Christians and Pagans

It’s past time to leave some tracks here, I know. To say that things have been hectic isn’t really adequate, the daily bump and grind has been placed in some sort of quaint historical perspective by the near-constant bumping and grinding of the last week or so. It would be tedious just to attempt a recounting, but things are as of today assuming more of a look of being in place for the upcoming show.
Christmas is a project and KG is a project manager. She has lists of lists and if she had MS Project, she’d likely have Gantt charts of when things need to be done and by whom listing all dependencies and resources.
So, my brother and SIL arrive today. I’ll go to the Schmidlaps’ place later and we’ll do a bit of bottle shopping, then I have some beers for sampling and G-lo is putting out a bite to eat. I hope it’ll be low-key and that I’ll be home early enough to get a head start on tomorrow before things get crowded and complicated out in the world at large.
Tomorrow we need to purchase the remainder of the vittles, mostly see-food (and eat it) and a few remaining details. I found some cheap blue crab today which influences the menu if only by its availability. Clams are cheap as well, so Clams Casino looks to be on the menu, and maybe some Calamar or fried oysters to round things out. We already have shrimp so the scampi is assured. We only have a family-sized deep fryer instead of the institutional sized one we should have, so sequencing of things is important as is using the oven and stovetop when possible.
Poor Jade (Princess Jade of Eastern Colesville) has a little cold and she’s sitting next to the PC while I type and sneezing on me. Holiday illness always reminds me of Sam’s mom having faux-appendicitis while I was visiting a few years back. I kept making fun of her (come on, appendicitis on Christmas Eve?) and when the ultrasound came back negative she protested so loudly (she’s an RN and knows the buzzwords) they removed her fucking appendix just to shut her up. Bless you, Jade.
Funniest gift of the season, so far, is a leg of lamb from Dean and DeLuca from the Schmidlaps. This thing was from a pretty big lamb, it’s like a carcass in the freezer and KG is ready to buy the thing a saddle and see if we can ride it around the neighborhood. It’s funny because the Universe is always talking to us (yes, all of us) and both KG and I are on the cusp of vegetarianism so for this giant leg of dead meat to show up in the mail is simply absurd, I mean it had joints on both ends of the leg and you could use it for a bat or a medieval weapon. Blech, when are we going to make that? Funnier (?) yet is that my brother and SIL also received one and my SIL is already a vegetarian. What funny gifts one receives from the elderly.
We’re giving everyone little bottles of Limoncello. I spent much of yesterday bottling and labeling it. Yes, that’s me, but not recently.

I bought a heating pad recently to keep some of my beer warm, at least while it’s trying to bottle condition and carbonate. The Imperial IPA I made a month or so ago was flat and going nowhere fast until I put it on the pad, now it’s having a great old time carbonating with a whole new fermentation going. It’s all cloudy and frothy and, while it’s still a bit too raw to enjoy, I enjoy it anyhow. The holiday ale fermented nicely and when I tested and tasted it the other day was no longer like a chocolate malted, the wormwood bitterness was more forward and the sweetness mostly gone. It’s compelling, I’m very much looking forward to bottling it after all of the Christmas guests return to their own worlds. It’s amazing what you can make with some malt, water, and yeast (and sugar and cinnamon and nutmeg and various strange herbs.) I’m still very excited by this brewing process in spite of finding a general shortage of time to pursue it of late.
The Gertrude’s Holiday Party was last Monday and the bar manager is also interested in beer. I told him about Wild Horse Belgian Sour Ale and Beneath the Kilt Scottish Ale and he begged me to give him some (beer.) Consequently, I’m stopping at Gertrude’s on the way to the Schmids today to give him a taste of each. Hey, it’s the holidays and it’s already noon somewhere.

If I’m wrapping the mackerel, it must be Friday

Hey, this is getting fun. It’s as though the hands on my life’s personal timepiece are speeding up and spinning round and round and going ever faster. It’s like three days until Christmas vacation. Oh, that was last week while I was still a kid. I do get some time off beginning on the 21st, but it’s not like it was when I was a kid. Still, a few days of no work demands, replaced by those of a more familial orientation, will be a nice change.
We’re getting ready. The Limoncello needs sugar and water and then we bottle it. That may happen later today or tomorrow. I’ve a batch of holiday ale fermenting in the new bathroom that needs to be done by the time guests get here (so as to free up that bath for actual use.) Finished fermenting, that is, the way it’s going it’ll be all ready for next year. It’s a very malty brew bittered with wormwood and sweet gale (they give it a very nice herbal quality) and then spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg. It’s too early to know for sure how it’ll eventually turn out but the wort, after I finished the boil and before I added the yeast, tasted delicious; like a cinnamon chocolate-malted or Ibarra, that Mexican hot chocolate. Hot chocolate beer, okay.
We paid a local landscaper to remove the leaves in the yard and he just finished. What an unholy mess that was but now the yard is showing again and, at least outside, the house looks sort of refreshed. In inside news, the fireplace is ***almost*** done. I’m having a little issue finding the right screws for the side vents, but it’s sealed and the mantle is up and it’s all decorated for the holidays. Yes, we’re still looking for a screen and yes, that IS The Goddess.

