96 bottle of beer on my floor, 96 bottles of beer..

I think it's pretty safe to say my creative writing here is done, so I figure I'll write about homebrewing when I get the urge.

Tonight I bottled two beers. My 3rd time doing the same European Lager, and a Winter Ale I threw together.

When Kym got me the brewing equipment the guy at the store also sold her a simple Coopers European Lager and 3 lbs DME. It's a yellow beer drinker favorite and I've made it about every 3 months since I first started brewing early this year.

I wanted a Winter Ale and wasn't too into all the kits I looked at. They seemed too spicy or too dark. I wanted a mildly spicy Amber ale, so I made up my own.
1/2 Crystal 60
1/2 Carapils 20
6.6 lbs Amber liquid extract
1 oz Vanguard 60 min
1 oz Cascade 15 min
Wyeast 1028 London Ale
spices (10 min)
1/4 t nutmeg
1/2 t 1loves
1/2 t ginger
1 t vaniall extract
2 cinnamon sticks

O.G 1.050
F.G 1.016

When bottling tonight I decided to try something different. I took a gallon from each of the fermentors and mixed then and got about a case worth of a european winter lager/ale. We'll see how that turns out...


I love my homebrews but they don't taste as good as this Dogfish Punkin Ale did.

Every Christmas since Kenslee was born I made a video much like the following for my parents and Kym's parents. The Christmas one is longer and more fine tuned, but some of the lyrics to this song I like so much (not the vulgar ones) I decided to make a summer vacation video.


I'm undecided as to if I want to put it on the Christmas video for the grandparents because of those few lyrics, so I'm just putting it here for now.

woohoo, 1000 posts!

Kym will probably get mad at me for posting this, but whatever.

A few months ago Kym started having blackouts. She'd lose vision for a few seconds, then be ok. After seeing the doctors a few times they ordered a cat scan. They found clogged sinuses, which is most likely the cause when combined with low blood pressure. But they also found pollups on her parotid gland. They ordered an MRI on that, where they found a tumor on her thyroid. The tumor has calcification, and with the help of google, we found some wonderful studies that told us that means there is an 80% chance the tumor is cancer. On Monday she had all three lumps biopsied. The results were released to the doctor yesterday and after about 10 calls and 24 brutal hours of waiting they called back, and we found all results are benign. One of the pollups showed benign results, but there was a limited sample so they want to do it again. Which sucks, but it's a thousand million times better than the way we felt a few days ago.

The fatality rate of thyroid cancer is really low, but we had to prepare for the worst. Imagine how you'd feel losing your spouse. Imagine a doucebag like me trying to raise two manical kids alone. It hasn't been a fun few weeks. But things are looking up. We have several appointments next week. She may still need sugery, or she may still need radioactive treatment. She still needs to get the sinus issues resolved. But, it's not cancer, and I can sleep now.

aka, the best 5K ever. I did my best time ever, got 3rd in my division, and blah blah blah.

Here's the good part. Free beer and food. Bud, bud light, bud light lime. Beamish and Magners Irish Cider. Bluberry Vodka/sprite/lemonade drinks. Buffalo and BBQ wings, pasta, brownies, flank steak, Q-Doba tacos, pizza, more pasta, duck, bruschetta, fruit smoothies, fruit on a stick, cookies on a stick, ice cream.

And I ate and drank it all just to support a good cause. Damn, I'm good person.

I bought a new pair of sneakers today that just hit the market. I got home and googled them and found nothing about them, almost no one even sells them yet, so I figured I'd write a review to help people out.




The Puma Vectana is a blue and grey sneaker. Blueish. And Grey. Grey, or Gray? Or is that Silver? I'm not sure.



As you can see, the Vectana has a webby looking thing in the front, so maybe they were made for spiders? I only got two in my shoebox, so that sucks that spiders would have to buy four pairs of them at $99.99 a pair.




But, wait, I just turned it around, and there's a tiger on the other side. Or, is that a cheetah? Hang on a sec while I google the cheetah girls to see if this is what they look like... nope, that's not a cheetah. Probably a jaguar. Definitely an animal that can run fast, because that's what these sneakers do. When I was little I could always run faster and jump higher when I got new sneakers and the same holds true here. In fact, these should be called Segways, not sneakers because they actually did all the running for me. I put them on, and they just go. I fell asleep halfway through my run tonight and they just kept on going and eventually brought me home. Not to my home because they don't know my neighborhood yet, but they brought me to a home. I can't complain about a sneaker that treats me that well.

But for real, if any runners do find this, I've never done a shoe review, so I wouldn't know where to begin. I've had 5 pairs of Puma Tenos in the past 3 years, so that's what I'm used to. These seem to be more cushioned in the heel, and I feel like there's less room in the toebox. I only ran 2 miles tonight, so I really won't be able to tell how much I like them until I get out for a few more runs.

My brothers and dad met my cousin and uncle in Jersey City the other day and we hopped a train to NYC, then a subway to Yankee Stadium to watch the Phillies put on a clinic for the Yankees (in 11 innings). I planned to document the trip in pictures culminating in pictures of my bros and me and my dad in front of the field, but then didn't feel like taking those pics. So I'm left with these.







My uncle works on Wall Street, but the address they use is the side alley behind his building because he sells Catholic School Books and the nuns and priests wouldn't approve. Shhh, don't tell.










A-Rod striking out I'm sure.


The amount of tourists taking pictures of and looking at ground zero is absurd. There's tarps around 95% of it and people take pictures of the tarps. I don't get it.