…Felt more like three days. With preparation for the parade party on Wednesday, my first vacation day felt more like a triathlon, and there’s absolutely nothing interesting to report about that. Thursday was a great day with friends and food and parade and fun. This year we had the largest turnout yet, around 100 people, give or take a score of kids. The weather was hot and steamy as usual, and with all of the water toys and sprinkler and mister set up, the side yard was a bog by the end of the day. My homebrew went over well, even though the IPA was foaming, and my plan to scale food offerings back to hot dogs meant I spent less time at the grill and more time catching up with friends.
After the parade, and as the crowd thinned out, everybody pitched in and broke down the tents, washed dishes, and generally cleaned up with us, which was VERY appreciated; by about 6PM I was absolutely spent. We rallied long enough to make it to the front yard where a tremendous privately funded fireworks collection was being lit off across the street, which meant we didn’t feel obligated to stagger down to the high school for the official community display.
Friday was all about recovery and rest. We farted around the house and cleaned up a little bit, and crashed the neighbors’ pool, but mainly napped and puttered. That evening we’d been invited to a neighborhood happy hour, so I made some guacamole to bring, packed up some leftover bottles of beer, and we walked a few blocks over to the party. The hosts were wonderful, we met a lot of new people, and Finn had a ball with a gaggle of kids her age. When it got too dark to see other faces clearly, my neighbor and I walked the girls home—under constant threat of attack by werewolves. I think we were all asleep by 10:30.
Saturday Aunt Renie was in town with her friend Wendy, so we got ourselves purtied up and drove in to town to meet them at Clementine, where we caught up, drank Bloodys, and ate like royalty. The ladies followed us back home to the A/C where we hung out and relaxed, talked, and played games with Finn. All too quickly they had to leave for a lacrosse game, so we said goodbye and tried to figure out what to do with the rest of our day. The consensus was fooling around, giggling, looking at baby pictures on my phone, and not moving from the couch.
Sunday the girls were up and out quickly to meet with some friends on vacation in Virginia, while I stayed home to catch up on some projects. What I thought would take a few hours consumed most of the day, but luckily I was inside in the A/C and there were leftover cupcakes and beer.
I had a total of five days off, but as with all vacation time, it slips through my fingers too easily. I did get to spend a lot of quality time with my girls, which makes me happy, but I’d love to have another couple to recover more.
I went through a series of backflips with my kegerator setup in order to have two batches of homebrew ready for the Fourth party. I have three Cornelius kegs, two full-size and one metric, which is a little less than 5 imperial gallons. One of the full-size kegs has been rock-solid dependable, and the other two are flaky in that they don’t seal properly around the lids. I’ve been able to get the second full-size to work up until this weekend, when no amount of trickery, brute force, or cursing could prevent it from spitting, hissing, or foaming my precious beer out around the lid.
Friday night I decided to ditch Keg #2 and transfer it into keg #3, and a preliminary seal test was successful. Upon opening the kegerator I found both kegs sitting in about 2″ of beer. After freaking out a bit, I realized it wasn’t the faulty keg, but a bad connection on the tap connected to the good keg (keg #1), which meant I lost about 6 glasses of IPA to a slow drip.
After fixing the leak, I cleaned keg #3, sanitized it, moved the beer, put it in the kegerator and gassed it, and… it foamed out around the pressure valve. I swapped the lid from Keg #2 out and gassed that with the last of the CO2 in my tank, but still couldn’t get a clean seal. So, at the end of the night, I had two bad kegs, flat beer, and no gas.
At the homebrew store, a kind employee and I went through two replacement kegs before we found one that held a seal properly, and once I got that home everything went much smoother. The hefeweizen is carbing and tastes fine, even after having been moved four times in the last week, so hopefully it’ll stay good until the party.
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In happy house news, several large bits of heavy, pointy metal have now left the property. I enlisted my neighbor to help me hump our old kitchen radiator off the back porch (it’s been there for 6+ years) and lift the boiler from the garage up into the Scout; we then loaded his pickup with chunks of my old Scout top, a skid plate, and other assorted ferrous metals and hauled it all to the recycling center. Where they told us they don’t take metals anymore. We did recycle the copper, aluminum, and other more expensive stuff we had; I got $21 for an aluminum G5 case and several pounds of copper heatsinks. We found another recycling center down the road who takes metal, and ~400 lbs of radiator netted me another $26. $.07/lb is pretty weak, but all of that crap is GONE!