This weekend I’m going to mount a new medicine cabinet in our bathroom, install a new toilet, and maybe put some hardware on the vanity drawers and cabinets. KG is sort of managing the bathroom remodel but she’s working both nights this weekend so I’m helping out. It’s the old bathroom but KG’s excellent design sense has allowed us to refresh it for a relatively small sum. It’s a miracle.
So that’s the haps.

Days Pass

I had this for breakfast today. A giant pancake with a fried egg and bacon chunks embedded. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, eh?

Today has been one of those days when an unusual number of things go wrong. I’m trying to dig it out and finish the day on the plus side but it still seems as though I’m swimming upriver. I scrubbed the tile on the fireplace (the never ending saga of the fireplace, I’m looking forward to the next project that involves something else) and it’s looking pretty good. There is still a bit of haze in one area and I’m deciding whether to scrub it with acid again. I’ll try to think myself out of it.
We were supposed to get a new refrigerator today and when the delivery people came it was about ½ inch too wide for the space. Yeah, that was my fault and I’m pretty effing dumb sometimes but I would have had to pull the fridge out and measure the space with it not there to get the right dimensions. I guess that’s another live and learn thing. So we’re looking for another fridge and KG who thinks major appliances are a lot of fun is more than a bit disappointed.
Oh, the furnace just quit unexpectedly as well. We’re lucky it’s not too cold and that we have a service contract, at least I hope we’re lucky we have a service contract. The guy is on his way to service it as I write and we’ll see whether it’s a covered part. I’d sure prefer not to get a new furnace right now.
We hosted the Schmids last night. Dinner was amazing. If this were a food-blog I’d go into the details of it all, but suffice it to say that it was all really really delicious, even my parts (well, not my parts but the parts I made.) KG might talk about it a little. I’m just going to say that the Schmidlaps were on their best behavior and we even had some fun. They have a new Caddy, well 2 years old. I saw when they arrived that they weren’t driving either of their old cars and it seems they took the plunge and bought a new one. I reminded G-lo that she might give Sam her old El Dorado, but she thinks she wants to sell it instead; she says she needs the money. Stingy old hag. Anyhow they brought a couple of nice bottles of wine and some red cabbage and kohlrabi and while G-lo’s cooking skills have diminished severely in her old age, it was a nice reminder of a couple of old family recipes.
I’m washing a couple cases of beer bottles right now. When they’re done I’ll bottle my Imperial IPA. It’s been dry hopping for almost three weeks and had two weeks in primary, which means I brewed it almost five weeks ago. It’ll only have a month to carbonate and condition before the big Christmas Party and I don’t think it’ll quite be at its prime, but the Apple Jack is getting a nice fizz to it and it’ll certainly be ready by then. I’ll figure out the specs on the IPAA when I bottle it but I’m expecting about 9% abv and pretty wickedly hoppy.
Sometimes time passes during the writing of these things and behold that is what happened during this one. It’s Saturday morning already. I bottled the IPAA. Liquid crack; I think it’s the best beer I’ve brewed to date and tastes delicious even now. It’s getting so that the beer I make is turning out more and more like what I picture in my mind when I start. Anyhow, things came together nicely and it should be a wonderful brew to serve this Christmas.
The furnace got fixed and our service contract covered the entire repair. The house is nice and warm again, which is convenient in that it’s quite a bit cooler this morning than yesterday. The little things.
So, there’s a tour at Clipper City Brewery today. I’m going to take myself up to B’more and check it out. They share some beers with the hapless tourists as well which are just coincidentally, some of my favorites of theirs. I also have to buy KG a new refrigerator, again.

Anthrax and HCl

It was a tough weekend, scrubbing old dried grout from my raw slate tile fireplace with a solution of hydrochloric acid. Big rubber gloves, goggles, no boots though, I was able to persist for about 3 hours each of both days and now it is almost complete. I just have a couple of small spots I want to hit again to make them as clean as the rest of it. It looks really nice and next I’ll mount a simple plank mantle which should finish it off nicely. Next we build a fire and hope nothing falls off.

Monday wasn’t much better. I was tired and cranky but when I got home I had a couple of homebrews and since KG and Ronnie had some errands, I was able to spend some quiet time putting myself right. I slept well and feel entirely better today.

Interestingly, or otherwise, I’ve been thinking about 9/11/2001 again and someone asked me recently how such a big secret as the government knowing it was about to happen (if not actually perpetrating it themselves as the evidence suggests) might have been kept. So many people must have known something about something, if it were the product of the intelligence agencies, how could it have been so neatly swept under the rug? One thing that comes to mind is anthrax. The anthrax attacks followed the 9/11 attacks so closely that, as traumatized as we all were, they seemed like just another part of it, and maybe they were, though a rather more closely targeted part of it. The intended victims of the attacks were media figures and politicians, notably Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Had either of the Senators died from the attacks control of the senate would have passed to the Republicans and a stern anthrax warning to the press to keep quiet about the whole monstrous affair certainly didn’t go unnoticed. I’m not exactly saying that’s what happened but I’m a student of alternate realities and as they say, a man’s gotta believe in something, and of course, the official versions of events certainly don’t add up. Check out this list of cases.. ‘Get in line, sit down, and shut up!’ has been the motto of this entire administration pretty much from day 1. It’ll be nice if this country is ever again a republic or a democracy.

