New Wheels

Remember this keychain?

It is now home to our new Toyota Highlander Keys. 

Mike and I have been visiting different dealerships the last couple weeks and last weekend we purchased this.  We had to wait a few days because they had to drive the one we wanted in from Wisconsin.  But Thursday afternoon we headed to Brooklyn Park and picked it up.  We both really like it and the kids love it.  It gives us all the room we wanted, but doesn't feel huge.

Sadly it isn't a stick shift.  It's the only disappointing thing.

But...get a load of this little area now on a lot of automatic cars...

When we were shopping for our previous car we mentioned that we wanted a manual transmission.  We had one salesman who tried to pawn this off as feeling, "just like a stick shift" but on the days I didn't feel like driving a manual transmission, then I could just put it in automatic.  I'm sure his sales pitch worked on someone who had never driven a stick shift before.  But, if you've ever driven a stick-shift you know that is so NOT true.  After about the third time of trying to sell us on this I just looked at Mike because I was about to say something that was probably going to be severly sarcastic; this guy was annoying.  Mike just looked at him and said, "I really don't think that's the way to sell this car to her."  He countered that his son (who wanted a stick-shift) had this on the car they had given him and didn't complain.  We decided that if our parents had given us a brand new car at 16, we wouldn't have complained either.

It's a little less time with only one car than we anticipated.  As we drove off the lot Mike said, "Well, we made it one week.  Aren't we tough."  But, the deal was good and quite frankly, Mike is the one that was having to reschedule a lot of things to accomodate when we each needed the car.  His schedule is just a little more flexible.  Generally when I get a phone call (as I did) for a funeral, I'm not able to ask for it to be rescheduled.  (I've actually tried in the past.)

And yes, it's a Toyota. Any joke you have for us, I'm sure we've heard. But go ahead...

Glasses - Take 2

A couple weeks back Maddie came home with a note from the school nurse stating that her eye test didn't go so great with her left eye and she needed to see an eye doctor. 

After testing both eyes we learned that she is near-sighted in one eye and far-sighted in the other eye, but she sees 20/20 when looking with both eyes.  This wasn't a surprise.  She wore glasses from about age 4-8 and the doctor mentioned this discrepency but thought she would be fine without glasses if she chose.  So, he offered up her options by saying, "If you want glasses because the transparencies are blurry then go ahead and get them to see if it gets better.  But, if you'd rather not wear glasses and would like to say, 'hey, people, get off my back, I'm good.' then that's fine too."  She opted for glasses because she's working with the media center lately and hoping to do some "anchoring" of their school's news and wanted to be able to see the monitor clearly.  My budding journalist.

We finally got a chance to go late last week and get some picked out.  Ugh.  She, Mike and I were pulling out all sorts of frames.  Coincidentally she only liked the ones she pulled.  Mike gave up before me and finally said to me, "You know...she isn't going to like a single frame we pull out for her."  What he was really saying to me in code was, "Stop pulling out every flippin' frame in this place or we'll have to go to a different store to find something she likes."  I got the hint and went and played 20 questions with Jake.

We did end up at three different stores, only to return to the first one, but Maddie chose these frames that she loves...

At first it was a little weird for her to look through glasses again and after the lady adjusted them Maddie started to walk out and looked at me and said that she thought she saw better without the glasses.  (Which is not what you want to hear after you've already paid.)  We had them double-check that the lenses weren't backwards.  The lady said, "It's a fairly strong correction, so she might just have to get used to it at first."

Maddie's correction was a +1.5 and -1.75.  I looked at the lady after and said, "But it's not that strong of a correction," because obviously I know so much about this.  But, in my family it really isn't.  I was somewhere around a +/-4 with my correction.  I believe my sister hovered around a +/-6.  My mom was legally blind without glasses.  So a +/-1 was nothing in my opinion.  But, the professional just looked at me and said, "Yes, actually, it is."  We skiddaddled.

She is going to wear these for a solid month and see how she feels about wearing them all the time or if she thinks a part-time gig is in her future.

Despite my early reservations on these, I have to say they've grown on me; she did a good job and knows her style.

HomeBrew 2

Sunday Mike continued the beer making process from the week prior.

First he opened the Ale Pail that had been sitting and fermenting all week.

I believe when he did this he said, "Okay, you dork, come and take as many pictures as you want."  So I did.

This is what the beer looked like after a week of fermenting in our basement:

Yum, huh? 

To be honest, Mike was a little nervous halfway through the week.  He had it sitting in our little utility room in the basement but when he checked, the top thing wasn't bubbling much.  He was afraid it was too cold down there for it to ferment properly.  So, the Ale Pail moved to our kitchen for the last half of the week. 

