ben.parmeter

This week is a big milestone for Claire.  She’s going to be going to daycare for the first time.  She’ll be thrust into an environment completely different from what she’s used to, with unfamiliar people.  It’s going to be really hard… for her parents.  And it’ll be hard on her too, I’m sure.  She won’t be in our protective cocoon for a large majority of the day.  She’ll be feeding from a bottle, she’ll be sleeping in different place, she’ll be interacting with different babies, the list goes on.  It’s a big milestone for us parents too.  We have to sort of let go of our little newborn baby and let her start to expand her independence.   It’s going to be tough letting other people take care of her for a good portion of the day, while we toil at work.  But I know we have to deal with it.  Sigh.  Our little girl is growing up so fast, and so are her parents.

Happy fathers day everyone. Kinda feels like this day was created just so dads wouldn’t feel left out of the whole mothers day thing. But dads surely do deserve a day to be revered as well. I love ya Dad, and I hope I can do as good a job at raising my child as you did with us kids.

As a celebration of fathers day and of my own impending parenthood, I’m posting some videos from our most recent ultrasound. This was the appointment where we found out that little Gizmo was going to be a girl. I have to say that it was a pretty awe inspiring experience to see my little progeny-to-be fluttering around inside my wife.

Since YouTube only allows ten minute videos, I had to cut this up into two parts. And no comments about the music, this was all part of the “experience” that we received at the place we had the ultra-sound done.  This was done right around week 17 of the pregnancy, so Gizmo still looks like an alien monkey.  Frankly, a bit creepy.  But also cute and awesome at the same time.  (Gizmo – I’m sorry, in advance, for posting a video with your naughty bits all over the internet – it’s really hard to see them anyway.  Some day you will will understand)

Time for another hop farm update.  I’ve been meaning to post these pics for many days now but just hadn’t gotten around to it yet. The hops are doing OK, despite being ravaged by insects and other wildlife (probably a cat interested in the string I’m using to train the plants).

They’ve actually progressed a bit more than what is shown in these pictures.   Go hops go!  And yes, those are pencils.  They make perfect little stakes.

I’m actually looking forward to this weekend.  Not because I’m looking for a rest from the brutal work-week.  No, in fact, I am looking forward to some free time to do some much needed house work / yard work.  It’s officially spring time and I need to get this place all cleaned up.  There is much to do around the house, inside and out (particularly outside).

And so I will throw on my work jeans (old jeans re-purposed for work around the house), a tattered t-shirt and enjoy the California sunshine while trimming some hedges, cutting some grass, weeding some gardens and digging some ditches.  How domestic of me.

In other news, I think my Nugget hop Rhizome has finally sprouted!  Hopefully I can confirm later today.  I noticed a thick shoot protruding up from the ground where I planted the rhizome almost two weeks ago.  I didnt’ have much time to investigate this morning before heading out to work, so I’ll get back to this tonight when I get home.  Maybe it’s another plant taking root or maybe it’s the new hops!  Exciting!

Over and out.

The weather out here is turning a warm 70+ degrees.  Driving home in the evenings with the windows rolled down and the music turned up, I’m reminded why I pay the “California Tax”.  It’s enough to make me want to ditch work early and spend the afternoon hanging at home with all the windows open and the breeze softly blowing the curtains around.  There is a short window of exquisite spring before the summer arrives and we are back to 100 degree scorchers.  Until then, I plan to drink it in one day at a time.

But what’s this?  Rain is coming this weekend?  It can’t be?!  Alas, it is so… and my spring will have to wait for another day.

If you are interested in technology at all, I urge you to go check this video out from the TED conference.

And even if you are not into technology per se, you should definitely go check out TED anyway.  You can spend hours watching videos of ground breaking stuff.

I had dreams of this kind of technology as a kid, actually. I always thought that I’d have some kind of cool implant that augmented my reality. Like overlaying objects or people over the real world seamlessly, so I could see a toaster in my kitchen that wasn’t really there. Maybe that’s not the best example, but this has potential to vastly expand or lives as we know them today. Just think of the video games you could immerse yourself in, the phone calls to relatives who seem like they are sitting accross the table from you. And of course what would any new technology be without porn. The adult entertainment industry will be all over this one.

Yup, I had to jump on board with this old internet thing.  Checkout many more here…

I guess this is just part of being a homeowner… plumbing.  My patience is being tested.  Thoroughly.  While I feel pretty confident when it comes to carpentry, or electrical work, I’m woefully incompetent when it comes to plumbing.  Maybe it’s just a confidence thing, but it certainly seems to be something that escapes me.

