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.

Owen's Birthday

On Thursday next, I will celebrate the 5th anniversary of my 25th birthday. In other words, I will be turning 29 again. For those who wish to spend time with me, you will be required to do so on the weekend after the 9th to the 11th while Jenn is out of town, and you will be required to do the driving and the buying of drinks.

Music returns to the Embracing the Lifestyle House

After a conspicuous absence, the sound of the Flute has returned to our abode. It has been a long while since I have heard Jenn playing for fun (since long before the recital) but now that she is into her teaching practicum, or the music portion thereof, she has returned to filling my life with music, free of charge. I, for my part, spend my waking hours getting people divorced in order to ensure that someday, when I have paid off my student loans and we are settled into a secure middle class lifestyle, that I can buy Jenn the solid gold flute of her dreams. There you have it - an excellent goal. Hopefully Jenn's goal is to pay off her student loans and be able to buy me the sports car I have always wanted. We can always hope.

In other matters, I have determined that the best word to describe the look that Koda gives me, and has given me since he was 8 weeks old, is "insolent".

Click-Click-Bloody-Click Pancakes

Tuesday was, as many of you know, Shrove Tuesday, also known as Mardi Gras, or, in the English tradition, Pancake Tuesday. To celebrate, we, as youth sponsors, spent the whole evening putting on a pancake supper at the church as a fundraiser for the kids. We served up pancakes, bacon, hash browns, eggs, decaf coffee (evening, eh?) juice, and a silent auction that couldn't be beat. 16 pounds of bacon, 2 giant costco sized sacks of pancake mix, 2 gallons of syrup, 5 dozen eggs, and a giant sack of hash browns, and we went through it all. We had extra pancake mix, but the eggs and potatos were gone in minutes. Now we know what we need to get more of for next year, and what we could use less of.

What really rocked was the amount of money we raised for the kids, which was beyond expecations. What didn't rock as much was having to spend so long frying 16 pounds of bacon. When I got home my cats really loved me until I took a shower and didn't smell so much like bacon.

At work, I am finally catching up to the massive backlog of work I had to do, which is nice. My desk no longer looks quite like it was hit by a paper bomb. If I keep up at this rate, I will be able to maybe take care of the layer of phone messages and hand-written notes to myself that has congealed under the files. I might even be able to get some rainy day work done.

We can always hope.

Anyway, I managed to settle one nightmare file, and my new nightmare client just fired me after a little more than three weeks. Good luck to the lawyer on the other side who will be facing an unrepresented litigant who wants to make a point and doesn't seem to care if she gets a good deal or not.

Anyway, I'm going to go to bed early to try to catch up on my overdue sleep.

Almost Done... So Close, yet so far....

Well, I have officially finished my last class in my undergrad career. I have unfortunately been incredibly disappointed by the course and the instructor. The instructor has been incredibly oppinionated and aloof, and really hasn't taught me anything. It's like he thinks he's the Pope and he thinks we should just take everything he says as the Gospel Truth. Well, I don't think so I am afraid. I have had a lot of exposure to the "School Band World" and I know that I don't have to take what he says as the be all end all, I just feel bad for my classmates who don't know as much about band and will take what he says as the be all end all. Ugh. Well, it over. I don't have to do anymore of his waste of time assignments, or answer anymore of his unrealistic, hypothetical questions, not like he ever left us anytime to answer any how, he mostly talked the whole class and NEVER, EVER, EVER let anyone else say anything. Egotistical jerk. Anyhow, I digress and aware that I am ranting and you, the reader, probably don't care.

I still have a paper and a project to do and hand in tomorrow, and then I am completely done with my classes at the University. I still have to teach my 9 week practicum, but I am looking forward to it, I think it will be a lot of fun.

My birthday:

For my birthday (or rather the weekend immediately after my birthday) I get the best present anyone could ask for. My wife is flying to Winnipeg to chaperone a youth conference, while I get to stay home and eat Macaroni and Cheese by myself. As an extra bonus, I also get to drop her off at the Airport and pick her up when she gets back. I, on the other hand, will not be going anywhere, as I have too much work to do. I will continue to have the companionship of my fluffy friends, to the extent that they will spend time with me. If anyone is reading this who wants to stave off boredom and lonliness on the weekend of March 9, let me know, because otherwise, it is going to suck.

Also, a big, "get well soon" goes out to our friend who is in hospital with her appendix, or rather, without it. You sure missed out on a good supper by being in the hospital, and now you get nothing to eat but industrial jell-o... Muahahahahahahaha

The death of Lucy

Lucy started acting funny a few days ago. The readouts on the climate control and the fuel information centre stopped reading out about half the time. The diagnosis from Deol Auto: BCM failure. Part: $400. Labour: $400. Oh, and the shocks and struts are going to need to go as well. Plus there's some kind of mysterious problem in the electrical harness. Then on thursday morning, the car died completely and wou;dn't take a jump. No power. the whole electrical system apparently dead from terminal. age and general bad design and workmanship. Total cost to get this vehicle running for another month: $4000 and up.

Tax Receipt from the Alberta Cancer Foundation: $50.

All the money we had set aside for furniture at the new house and all of our tax return money for the year: 2001 Hyundai Sonata with a quarter million fewer kilometers than Lucy.

The problem with the kind of car you can afford to buy when you are broke is that it costs more in the long run than the kind of car you buy when you are mostly not broke. Now, of course, we are broke again, but at least we have enough transportation to get me to work and Jenn to school (in St. Albert). On the up side, this car uses about half the gas, so over the course of a month, I am saving about $100 on gas, which helps. Hopefully these vehicles will carry us far enough that we can be in a much healthier financial position the next time we are looking for transportation on short notice. Or perhaps, might I even dare to dream, that the next time we buy a vehicle we would still have a running vehicle to trade in. What must it be like to _want_ to buy a car instead of needing to buy one...that day.