain amount of commitment in terms of assistance from Nick the Mighty Brewer, and with dedication and perseverance, I hope to have this quixotic project completed in, say, 4 years.

This will take planning, patience, and a liver of gargantuan proportions. I think we're set.

First off, we will need to establish some ground rules:

1) I will attempt to brew 80 styles of beer as recognized by the BJCP 2004 style guidelines. I will be required to re-brew only if a) the beer is wildly not to style or b) faulty.

2) I will brew all these beers "The hard way" which means that I will be "mashing" at least partially for each beer. If I miss my gravity by enough points, I will feel free to hit my beer with some malt extract, but every beer will be mashed.

3) If there is an option of brewing one beer and using two yeasts to make two distinct styles (eg. American Wheat, Weizenbier) I am so totally allowed.

4) Beers brewed off of the "Big Brew" will count towards the total.

5) No repeats until all the styles have been brewed. If that means that I spend 3 months drinking nothing but barleywine and straight lambic, that's my own bad planning and bad luck.

This means that I will need to pick up certain things over the next little while to make things easier, and if you happen to have any of these things lying around that you want to get rid of, let me know.

-I will need an external thermostat for my little chest freezer so that I can start lagering my beers. I had better get this set up soonish so that I don't wind up lagering a ton of beer all at the end.
-I will need to set myself up with a keg system shortly thereafter, because I can fit 2 corny kegs in that freezer, but only one carboy, and also because kegs kick ass.
-I will need a grain mill so that I can, well, grind my grain.
-I will need something to placate my wife, she is bound to get pissed at me soon.


There has to be a strategy here, to keep me from drinking horribly unsuitable beers, for example having too much barleywine and dopplebock in the summer, or heffeweizen in the winter.

The first three beers will be as follows:
8A Ordinary Bitter (already brewed, turned out nice)
15A Heffeweizen (May 6, big Brew)
16A Belgian Wit (May 6, big brew)

Then I need to come up with a plan for the next few. The next brewing session I will do will be the June 1 weekend. That beer will be the first beer that I am brewing specifically to meet my new goal, and as such I want to start with a bang. I want to make something that will be good to drink through the tail end of summer (the heffeweizen and wit will be great for this too)

I will be thinking about his for a while, I think.

Tonight- Curry

Tonight I will be making a supper to remedy the excessively traditional Easter dinners we have been eating. Three days of variations on the theme, "Roast meat, mashed potatoes, token vegetable, dessert." Tonight we will have Aloo Chaat, Chicken Tikka Massala, Raita, some kind of Dal, pappadams, and either rice or homemade roti (I haven't decided). In case you hadn't noticed, I am cooking somewhat for the leftovers and lunches.

In other news, we are only 7 weeks away from taking possession of our house, which is kinda scary in itself. I realize that I still need to do certain things:

1) Hire the truck;
2) Get a carpet cleaner;
3) panic that I am about to get into the lifestyle of a genuine adult, rather than the arrested adolescence of a perpetual student.

Idiot wins darwin award!

So the stuff last night turns out not to be a stabbing (you could understand our suspicions with a dead body in a pool of blood next door in front of the lobby).

Turns out we have a new winner in the April 2007 runoff (qualifying round-Canada) for the Darwin Awards!

Buddy came home, had locked himself out of his apartment. Instead of paying the $20.00 lockout fee (not that there is a number now to contact a security guard to provide lockout service, or, you know, security) he pounded on his next-door neighbour's door at 1:30 in the morning until the guy let him in, and climbed out on the balcony and tried to get onto his balcony and into his apartment. Instead, he fell 150 feet straight down onto the concrete in front of the building, being killed instantly.

What does this teach us?

#1: You are not a ninja.

#2: Falling can kill you.

#3: You need to have a key-buddy, or at least a current number for building security.

#4: You are not a ninja.

#5: If someone is pounding on your door at 1:30 in the morning because he has lost his keys and locked himself out of his apartment, he probably isn't smart enough to climb over your balcony without killing himself. Just don't let him in.

More flashing lights in the night

We would never noticed, had it not been for the fire alarm being pulled this 1:45 AM on Good Friday, that there were 8 cop cars, police tape, and film crews in front of the building next door, 6 floors and 40 lateral feet from our bedroom window. Some poor bastard had gone and got himself stabbed next to where I sleep. We will update when we read the news tomorrow.

The other news for the weekend is that we come one step closer to being homeowners. We will at least have the mortgage signed up. What joy.

Seeing all the cops roaring up next door and waving guns around, we decided to treat this not as a fire alarm but as a lockdown, not wanting to be shot or stabbed ourselves, and knowing that before any fire could get to our unit, we could get off the balcony on a ladder truck.

Anyway, we have almost decided to stop paying attention to the fire alarm. It just seems to be an inconvenient side effect of living in an apartment building. Every now and then it gets loud because of some drunk wanker. Then someone gets stabbed.