Next comes the racking cane.  Doesn't that sound pleasant?  I will try my darndest to explain what this does in layman's terms. 

What Mike is doing is getting everything transferred to a plastic carboy for a secondary fermentation.  This isn't really necessary, but he prefers this process because it cleans out the beer better.  He could have left it in the Ale Pail for another two weeks and the beer would have continued to ferment in there.  According to Mike, "The secondary fermentation makes the beer 'clearer' in the sense that it doesn't have all the crap." 

The racking cane not only siphons the beer from the pail to the carboy, but it acts as a sieve and cleans out the beer.

And it is beer at this point.  Once it's begun fermentation it is no longer considered wort. 

I don't think this whole transfer process took longer than five minutes.

But then we have the science part jumping in.  He had to retest the beer to check the levels.  Of what?  I'm not totally sure on that to be honest, but once the numbers level out, the beer is done fermenting. 

His fermentation had slowed down, but not stopped so that was good.  I guess.

Next he stopped up the carboy and filled it with water so we could sit for hours and watch it bubble.  It's how we roll here.  We also like to watch grass grow and paint dry.

He then topped it off with a cute little red cap.

This was moved to our future basement bathroom, which is apparently our current sewing-storage-and-beer-fermenting room.  It will sit down there for another week.  It will be measured again and if the fermentation has stopped then he will bottle it.  He can't bottle it before fermentation stops or the bottles will explode. 

That's not really something I want to take pictures of anytime soon.

Episode three coming soon to a blog near you...

Suiting Up

Last weekend while we were shopping, the kids stayed with my parents.  For some reason Maddie and Jake don't mind shopping with them, but they hate shopping with us.  My parents took them to Kohl's.

I guess mom and Jake found this and Jake loved it.  LOVED it.  He's my little dress-up man.  He loves to wear a tie to church on special occasions.  He thinks vests are great with ties.  He has "church shoes" as he calls them.

He tried this on for us at my parents' house and came out beaming:

His first suit.  It's pinstripe.

I mentioned how I thought we could remove the little hanky-thing in the pocket and make others to match the ties he already had.  He said he thought that sounded good, but he also thought we could take it out and he could put a little flower in there instead.

Pinstripes and a red carnation - the cutest little mobster ever.

Homework Hassles

Last week Maddie came home with a "Chocolate Caper" assignment.

This sounds delicious, doesn't it?  It had nothing to do with eating.  It was a booklet of logic puzzles that they were assigned each day.  She said it had to do with math class.

I love logic puzzles; especially the kind with the little boxes that you "x" out as you figure out the clues to who did what, when, and where they live.  But, in general, I'm a big fan of logic puzzles and have occasionally bought a book of them when going on trips.  I've tried to find these apps on my iPod, but haven't been successful...yet.

Anyway, I would have been the perfect candidate to help her out on these and Mike knew it.  He hates stuff like this.  And he especially didn't see how this related to math in any way, shape or form (he also made sure he voiced that opinion well out of earshot of Maddie).  But there were a couple of really tough ones and these happened on the nights I taught.

One night I came out of my studio to this:

Frustration.

They had already restarted this logic puzzle twice by the time I got out.  They thought they had it figured out until I pointed out one flaw.  The third time was the charm though and all together we were able to figure this one out.

Mike is awesome with helping the kids with their homework.  But I think he might lose it if anymore of these logic puzzles come home.

Us in 40+ Years

Every so often I beg Mike to let me start teaching him how to play the piano.  My biggest "pro-argument" is that we'll be able to play fun duets together when we are old and gray.  It will be something we can share when we hit high into retirement age.  He hasn't gone for it yet.  In fact, he either flat out ignores me or rolls his eyes.  But I'm not giving up.

A couple nights ago Mike and I were watching the news and we saw this, which apparently is quite popular on YouTube...



I jumped at the opening and said, "See!!!  That could be us in 40-50 years!  Please let me teach you how to play the piano.  You, Jake and Maddie could rotate your practice times!"  (Not that the last sentence is a big selling point, but I would get a kick out of having to remind Mike to practice piano.)

He just looked at me and said, "Okay.  When I turn 80 you can teach me how to play the piano."

Don't think I won't hold him to it.  I'm thinking of going this week to buy the book he'll learn out of, just in case they don't print it in 40 years.

And I'm not going to stop bugging him about it either.  My goal is to get that date moved up at least 30 years.

HomeBrew

For Christmas the kids pooled their money together and bought Mike a beer-making kit he had on his list.  Our kids bought their dad a kit on how to make alcohol with my blessing.  There is no end to the cost of future therapy bills.

And if that's not enough, after having already read about our eggnog, then after reading this, someone's going to think we need AA.