Last night, after the ladies went to bed, I crept quietly around the house and quietly drilled a single hole to install speaker wire from the den to the living room; this allows us to have music accompanying our dinner or playing while we entertain guests. I put my Advents in the living room and set the new Polks up in their place; they have great range both high and low for their size, and I think are better matched for video-based sound than the warmer tone of the Advents.
Eventually, the plan is to set up AirPlay in the den so that we can control the music from anywhere in the house with our phones (and stream services like Pandora through the system). That comes after we get an HDMI-capable head unit to run the various components. One thing at a time…
It’s Wednesday and I’m just catching up from the weekend. Rather than take any longer to write out a narrative retelling of what got done, here are the highlights:
- Emptied the rest of my Belgian IPA into bottles and washed the keg.
- Cleaned up the mess left by my Hefeweizen when the airlock shot itself off. Looks like I’m moving to a tube-in-a-jar setup from here on out.
- Chopped the ever-loving shit out of the front hedge; it went from 9′ at its highest to a reasonable 6′ and about 4′ for the low sections.
- We can now see the light fixture again, even though it’s not working.
- Visited with friends up in Glen Arm, who were hosting a client appreciation party. There were kids, bubbles, friends, and ice cream. There was sunshine! It was lots of fun.
- Put down more weed killer and Roundup on the driveway in an effort to clean the place up before the parade.
- Seeded more of the backyard and areas of the front yard for the same reason.
- Finished repairing the main sections of Finn’s playset; the swings are now level and the desk is functional again.
- Chopped my old rusty Scout top into five smaller rusty sections to be recycled
- Nuked all the weeds around and behind the greenhouse
- Took delivery of a pair of beautiful Polk 15 bookshelf speakers to complement the other two, with the eventual goal of adding audio to the living room
- Helped our neighbor jack up the corner of his garage, stiffen the supports with some 2×4″ and pour concrete around the footers.
Jen and I scheduled a party with some of our neighbors for Saturday night. Which, in our family, means we use the occasion as an excuse for a massive spring cleaning. We’d started doing some preliminary work this past week, but as anyone who does a major overhaul knows, progress made only lasts for minutes.
I started by going out for breakfast and hitting neighborhood yard sales on my way home, where I scored four satellite speakers, an unopened hiking compass, five Xbox games and a Playmobil pirate ship for Finn. After eating, the girls got started at the house while I went across the street to the church playground, where I’d volunteered several weeks ago to help with spring cleanup. A nice man named Rich and I shoveled and moved three tons of playground sand (which, after the rain, weighed in at more like six) to the sandbox and and helped level wood chips under all the equipment. Thankfully, there were donuts and coffee to keep us moving.
On my way back to the house I stopped to see the neighbor’s new C5 Corvette, which he bought through a family friend for a fraction of its book value. It’s black and sleek and in really good shape for its age. We spent about a half an hour poking around at it, and then I headed home to throw myself into housecleaning. We cleaned corners and under couches and all the places that haven’t seen the light of day since November. Bathrooms got scrubbed, floors mopped, and even the basement got a sweep (if guests are going to the kegerator, it can’t look like the dungeon from Silence of the Lambs down there).
At 5:30 we were scrubbed and ready for guests, just barely. Four kinds of cheese were laid out. Dinner burbled quietly in the crock pot. Music wafted in from the den. The house was pristine for about a half an hour and then kids arrived and EVERY SINGLE TOY HIT THE FLOOR. What followed was a wonderful night with friends; there was great conversation. There was homebrew, vodka, white wine and sake. There was delicious cajun shrimp and sausage gumbo. There was a cake from Sugarbakers. At some point I built a fire. The kids got along great. Everybody called it at about 10:30 or so, and we staggered up to bed tired but happy.
This morning, despite my hangover, I hit the ground running. Well, not exactly. I hit the couch sleeping after Finn came in at 7, and rested there until 9:30 while she took in some PBS Kids. After a BE&C and some strong coffee my head quieted down and Finn and I hit the Home Depot for some lumber and supplies. Back at the house, I disassembled an ancient workbench in the garage to make way for shelving to maximize storage space, which took up a good chunk of the afternoon. Because the whole structure leans to the east, the shelves aren’t square, but they’re all 2″ wide and they hold four times as much stuff. I moved a lot of Scout stuff around and freed up the back of the building for a homemade hoist to store the traveltop, which went in at about 5:30.