Why all the sudden rants about plumbing?  Well, I’ll tell you.  I have recently acquired a new kitchen faucet, which I love, from e-bay for less than half the cost than a retail shop.  It’s brand new, beautiful, and actually quite simple to install.  However, before I was able to install this, I had to tackle the water valves underneath the kitchen sink.  The water valves you see, are a different size thread than the shiny new faucet.  So, it was time to replace them.   At least one of the them probably needed to be replaced anyway.  It was very old anyway and the internal rubber gaskets were actually quite deteriorated.

Allow me to just get this off my chest.  Water valves are designed in the seventh level of hell, by retarded monkeys.  (hopefully I didn’t just offend all of my readers with that statement, especially my retarded monkey readers)  They work by actually destroying the copper pipe that comes out of your wall.  Thats right, destroying the damn pipe that comes out of the wall which are, I might add, impossible to replace without paying a big hairy sweaty man without a properly fitting belt who charges $100/hour. These valves actually compress a little brass ring which squeezes the copper pipe and deforms it such that the little brass ring becomes a permanent piece of pipe jewelry.  Replacing these brass rings is not possible.  Don’t do it.  Take my word for it.  Because no matter how careful you think you are, you’re gonna bend that pipe and then, you will never get a tight seal.  Leak city.

I have spent two evenings and an entire morning on awkwardly crammed underneath the kitchen sink, arms reaching around pipes, cursing and grunting.  Valves!!.  I had to take a break – for fear that my anger would take over and I would go on a pipe-wrench rampage underneath the kitchen sink.

Curse you valves!! Curse you!!!

Just as I had mentioned in previous post, I have stepped up and made good on my plans to brew beer. Today, I peeled myself off of the couch and went down to the local home-brew shop. There I was confronted with a vast array of confusing choices of equipment and brewing materials. I quickly made friends with the guy running the place, who himself had just started brewing beer a couple of months ago. I told him what I had wanted to do – and we started off trying to keep it simple and cheap and then escalated from there.

First, I chose a beer kit which consists of all the delicious ingredients to make the actual beer. I chose the “Strong Nut Brown Ale” which comes with all the grains (Pale Liquid Malt Extract LME, Victory Malt, Chocalate Malt), Hops (Northern Hops from the UK, and Willamette Hops from Oregon), Irish Moss for flavor, Turbonado sugar for brewing, yeast for brewing also and bottling sugar.

Next, I chose to purchase the actual fermenter (5-Gallon Bucket) and gear from the same shop. This is how things started to escalate in price. As we chatted over the course of 45 minutes, we slowly began piling on item after item. It started with just the fermenter, the airlock, then the rack and bottling bucket, the siphon, the tubing, the bottling tube, and the list goes on. Not really all that terrible when you consider after purchasing all of this it was still around $80 with about $35 going to the actual beer kit contents.

The brewing process is relatively simple, but very precise. In a way, I feel a bit like a cop-out by not actually doing the process from scratch – actually selecting the ingredients one by one and preparing the malts, etc. However for a first timer, I think that going with a kit is a wise choice. Maybe if I really enjoy this, I’ll start to experiment with more complicated brews.

Thankfully, HopTech has some great instructional videos online which helped me immensely. I learned some new stuff that wasn’t in the instructions from these videos. They really helped me visualize what I needed to do during the entire process.

In two-three weeks, I’m hoping to have 5-gallons of delicious, delicious beer. Wish me luck.

It’s been a long, long time. Sorry I haven’t written you, internet. Life gets busy you know. With work and the house, and a fast paced lifestyle there hasn’t been much time to jot down my thoughts, whims, musings, etc. But let me try and make up for it. I know it’s not much but I have a few pictures from a recent attempt at the John Muir Trail here in my gallery. And how about a couple random paragraphs?

Random thought: Winter Beer Season is coming soon bringing with it a bevy of delicious dark yummy beers. I’ve been talking about it for a really long time now, but I think this year I’m finally going to do it. I want to brew my own beer. It’s been a fantasy of mine for a really long time – to start my own brewing operation and eventually work my way up to a microbrewery a’la McMenamens in the Pacific Northwest.

I’m going to Japan in a few weeks and thusly needed to pull the old monkey suit out of the closet. That old suit is over five years old, hard to believe. Knowing that the suit is now a tight fit (I’ve put on a few pounds over the last 5 years, ok, jeez), I decided to take it to get altered. The whole experience was very humbling – and really put my weight gain into perspective. I’ve literally gained about 4-5 inches around my mid-section. Shock! And so I ended up walking out of the store having donated my old suit to charity and purchased a brand new suit. Am I a complete sucker?

Hopefully that holds you over for now internet. Sorry about the cold shoulder – can we still be friends?