Anthony Rants

Well, another year has passed. My 26th birthday was really good. Anna made some German chocolate cupcakes with coconut-pecan frosting. I took some of them to work and everyone enjoyed them. Matt took me to a pretty good Chinese + bubble tea place for lunch and Anna took me out for dinner too :-)

Anna and I had a very productive weekend. On Saturday we had a garage sale where we made around $120, but more importantly, we got rid of lots of extraneous stuff that was laying around the house. The stuff that didn't sell (mostly my old clothes and such) was dropped off at Goodwill. Then on Sunday, we went mountain biking at Kickapoo State Park. It was a blast, it is hard to believe that there was such a fun trail hiding less than thirty minutes away. Hopefully we can explore some of the other trails in Illinois before fall and winter really set in.

Here is that picture I promised. It was taken from the upper level deck of the cabin looking down the slope of the mountain it was on. It really was quite impressive.

Sorry about the quality of the image stitch, I figured I could either correct the exposure and eliminate the left most seam, or just go ahead and post it for you :) (The picture is actually four different exposures combined to form one wide panoramic shot)

I'll try and find some time tomorrow to write an entire post.

For the past week, Anna and I were out in Colorado visiting my family. My dad had a brief respite from his deployment in the Middle East and it was really nice to visit with him. We did quite a bit of mountain biking (I'll have to post more about our bikes later), some hiking, some beer tasting, some brewery touring, and lots of visiting. We stayed in a really nice vacation home that my mom rented for the week. It had plenty of beds and bedrooms for us all to sleep in, a spectacular view, and a hot tub to soothe those sore muscles :) I'll be sure and put up some pictures of the view. I had originally planned on cooking three times while we were out there, but my mom had a lot of meals planned and faced with quickly rising expenditures (mountain biking and driving an SUV to Colorado ain't cheap!), we cut our meal plans to just one meal. Anna and I cooked a variation of Rouladen which I think went down pretty well with the crowd (my parents, my sisters, and my grandparents). I love to cook around the house, but cooking for that many people is a little stressful (I've never made twenty rolls of Rouladen before!). We brought a nice Riesling blend and what I consider one of the beers that defines doppelbock: Ayinger Celebrator. I thought even if my dad didn't enjoy the beer he would enjoy the little goat as a good luck charm. Turns out he enjoyed both the beer and the goat :) We tasted lots and lots of beers while we were there; A few were beers that I have never had: Dogfish Head 120, Stone 07.07.07 Vertical Epic, various New Belgium fare, and lots of others I'll have to expound upon in yet another post.

When we returned from Colorado, I had a nice surprise waiting for me (ok I admit, I looked at the results online and it wasn't so much of a surprise :p), two second place ribbons and a first place plaque from the Dayton Beerfest. I nearly swept the Belgian Ale category taking first with my Belgian Pale Ale and second place with my Saison. I won with relatively low scores though, so it may have just been a weak category ;) But hey, a win is a win. The other ribbon was a second place with my American Wheat. Winning these awards was a nice feeling of accomplishment and continues my streak of at least placing in every competition I've entered, but it also reminded me of my current lack of brewing. I hope in the next few weeks to really start closing in on finishing my new brewery, but first I have to close in on unpacking! Anna and I are both in agreement to really make a concerted effort to get everything unpacked in the next few days... we'll see how that goes.

Lots of people scoff when they hear we don't have a microwave at our house... it seems odd, but after you live without one for a year or so, you find that you really don't need one. That inevitably leads people to ask, "But what about popcorn?" Well, we use an air popper, of course the conversation concludes with a good amount of guffawing on their part and comments about lacking that extra buttery goodness that microwave popcorn has. (We actually prefer to just melt some real butter and drizzle the air-popped corn with it, but that is probably beyond the scope of this rant :) )
Well my friends, it appears that Anna and I will have the last laugh this time: popcorn butter causes disease.