Right now I’m typing this quietly in Finn’s room as she tries to fall asleep. Mama is downstairs watching Game of Thrones. I have a half a glass of beer and a slice of cake waiting for me. My back and legs are going to be singing to me tomorrow, but what I got done was definitely worth it.
You can’t see it in the photos, but there’s a fresh coat of white paint on the basement and back doors, as well as a ton of touchups throughout the room. The shade on the back door is new, and there’s a matching shade over the window courtesy of Jen and her sewing machine.
How did I spend my three-day weekend? I organized. Picking up where I left off over the Christmas break, I cleaned up piles laying around the basement earmarked for donation, disposal, or consolidation. The Scout is loaded up with a pile of crap to go to the dump (along with our Christmas tree, which never got taken by the County even though it was on the curb within the week specified). I moved my new tool chest, a gift from my father, into a new open space and consolidated two toolboxes, two tool caddies, an entire workbench, and one shelf of handheld electrical tools into one easy-to-access area. I pulled an ancient section of pegboard out of the attic, painted it white, and backed the second half of the tool bench to get oddly shaped and easily lost items off the bench and into view. I still have a mountain of small hardware bags that need organization as well as a crate of loose hardware in jars from my father, so I’m going to have to buy a plastic divider box or two and sort through all of that to get it out of the way. It’s kind of a shock to go down there and see so much open space again.
I also inherited a couple of old Macs from work: a white G4 iBook and a G3 Pismo Powerbook, both models I formerly used to own. The iBook may become Finn’s computer (it’s between that and the lampshade iMac) and the Pismo will be my backup OS9 machine. Spurred on by my burst of OCD, I made a Google spreadsheet with all of our house Mac information to keep things straight, and for insurance purposes. In digging through hardware, I found my Powerbook 160 is refusing to start, so I did some sleuthing and found that a dead PRAM battery is usually the culprit–especially since the machine was working when I got it. So I pulled it apart and hunted down a replacement.
I brewed a Nut Brown ale on Saturday night, knowing both my kegs are close to exhaustion. It went easily–it’s hard to fuck up an ale, really–and my starting gravity was only off by .002%. So I should have something new to drink in about four weeks. Next up will probably be another batch of Chinook IPA.
Sunday was game day, and it did not disappoint. I was pleasantly shocked at the outcome of the Patriots/Ravens game, frankly, because I figured it would end like most Baltimore playoff games do, but it’ll be good to see them in the Superbowl again. We had C&G come over to grill up some food and watch the game, and the whole thing was really good. As always, I’m going to be sad to see the season over with, no matter what happens in two weeks.
Meanwhile, with the temperatures plunging into the single digits, we are battling our local mouse population, which has been much more active in the last few months. The first night I put out traps with dabs of peanut butter and we got one kill, but they wised up after that. Last night I made improvements to our arsenal by tying small pieces of chorizo to the bait arms on our traps, and within an hour or two we got another one. There was no other movement after that, so I may need to switch to cheese or some other smelly foodstuff, but it’s nice to know my theory worked.
I did a little WordPress wrangling last night and added a class to syndicated Scout posts. Whenever I add a post on the Scout blog, Idiotking picks it up and syndicates it over here, including it inline. It’s been a little confusing because there hasn’t been any indication that the content is from somewhere else, so I wanted to add a visual cue. I’m still working out some of the issues, and eventually I’d like for there to be a larger indication of where the content is coming from, but right now I’m pleased with my wordpress-fu.
To follow up on some earlier posts, the speaker cones I refoamed sound excellent now that they’re dry and reinstalled. On a difficulty scale of 1-5 I’d say this project was about a 3, only because I was sawing with an X-Acto knife next to a fragile paper cone. But, then, I also think nothing of disassembling laptops as a paid professional. It’s a great way to have saved $150 over the long run, even if they’re destined to be backup speakers in the living room.
Our iPod interloper is back in the clink for reasons unknown; I got another subpoena to appear in January for another court date. He must have blown his program somehow, and sadly I think he’s destined for some serious time behind bars.