Sunday Mike finally got some time to make his brew.  This process takes a few hours so you would need to make sure enough time is allotted.  I'm not a beer fan in the least, though Mike still tries to get me to taste new ones he think I might like.  So, I was just the photo-journalist here.

And when Mike found out I was taking pictures to be posted on the blog he said two things:

1.  "You are a dork."
2.  "I don't want to hear from Tracy [my sister, who happens to be a microbiologist] about any unsanitary issues/fines she might see."

So, zip it, Tracy. 

Here we go.  First you need some basic supplies.  I bought these at Midwest Homebrewing Supplies.  It's also where we've purchased all his kits.  They are extremely nice and helpful to people like me: those who know NOTHING about beer.

A couple buckets (though Sunday he only used one).

A big giant pot.  This is the largest pot we have in the house and it only gets used to make beer.  That's so sad.

A kit of some kind.  Mike's wish list was for this:

But when I looked closer I saw this - and began to think there was hope for this beer yet!

The kit contains everything you need, except the yeast.  Don't forget to pick up yeast.  I would have forgotten except the nice guy helping us out told us the kit didn't include it and found what we needed.

A friend of Mike's taught him how to make beer a couple years ago.  Apparently one of the rules was, "You have to drink beer when making beer."  I was exempt from that rule because I was just the photographer.

First you take your grains and put them in a giant tea-bag.

Then you "gently crack" them open.  He didn't roll them out, just used the rolling pin to squish them some.

You take them to the big pot that is filled with some water and steep the grains for about 30 minutes.  There's a lot of waiting time when you make beer.  But, just like tea the water gets darker and darker.

When 30 minutes are up, you drain the bag and toss the contents.  All while the dog looks on and whines because she thinks she's missing out on some fantastic tasting stuff.

Maddie came in to inspect things at this point and asked if she was going to get to try it.  Don't worry, we said no.  The cigarettes were enough of a moral issue for one week.

Next you remove the pot from the burner and add the motor oil malt.

I mean seriously - look at this stuff.  It totally looks like used motor oil.

But you put the pot back on the burner and bring it to a boil again.  Apparently we weren't done, like I thought so I didn't get a picture of him adding the Hops.  That stuff smells bad.  Really.  They are little green pellets that look like rabbit droppings.  I mean, could I make this stuff sound any more appealing?  "Motor Oil and smelly green rabbit droppings".  I certainly know how to sell a hobby, don't I?

I don't know how long he steeped these Hops, but the last 30 minutes of it he added this:

I think Mike hid the kit box when Jake found out there was a giant bottle of honey in it.  Jake's former life was a bee; this kid loves honey.

During the last two minutes of this boiling time you add the Aroma Hops.  They smell bad too.

Now he began the cooling process and these ominous looking instruments came into play:

Mike admitted that there is probably a better cooling process, but this is what he's come up with that didn't require extra equipment.

First put the big pot in the sink that has been filled with cold water.

In the Ale Pail dump 10 pounds of ice.  I asked about it melting, but he said the whole mixture gets topped off with water anyway so it's fine.

Pour in the mixture from the big giant pot.

Stir that up.  The ice melts within a minute.  Keep an eye on the temperature and add water to fill the bucket.

Next get out the yeast.  Mike was nicely surprised when he opened it and said, "Wow!  You bought me the good stuff!"  I said, "Only the best for you," and wondered what the heck he was talking about.

Pour that in and stir it up really well.

Then you pull out the giant test tube and fill it with some of this wort (unfermented beer).

Then you measure the wort and record it for the alcohol potential.

I thought he was recording the alcohol level.  Then I was informed there was no alcohol yet because it hadn't had time to ferment - thus why it's call wort and not beer.  Huh.

I don't know why we have to record the potential alcohol level.  Is there a point where you say, "Drat!  Too much alcohol is possible!  Toss it!"   ???

At this point Mike tested it and offered me some saying, "It has a little bit of a sweet taste.  I mean it doesn't taste good...but it's got a little sweet taste." 

I tasted it and started gagging and yelling, "Blech!  That's awful!  It tastes like an old shoe!"  To which he replied, "Versus a new shoe?  You've eaten a lot of old shoes?"  And I told him I have a good imagination and it's exactly how I would expect an old shoe to taste.

Now you top off this awful smelling/tasting wort (a now highly appropriate name, in my opinion) with the lid and fill this little cup/cap with water.  This cap allows carbon dioxide to escape thus preventing the lid from blowing off.  The water seals off the cap so no air can get in.  Here I have to agree with my sister, science can sometimes be kinda cool.

Now this will sit for a week.  Next Sunday it gets transferred to a plastic carboy. 

And that's where I'll leave you hangin'...