Regina ALES

Today I will be heading down to Alley Kat to pack up some beers for shipping - I will be sending 8 beers out to the Regina ALES competition, which is a MCAB qualifier. THat means nothing to non-brewers, but needless to say I will be entering some beer in a big contest and hopefully I will win something. I think that this competition has actual medals, which would be nice. Then when I go to work I can put my medals up on the wall next to Jennifer Heil's gold medal picture.

Bwahahahahahaha!

Come to think of it, I have some wine competition medals that I could put up right now, and some certificates......

Yeah, that would be good.

okay. You got me.

So for everyone who made it possible for me to not realize that I had a surprise (late) birthday party coming to me, thanks.

To everyone whose idea it was to get me to the location by saying that my sister-in-law had just scalded herself with a gallon of boiling water - not so cool - you will get yours.

It was pretty cool, though, a long cry from the four years in a row I had to bake my own birthday cake. I kinda like this whole "someone knows I'm alive" thing. I could get used to it.

Then tonight we had the college & careers fondue. We provided a fondue Neufchatel, which rocked. There were also a couple of attempts at Fondue Bourginon, which were, well, oil fondue, which is good for a party of 4-6, not so good for 14. The sauce Bearnaise was made with becel margarine and a package of Bearnaise mix from Safeway. Mennonites assume margarine and butter work the same in cooking. Not so much.

Anyway, it all tasted good. We also played "Apples to Apples" which is a rockin' cool game. Now I am going to go to bed.

Look, I know I have been making boring posts lately

But the thing is, neither Jenn nor myself have had enough spare time or energy to do anything even remotely interesting for the last couple of months. We have been packing, doing laundry, and not even cooking anything good. We get home late, eat late, and pop in a dvd and fall asleep. It's a sad little existence, I know, but we assure you it will change once Jenn is out of school. Heck, Jenn may be able to do something interesting for your entertainment over the next week which is spring break at her school. I will, of course, continue to do interesting things that I can't talk about due to solicitor-client privilege.

Here's something marginally interesting- a movie poster has blown onto our deck from somewhere. Here, I'll go see what it is for...

"The Middle Man", which doesn't even show up on the IMDB. Sad.

I don't even get good garbage flying onto my deck.

Other interesting things this weekend are the beer tasting this afternoon at Alley Kat, through the Homebrewer's Guild, after which we go to a barbecue and "drink our dribs and drabs" party at which we hope to get rid of all the booze that we have where there is less than 2.5 cm left at the bottom of a bottle.

On Sunday, there is a chance that we will have DimSum with the Giant Albino and his Pole Dancing sister, in the evening we have a Fondue supper at church, birthday supper at family's and Jenn's mum and dad get back from Cancun, at which time, we will squeal on Jenn's little sister for doing all the bad things we know about her having done for the last week.

Because she would squeal on me and everyone else she knows if she could.

Anyway, I promise to try to be more interesting in the next little while. Ta.

closer to the floor.

Here I am, four loads of laundry closer to the floor of our bedroom, and there's no end in sight. Jenn is at parent-teacher interviews, and I'm slaving away over the 8th floor laundry, because all the laundries within a floor of my apartment are in use. I guess hump-day is also laundry day. Tomorrow I may wind up having supper and beers with Mel & Nick, as my assistance may be desired in the beer-making realm. I think I'll drop off a couple of carboys while I'm at it, all the better to not have to move to my new house all at once.

Work is busy as ever, and this weekend promises to be at least a little break, with a beer tasting on Saturday and fondue on Sunday. I need to figure out what we'll be bringing.

Anyway, time to load another pile into the washer upstairs.

Wife back, Oil Losing.

Some good, some bad. The Oil are in the midst of an 8 game losing streak, but my wife is home and my Cats have stopped bothering me so much. I also bought a book at the used-book store in Stony Plain - The Homebrewer's Companion. I love it when a book I have been meaning to pick up shows up in mint condition for half price at a used book store.

Today, I also had the fun of working through lunch and about an hour late. Busy week so far and it's only Monday. On the up side, both my meetings for today jammed out at the last minute, so I didn't have anything much to distract me today, and I managed to get a lot of work done.

For my birthday I got the 1st and 2nd seasons of Dinosaurs on DVD. I'm rather enjoying it. It has a muppet-y feel, being a Henson production. We will see how it stands up after a few more episodes. One thing is for certain, the baby dinosaur reminds us a lot of Koda.

I miss my wife.

Jenn is at a conference in the 'Peg, and here I am all alone and sad. If it weren't for the fact that cats are extra love-y right now, I would be having a serious hug-deficiency. As it stands, even Koda is touching me of his own free will.

Today I did something that most people will find incredibly dull but that I thought was really exciting. I made an "all grain" beer. This is the first beer that I have made using crushed malted barley instead of malt extract or kits. It actually was a lot less complicated that I had expected. the hard part - getting the unfermented beer out of the grains- was actually pretty easy. The equipment that I built for it worked perfectly, and everything ran super smooth. All in all, a pretty good show. We'll see for sure when we taste the beer. Big shoutout goes to Nick for his awesome co-brewmastering and generally doing a ton of the work. Technically, it is his beer, but I feel a certain proprietary interest in the formulation and processes.