Zombie Dick Clark has officially been released from deep freeze for his annual 45 minutes of feasting on BRAAAAAIIIIIINNNNNNNSSS in Times Square. Woe be upon you, the living.

I guess this post reveals the extent of MY crazy new year's party, huh?

But before you get too proud -- I am ringing in 2008 with a 750 ml bottle of Chimay Blue, and you probably aren't. So Nyyyyaaaaah.

Ends of trips are always the worst.

I have to take the kid away from all three of his grandparents -- he seems to love them more and more with each day we spend here.

I have to load up the current revision of "our stuff" so that it's all acceptable to the airline -- and despite promising ourselves again and again that we'd go home with less than we brought, it just never happens.

Tried to make plans to see some friends while we're all in the same general vicinity; no luck, as kids schedules (and let's be honest, my own inability to plan more than two hours into the future) strike again.


Home will be nice. I just have to get serious about getting rid of a major volume of junk in the next few weeks, as we're less than a year from a big move ... I'm not a naturally neat person, I'm generally a clutterbug and packrat. But we've reached the point where the clutter is even getting on MY nerves and that takes some doing.

And I have to be on a plane before 7am tomorrow, which just isn't natural. wish me luck...

More things I never thought I'd say...

Wife: "How was your day with Theo and granddad?"

Me: "Spectacular. Played Wii during his nap. Fed the Spud. Had an existential crisis over Spud's eating habits and narrowly avoided joining a monastery as a result. You know, the usual."

Now, I bore you with home movies.

I hate to be "THAT father," but if you're into cute babies, here's a clip of Theo and two of his cousins from Thanksgiving, taken with my Sanyo Xacti VPC-E1 and exported for web display in iMovie HD.




Before anyone mentions it, we have noticed my son's foot fetish and are coming to terms with it. I'm comforting myself by thinking that the people who founded Foot Locker, Payless and DSW probably behaved the same way at 6 months old...

These are things we need to know.

EDIT: Stupid non-working quiz spam used to be here; thanks Erik and my sister for letting me know. I took it down.

Let me tell you about my dumb:

Eh. too much to do.

Tonight was a good night for procrastination. Chinese food, two beers (Otter Creek Stovepipe Porter and a Peg Leg Imperial Stout.

The always-short list for tomorrow...

Update the address list, print out labels for the holiday cards;

Make baby food -- at least the new kitchen aid food grinder has arrived...

Hope the weather holds out to get outside and run;

Fold laundry;

And hope that I can watch 15 minutes of football while Theo is asleep.

Sometime this week,
Start packing for the Christmas trip;

Go buy my wife's Christmas present at a real store, since the online store I ordered from lied about their stock;

Ship the merchandise from the eBay auctions that are going to make me rich.

Homebrew diary: Oatmeal stout days 2&3

I was way too tired yesterday for an update (something exhausting about spending an hour of my day moving blocks of ice around in the street).

Rapid fermentation yesterday and a very nice looking krauesen on top of my brew. Today, it's slowed to a crawl and I have a vast amount of sediment in the bottom. All normal, considering the massive yeast starter I used -- I wanted to make double-sure I would be able to move the beer out of the fermenter within a week.

I'm pondering the possibility of brewing again the day I move this beer to the secondary, but since we also have to get ready for a trip...maybe that's not such a fabulous idea.

Homebrew diary: Oatmeal stout

It wasn't a good day to try and brew, but with a trip coming up for Christmas, I had to get some beer in the fermenter today so I could get my winter beers brewed and drinkable before the first of spring. I used the Oatmeal Stout extract kit from Midwest Homebrewing Supplies.

Yesterday I activated my Wyeast pack and made a starter, as well as getting all the necessaries out of the basement. If I'm going to store my gear in the basement I need to start wrapping it in a trashbag, I'm washing everything twice because the dust is so heavy down there.

During Theo's morning nap I got everything staged -- water in pots, equipment in sanitizer. I started warming up water about a half hour before his long afternoon nap, knowing I wouldn't be done when he woke up, but far enough along that I could still feed him, bathe him, make dinner and not make any massive mistakes. Several hours later, I'm still trying to figure out if I succeeded.

The first speedbump was the specialty grains -- I use a technique for steeping the grains I picked up on the Midwest forums, where instead of teabagging the grains in the brewpot, I soak them in a small amount of water in a saucepan, strain them into the brewkettle, then dump them back in the saucepan to repeat the process.

I didn't consider that the grains, in this case, were mostly rolled oats -- and thus, when I lifted the lid on the saucepan after steeping a half-hour, I had OATMEAL, making the rinsing and straining process a much bigger PITA than usual, and leaving me way behind on getting the boil started.

Once I was boiling, all was well and normal; I had set several containers outside to collect the day's snow and sleet, making wort cooling a cinch. I poured the cooled wort into my carboy, topped it up with water to 5 gallons, and pulled a sample to check the starting gravity...which came out at 1.060, nearly .020 higher than the expectation on the recipe.