That said, it is Thanksgiving week and KG and I are serving dinner to the Schmidlaps. It wasn’t on our list, really, but they didn’t have any other plans and, in spite of having some low-level plans for a quiet day together, we both felt as if it was the right thing to do. So, we’re making a turkey and a few fixins. If we can keep out of trouble it’ll be a good thing, they display their resentments at times when there are no other witnesses. We also are hosting the entire fam-damily for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day celebrations and it will be much nicer to do that without a bunch of nasty words floating around in the recent past. Yes, it would also be nicer to do it without nasty thoughts as well, and that is my holy grail and I have to do it in my own head first and then I have to be patient and loving with the others to help them do it. And then flowers bloom.

Veteran’s Day

Veteran’s Day today and I’m off work, as opposed to being on work, I guess. I put some sealer on my slate fireplace today and realized there is still too much grout haze, I have to give it all a big acid bath. Not good news but pretty much the price one pays for do-it-yerself when doing something new. I won’t fall for that one again. Dar Williams was really a joy at the Ram’s Head last Thursday. We had two of the best seats in the house and could literally look at her nose hairs, if she’d had any. The Ram’s Head is so small that after a concert there one has the illusion of actually knowing the artist. I felt that way. A charming lady, to be sure.

Friday I took half a day off and drove down to Richmond to pick Sam up and bring her home. I took the scenic route out 66, and then down 29 to 522 at Culpepper. 522 runs into 33 which meanders down to Richmond. It was a fun drive in spite of the weather being sort of gloomy and intermittently rainy. I stopped at a distillery, one that historically had been a moonshiner. The owner, great grandson of the founder, finally got it licensed a few years back. The equipment was impressive and the tour was fascinating. I bought a couple bottles of his product when it was over and KG is still laughing at me. The Whiskey isn’t bad but the 100 proof corn liquor (white lightening) is a bit too corny for drinking. It’ll make good disinfectant for my brewing parts though (I hate using good vodka to disinfect hops and bottle caps and stuff.)

Anyhow, Sam was good. We talked the whole trip home and caught up on things. Once home and as soon as she caught sight of Ronnie, she was gone with her for the evening. It was as though she’d never left. It felt really, really good to see them together and having fun, thick as thieves. A highpoint of my otherwise uneven, but not entirely dissolute, fatherhood.

Saturday we took the girls out for some shopping. Sam was excited enough about that that she woke up early. We dropped a couple of C-notes at Nordstroms’ Rack (I got a new shirt and tie.) For lunch we dined at Baja Fresh. Once we got home, Sam went out with some friends from her time here and Ronnie took some Homecoming pics for the school paper.

Saturday night was Ronnie’s Homecoming dance and for KG and me a dinner party at Betty and Dan’s (of Betty Beer fame.) We ate, talked (story), drank, and watched the slideshows from the wedding. It was great to spend some Q-time with them again. We got home at about 12:30. Ronnie was already home (the dance was boring), and then Sam wandered in at about 1:30 (I was waiting up, but of course.)

Sunday Sam woke up early again and we all went up to Target and the grocery store. We bought Sam a couple of new bras and some socks. <resentment> In spite of the $800 I send her mother every month, Sam has almost zero clothing; three pairs of jeans (hand-me-downs from her girlfriend) and two brassieres. She came here with no coat (as she usually does) and precious little of anything else. Cindy drives a new car and shops for herself at Nordstrom’s though. </resentment> Anyhow, yesterday afternoon I put Sam on the train and sent her back to Loonieville. She was very sweet and open on this trip, casually discussing things that I’m quite sure she can’t with her mom. We discussed college and that she should apply to schools all over the country instead of just MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art) as she intended. She was really present and loving and Sammy. I’m all squishy at the fabulousness of our visit.

Then, as though we hadn’t yet had quite enough fun, our moviemaking neighbors came over for dinner last night. It was really a good time and we were at more than one point laughing hysterically, a al Cheech and Chong. We packed them off with the leftover crabcake and some mashed sweet potatoes at a respectably early hour and went right to sleep.

Today, as I said, I’m on holiday to honor Veterans’ Day. Wouldn’t making soldiers veterans for more honorable causes be a better reason for celebration? Throwing away the youth of our country on Imperial Overreach just seems too historically resonant as do the Democratic candidates’ excuses for their support of it. We make our lives through our beliefs and we use our children to insure them.

I guess at some point one just has to decide whether ensuring corporate dominance of global resources is really fighting for patriotism and freedom, or whether it’s just business as usual for the country that says the business of America is business.