Well I have to apologize for doing such an awful job of updating my blog, almost two months since my last entry! For shame! Home ownership is keeping me very busy, lots of 'fun' activities, from fence building to yard work to situating the garage for more than door painting, the 'fun' never ends around here. In amongst all of this fun I have learned a few things that I will share, call these "Anthony's lessons learned so far from home ownership".

1. In Champaign/Urbana, Menards > Home Depot > Lowes in terms of prices... in terms of quality? Maybe Lowes > Menards > Home Depot... Choose wisely. A really nice thing about Menards is that anything you purchase on a credit card can be returned because you can print out receipts for anything you purchase on a credit card at a kiosk in the front of the store.

2. People are stupid with electricity, never trust anything that has been marked by previous owners... honestly, don't trust anything involving electricity that the previous owners had a part of.

3. If you ever have a house with a subpanel, or you end up installing your own subpanel, do yourself a favor, stick with the same brand that your main panel is... its a pain in the ass to remember which brand corresponds to which panel. Even worse, locally I have the worse luck finding the breakers I want for our subpanel (Cutler-Hammer).

4. If the toilet doesn't flush on the first attempt... plunge it! Do not under any circumstances attempt to flush the toilet again... Found this out the hard way... when you're busy cleaning poop-water off of your bathroom floor, only two thoughts go through your mind: Why didn't I spring for the shop vac that had 8 gallons of capacity!? AND Why didn't I just plunge it!?

5. If you have any painting to be done, hire it out. Painting itself isn't a big deal, but the cleanup is a bitch. Especially if you're doing something silly like painting all of the doors in your house... and especially if some of those doors need to be one color on the front but a different color on the back.

6. Need a fence? Hire it out. Your (not) sore back and (not) blistered hands will thank you.

7. People are stupid about electricity... repeated I know, but it is just that important... If you happen to see a double pole 15A breaker in a panel, don't assume that it controls the power to anything, could be whatever it did control power for is long gone... Don't assume that the breakers labeled 'Garage' are actually all of the breakers that control power to your garage... luckily I am in the habit of carrying a little voltage testing pen device that will beep if a circuit is still hot.

8. Fiberglass insulation, warm weather, and copious amounts of perspiration do not mix... take a cold shower after attempting to mix these ingredients... calamine lotion seems to help after the fact as well.

9. While the house itself is one big project, divide it up into little projects lest you be overwhelmed before you get anywhere.

10. Reward yourself after you complete a project, even if the project is as trivial as planting some flowers... have a beer... or three... the projects don't seem so big after a good strong ale... after all, it was Shakespeare who wrote, "For a quart of ale is a dish for a king."... and as a home owner you are truly the king of your castle :)

In all seriousness, I have gotten quite a bit done over the last few weeks. Completed a wooden privacy fence (posts, concrete, panels and all!), rewired the garage, insulated the garage (has to become a habitable brewery after all!), lots of yard work, and even some unpacking in amongst all of that. Things are going really well for Anna & I and I'm really enjoying having something to do for a change (aside from brewing beer that is... and now that I'm on a sort of brewing hiatus [brewery isn't unpacked or setup yet!], I'd go crazy were it not for these projects to keep me busy).

I have other stuff to talk about too, I'll see if I can't get another post out of my brain again soon.

I really dug this recent blog post from Tomme (the head brewer) at Lost Abbey/Port Brewing. I only wish we could get some of his beers out here. Anyways give it a read and post your thoughts... agree? disagree?

I'll post some more tomorrow about some recent happenings here :)

Matt and Kate have been teasing us lately on all of the "fun" things we get to do, from painting to crawling around in blown insulation to run wires. When I was younger and I had to help my parents with such tasks, I think I looked at them the same way Matt and Kate look at them... but now that I am doing these tasks for Anna and I, there is something more to it. Maybe it is just the novelty of being able to change anything we want or maybe it is the gratification of feeling like you got something accomplished... whatever it is, I hope it doesn't wear off anytime soon because we have lots more things to do! :)

Today we're going to continue painting and I'm going to mow over there for the first time... and in another first, I'm going to carry my camera along so maybe I'll come back tonight with some pictures to share.