Finn busted out her new Legos over the break and I spent a couple of long afternoons building and playing with her. The set we got is geared specifically towards girls, so it features a girl minifig, a horse, and a car with plans to build houses and other structures. After we’d built a bunch of the structures, I got the feeling the minifig was lonely so I went into the basement and busted out a couple more from my stash. She seemed happy to see them, and for the rest of the afternoon we put wings on the horse, the car, and anything else that touched a red balloon on the couch (it was bestowing super powers, you see), then flew them from one end of the room to the other.
In the basement, I rearranged all of our shelving units and reorganized a bunch of stuff we had scattered in multiple places. Up in the ice room, I bought some 2×3″ studs and built shelves to hold rubbermaid bins, which effectively doubled the shelf space in there. That freed up a bunch of space in the main room to hold more important stuff and move dry goods closer to the foot of the stairs. I moved the bikes to the back so they’re out of the way, moved my brewing stand further away from the furnace to avoid temperature fluctuations, and consolidated large woodworking tools to the back wall. I also ditched a bunch of dried out paint, tossed unneeded junk, and made a pile of to-be-donated-or-tossed stuff for us to go through. Once that pile is gone, the room will be much bigger.
This morning we got up early to have breakfast with Santa at the Baltimore Zoo. I went into it not really expecting much, but came away pleasantly surprised. We rode the tram up to the original mansion/administrative house and found tables set up for us out on the porch. A beautiful spread was laid out, and we filled up on eggs, bacon, french toast and potatoes while Santa came in and got settled nearby. At the same time, zoo staff brought in a pair of penguins and a chinchilla for the kids to see, as well as a craft table to make ornaments, bird feeders, and gingerbread cookies. Most importantly, Finn had a great time.
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My brother-in-law Glenn and I had standing plans to visit the Annapolis gun show today, long before the events in Connecticut hit the news. We debated our plans Saturday via text, but ultimately decided we’d go. He’s in the market for a shotgun of some kind, and I’m looking specifically at gun safes and trigger locks.
The Annapolis Armory looks just like every other armory I’ve ever been to. It’s smooth 1950’s brick surrounded by scrubby pine and vintage tanks, and the interior is painted industrial shades of blue and gray. Jammed into the gymnasium were gun dealers of all shapes and sizes, as well as surplus sellers, book dealers, and knife and crossbow tables. There were a lot of Vietnam veteran patches, acres of camouflage, and some very interesting hairstyles on display. We walked one side of the gym to the other, and without fault were surrounded by some of the most courteous people I’ve been around in a long time. I suppose the proximity of so much deadly weaponry underlines the need to be civil to your fellow man. The mood was subdued and serious. Quiet men pored over the hardware, speaking quietly to each seller. I overheard one man inquire about sales volume, and the dealer explained that purchasing was up since Friday, especially AR-15s and other semiautomatics. There were all kinds of guns on display, from shiny antique rifles to AR variants dressed up with modular accessories like Transformers.
With all the merchandise on display, there was one category I did not see represented anywhere: not a single gun safe, trigger lock, or other method of securing firearms. My intention was to ask questions and educate myself as much as possible, but there wasn’t anyone to talk to. Perhaps that says everything there is to say about gun control.
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Finn and I stopped in to the Lowe’s this weekend to do some Christmas scouting, and I noticed they’re selling the Nest thermostat. I fooled around with it for as long as Finn would let me, and I came away extremely impressed. After having read through the website, this is something I can definitely see in our future. I’m the guy who installed programmable thermostats in my last two houses and actually took the time to set them up; if a $200 investment could save us even more money in heating costs down the road, I’m all ears.
The lawn furniture is in, the plants are covered, the gutters are clean, the house is stocked with non-perishables and water, the firewood has been gathered, the Scout is battened down, and we have one full tank of gas. Except for a generator, we’re as ready as we’re going to be for Sandy’s arrival.
I inspected the gutter guards on the back of the house and liked what I saw. Hopefully I’ll never have to get up there and clean that thing out, and we can start growing grass under the eaves again.
In the morning we had brunch with Dan and Elena one last time before they leave town. Jen and Finn went to the Baltimore Zoo for a Halloween event with the neighbors while I put some band-aids on our yard before the storm. Our crab salesman from across the street showed up a little after lunchtime with a bag of mediums and two handfuls of claws; not having made dinner plans it worked out very well and tasted great with a couple of glasses of IPA.