LFLF Editor's Blog

Brewing Up a New Hobby

After talking about it for a few years, I've finally made my first foray into brewing.  Terry has brewed quite a bit in the past, but this is all new to me.  We started with an apple mead/cyser : 6 pounds of local honey, 3 gallons of unfiltered apple juice, 1 gallon of water, fresh ginger and champagne yeast.  We'll see what happens. 

Kenzie was quite happy to lick the extra honey from the container, smell the freshly-cut ginger root and watch the apple juice (and later, the honey mixture) siphoning into the carboy (giant glass bottle).  We talked about creating vacuums (the siphoning), separating the albumen from the honey, activating the yeast, fermentation, etc.  He's tried a sip of my store-bought cider before and, while not overly impressed, said it wasn't completely awful.

As usual, I dove into this new adventure headfirst.  I'm relying on Terry for some of the basic information, and I've been looking through various brewing websites for a few hours, now.  I have The Complete Joy of Home Brewing by Charlie Papazian in front of me, and I'll probably start reading it before I go to bed tonight.  I enjoy learning what I need to know as I go along.  Perhaps that's why unschooling has always made so much sense to me. 

The house now smells of honey and ginger, and I'm reluctant to cook anything else until it's back to normal.  Honey has always been one of my favorite scents.  We'll leave the mixture in the carboy for a few weeks and then add a bit more honey for a second round of fermentation when we transfer it into bottles.  I can hardly wait!

Back Online

Ahhh....  The computer's fixed (crosses fingers), the magazines will soon be done at the printer's, and I feel like life is back to normal. 

Yesterday, we ate at our local Greek restaurant where Kenzie decided to teach us a few of his favorite Greek myths. We also talked about Atlantis and whether or not it ever existed.  He thinks the island, itself, did exist, but doesn't believe all the myths surrounding it.  He loves hummus on pita bread and looking at the cool "photo mural" of Athens on the restaurant's wall while listening to Greek music, so Tino's is always a treat for him. 

After that, we visited a grocery store we haven't used in ages and picked up lots of Asian foods.  Kenzie especially enjoyed the rice candy with edible wrappers.  I bought my mother some licorice-dusted prunes (she likes both licorice and prunes - don't ask me why), and we grabbed several other assorted Oriental goodies, as well. 

Today, Kenzie spent quite a long time reading about pirates.  He played with action figures, read his new Bionicle comic and Lego magazine, rode his bicycle, and created an elaborate game of pretend in which we used play money to buy businesses.  He hunted for bugs to keep for a while in his bug box, talked about Pokemon (as usual), looked for birds and butterflies with the binoculars, and gave me a run for my money during an extremely long (three hours!) game of Monopoly. Now, he's about to go on a walk with our elderly neighbor and her dog.  All that, and it's not even 5:00!

I guess I should start thinking about what to cook for dinner.  Maybe those rice noodles we picked up yesterday....

Dead Computers and Songwriters

Not surprisingly, after my last post, the computer had a fit and began turning off only a few seconds after starting.  Often, it never even got to the login screen.  I think it knew I was talking about it (so much for our BOINC theory).  So, while it's being fixed (assuming it can be fixed), I'm using Terry's computer.  He's rather fond of his online RPGs, so I'm trying to do everything while he's working.  It's not going well, especially since I'm desperate to finish up Issue 10 and get it to the printers.  It would have been there a week or two ago, had my computer been a bit more reliable.  Sigh....

Right now, Kenzie's listening to a Harry Nilsson cd, and he's just announced that when it's finished, he wants to watch The Point, Nilsson's wonderful cartoon about a boy with a round head living in a world of points.  We bought it when Kenzie was two or three years old, and it's been a favorite of his ever since.  Since then, Harry Nilsson has become one of Kenzie's most loved musical artists.  I don't know of any kid who doesn't enjoy the "Coconut" song (and the Muppets' take on it is particularly enjoyable, as well). 

Extraterrestrials and Dogs Defeat My Computer

A few months ago, we replaced our old SETI screensaver with the new one (part of a program called BOINC).  Ever since, the computer has been overheating on a regular basis.  My brother and I cleaned out the tower, but it didn't do much good.  This week, it started shutting down every few minutes, making working on the magazine (or blogging, for that matter) almost impossible.  Terry removed the fan and cleaned a tremendous amount of dust out of the heat sink, but still, the computer shut down.  Just when I was considering pricing new fans and heat sinks, Terry read an article about BOINC causing computers to overheat, so we quickly removed it ("Fast, fast! Before it shuts down, again!").  What do you know?  No more overheating. 

Kenzie and I love SETI, though, and miss having the computer searching for life out there in the Cosmos.  I feel like I'm letting down Carl Sagan (a childhood hero), somehow.  But, it seems almost luxurious being able to work without saving every fifteen seconds, waiting for that unmistakable "click" and the dreaded dark screen.

In addition, the dogs wrecked havoc with the phone line (and, thus, the Internet connection) after a few finches decided to nest in a backyard bush/tree.  This giant bush (taller than the house, itself) had always covered the phone line and water spigot in the back of the house, but once the birds moved in, the dogs felt the strong urge to tear off the lower branches in their effort to make friends with these little feathered guys, and exposed the phone line and spigot.  Well, the first day, they turned on the water without anyone noticing and flooded the backyard.  The next day, they ripped the phone cable out of the box. Now, mind you, these are almost exclusively indoor dogs.  They weren't out there long, accomplishing these feats within only a few minutes.  Perhaps they're gifted.

After a call to the phone company, a wonderful, hippie-ish man came out to take a look, fixed the problem, and decided not to charge us (saving us over a hundred dollars).  We talked about New Orleans and Mardi Gras (it was Fat Tuesday, and his family is from New Orleans), sun signs, and what it's like to be a boy with long hair (Kenzie especially enjoyed this conversation).  This is the second time I've had this sort of luck with telephone repairmen.  If only I could extend that luck to police officers, plumbers and IRS agents. 

But, I'm back online, now, trying to catch up a bit.  How did we live without computers?  I don't remember....