I checked my hydrometer on a cylinder of water -- right on the money, 1.000 corrected. No matter how I played with the hydrometer, I didn't get anything close to the recipe expectation. The only other times I've had this issue, it was not enough water...but I fixed that issue a couple batches ago, and I'm 99.994% sure I was right at 5 gallons.

I decided that chances are that despite my efforts the water I added wasn't completely mixed with the very thick wort from the boil. I gave the carboy some extra shakes, pitched my yeast, and put the carboy in the basement; now I just keep my fingers crossed...

I've been typecast

"Parenting blog?"

Expect me to double my use of swear words to try to shake off this label. Maybe someday I'll have my dream of a "drinking blog that occasionally mentions parenting," instead of a "parenting blog that occasionally mentions drinking."

Right, and maybe someday I'll be able to spell "occasionally" without the use of spell-check.

In truth, I need to post more regularly before I deserve any label. Of course I'm happy to see someone notice!

As opposed to what?

Another installment in Things I never thought I'd say out loud...

"Oh, cool, this wet spot on my pants is just baby drool."

Mothers for Social Drinking

If you read the links under "What I'm reading now" on the right, you've probably noticed a few stories having to do with the Neoprohibitionists -- prudes and nanny-staters with the goal of slowly chipping away at what's left of our freedom to abuse our bodies however we like.

To summarize: Exploiting hysterical "Do it for the children" tactics and the spinelessness of politicians who can't be seen as "soft on crime," they are trying to make even moderate drinking impractical, if not illegal.

Their views have already had an effect, as in places like this MSNBC story, which assumes a worldview that neoprohibitions would love. Using the standard journalistic cop-out of presenting "both sides" of a question no reasonable person would ask, it implies that any amount of alcohol consumption is dangerous.

It also buys into a notion that has taken hold among certain folks that parents are required to make their entire existence "child friendly," as if responsible adults engaging in adult-appropriate behavior around children will indelibly scar their little snowflakes. New parents start hearing this about 30 seconds after they announce their pregnancy, when well-meaning folks start telling them that "Everything changes when you have kids" and that "It's not about you anymore."

That's why it's good to see parents take a stand in favor of common sense and the rights of adults. I couldn't say it better:

We, the undersigned, take exception to the claim that social drinking in the presence of our children is a sign of irresponsible or bad parenting. Further, we contend that it is moderation that makes responsible drinkers, and that moderation and good sense are the responsibility of all citizens; that healthy attitudes towards the consumption of alcohol are learned in the home; that successful parenting does not require us to sacrifice the exercise of our own maturity in order to protect our children's innocence; and that our society has more to fear from the poor judgment and intemperance of institutions which prey on parental insecurities than with the hospitality we share with other mothers in our parenting journey.


found via Brookston Beer Bulletin.

We'll call it...Lleb's three-livered ale!

Looks like it will require a legal battle, but Bells brewing seems determined to keep a product in Illinois.

Old SportsCenter ad of the day

I didn't realize that a bunch of old ESPN ads were posted to YouTube until I saw one on Deadspin. I'll keep posting my favorites when I have nothing else to say.

These days, ESPN is so insipid that I have no desire to watch any show aside from MNF, but that's another story.

Kick-ass Dad of the Millenium award

You can get the gist of the story by reading it, but for once I recommend listening to the radio version instead.

No, no, I insist you endanger the rest of us

James REALLY hit a pet peeve of mine in his post today. Because the comments engine of his blog is for shit, I'm posting my response here. Read his post so maybe this will make a little bit of sense.


Giving up the right-of-way at stop signs through some misplaced sense of "courtesy" is a freakin' PLAGUE where I live. I can only assume it's the outrageous percentage of older drivers on the island, or maybe they do it out of habit, because it is very necessary in certain places around town where only one car can fit down the narrow colonial horse paths.

It's not just stop signs, either. My favorite inexplicable behavior is at a busy stoplight with turn lanes but no turn arrows, the person at the head of a lane of traffic will sometimes try to wave through the oncoming traffic turning left when the light turns green -- basically, inviting the car in the lead of oncoming traffic to make what I grew up calling a "California left."

I never take them up on the offer because invariably the car next to or behind the "courteous driver" doesn't know what's going on, so following the accepted rules of traffic flow in the 49 states not called Rhode Island they will dart out around and through the intersection. No joke, I've avoided having my car totaled in this way at least three times in the past two years.


My fear of that fender bender and disgust with that other driver has led me more than once to put the car in neutral and wave to the offending driver with both hands until they give up and take their turn. The way I see it, refusing to follow the rules of the road and take the right-of-way is actually the OPPOSITE of courtesy and might even get someone killed.

I'm still trying to decide if this is better or worse than the current situation in Chicago, where using the crosswalk at any stop sign in Lincoln Park now requires the faith of an apostle. Twice during Thanksgiving week, drivers looked us right in the eye before gunning it through the intersection to miss us by inches.

Of course, I should consider the driver's perspective. By any measure, five seconds of Mr. Mercedes SUV driver's time is worth more than the lives of a family of three, right?

Yeah, busy.

Things I never thought I'd say out loud...

"Wow, isn't it amazing how well baby shit washes out of fleece?"