Yesterday morning I brewed a batch of beer for the first time in quite a while. It was a kit (I'm not a full mash guy) from Midwest Homebrewing Supplies - Packs-a-Punch Porter. It included not only six pounds of light extract, but also 3.3 pounds of porter extract. I hadn't used porter extract before - the stuff looked more or less like a cannister full of tar. I was afraid to get it near my white counters.
Here you can see it bubbling on the stove. It would be more amusing to see it bubbling out of the pot and all over my stove and the horrified expression on my face when it did (it's been a while since I had a boilover) - but at that point I was scrambling to get it off the burner before carmelized sugar leaked into places I couldn't reach it.
So...details - Saturday, July 8:
6# Light LME
3.3# Porter extract
8 oz. caramel 120 grain
4 oz. chocolate malt
4 oz. black malt
2 oz. Tettnang hops (bittering)
1 oz. Willamette hops (aroma)
Wyeast Londa Ale (#1028)
It wasn't percolating yet today, but it's fairly chilly downstairs, so it might take a while. The beer of choice for drinking while brewing (always a necessity - you must drink from a previous batch while creating a new one) was a Java Stout from December 2004. It was perfect...even chilled it had a great carbonation level, and the taste was exceptional - I always add a stronger batch of coffee to my coffee beers, and it gives it more body. It's particularly good that it turned out so well, because the IPA I brewed last time tastes a little off, like there was too much heat in the room while it was in the carboy - that'll always trigger a funny taste. I got the same taste with my Anchor-style ale the one time, which is an ale done with a lager yeast, which expects a lower temp (but is done at a higher temp, ale style) - carmel-ly and slick, to the point of overriding the hops - for a hophead, that's never a good thing.
Sunday, July 09, 2006
This Post Brought to You by the Letter E
Eryn farted this afternoon and announced, "A". This was followed by farts, "B", "C" and "D". Then there was a long wait before she announced. "E isn't ready yet. I have to wait for it come up. I can't fart yet."
She has an excellent career as a professional ahead of her.
She has an excellent career as a professional ahead of her.
Thursday, July 06, 2006
A Few Important Facts About Me That You Probably Didn't Know...
I sometimes turn the mirror in my car so that it shows just half of my face. I do this not so I can appreciate me, but so that it looks like I'm in a Hitchcock movie, like North by Northwest. It makes the ride home more suspenseful.
There are two albums to which I have danced to all the songs in succession: Air Supply's Greatest Hits and Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down.
I once squeezed a girl's elbow at a party only to find out later that it was actually her breast. She thought this meant we were dating.
In my younger years I was caught streaking/skinny dipping by adults three times: once on a bike trip, once at Huck Finn day camp at Many Point Scout Camp, once changing into Native American regalia for a Scouting ceremony.
I hope this provides some insight into me.
There are two albums to which I have danced to all the songs in succession: Air Supply's Greatest Hits and Lionel Richie's Can't Slow Down.
I once squeezed a girl's elbow at a party only to find out later that it was actually her breast. She thought this meant we were dating.
In my younger years I was caught streaking/skinny dipping by adults three times: once on a bike trip, once at Huck Finn day camp at Many Point Scout Camp, once changing into Native American regalia for a Scouting ceremony.
I hope this provides some insight into me.
You've Been Baptized
So, I've been ordained for a while now. I still need to file my paperwork with the county (I know, I'm lazy), but I've been pondering whether I should worry about performing rites of other sorts. I've come to a conclusion. As my first act, I've decided that baptism, by me, is not voluntary on the part of those baptized, but rather a consequence of being in any sort of liquid with me or sharing any sort of liquid with me. Like what, you might ask? I offer some examples:
1.) If you have been on a slip and slide or at a Wisconsin waterpark at the same time as me, you are baptized. Conner, this means you. Cookie Queen - some of the water splashed from the slip and slide hose feed onto you when I stepped on it - you too are baptized.
2.) If you share beer with me, particularly a pitcher. Dan'l, Kyle, Adam - this obviously includes you. Erik, it probably means at some point, if you don't fall under a point below, you too will be baptized.
3.) If you partake of any food stuffs I make that include any liquid, you are baptized. This will probably include everyone at Tall Brad's Chilifest, particularly if you vote me (and Pooteewheet) into third place for like the fourth year in a row.
4.) If you were in Schultz (e?) Lake on any one of the several days I was there and immersed, including the one where I locked myself out of my car. Yes...you were baptized by an idiot that day. Welcome to the faith.
5.) Chris Sells, Microsoft guy. I had a drink of your berry soda to see what it tasted like. You are baptized. Your mother and stepfather both gave me a beer - they are also baptized.
6.) Anyone who drinks coffee from the coffee dispenser in the c-building at work at any time. How can this be if I'm not there? I am at that coffee dispenser so often that the times between cups don't suffice to interrupt my holy, exalted presence - if you are at that particular coffee machine, you are basking in my coffeeness and you are baptized. Erik, please note that this supersedes item #2.
7.) If I've ever spit on you, you are retroactively baptized as that's a whole lot of holiness. I think that Chris (#5) is the only one that applies to, but he triple dog dared me while I had a mouth full of water and was a stupid eighteen year old, so it's his own fault.
8.) If my tongue has ever touched your body - this obviously involves liquid and you are baptized. Some of you more so than others. This is spit, so like #7, we'll retroactively apply it.
9.) Note that licking your arm is my tongue touching your body, so Christy, you're baptized.
10.) If you use my parents' cabin, I've been in the water in the foundation so much that it permeates the whole structure. You too are baptized.
11.) I think my dentist and oral hygienist are unbaptized - they wear latex gloves. This is very unrighteous of them, but it would be gross otherwise, so good choice.
12.) Farting may be part solid, part gas, part liquid. The church is undecided about whether I can qualify this as baptism.
13.) If I've ever worked with a plumbing system that involves you. This includes all of our renters.
14.) If you've looked at any picture I've posted to my blog involving water, you're on dangerous ground. You'll have to decide for yourself whether it counts, but if you had to think about it, it's likely you're baptized.
I'm sure I'll think of some other appropriate situations, but for now 80% or so of you who have come in contact with me in the last year can consider yourselves baptized members. I like to think of myself as the Typhoid Mary of Faith. You don't have to agree with any of the planks of the faith, we're fully inclusive of schismatics, heretics and nonbelievers. Even if you don't believe in us, we believe in you. Peace.
1.) If you have been on a slip and slide or at a Wisconsin waterpark at the same time as me, you are baptized. Conner, this means you. Cookie Queen - some of the water splashed from the slip and slide hose feed onto you when I stepped on it - you too are baptized.
2.) If you share beer with me, particularly a pitcher. Dan'l, Kyle, Adam - this obviously includes you. Erik, it probably means at some point, if you don't fall under a point below, you too will be baptized.
3.) If you partake of any food stuffs I make that include any liquid, you are baptized. This will probably include everyone at Tall Brad's Chilifest, particularly if you vote me (and Pooteewheet) into third place for like the fourth year in a row.
4.) If you were in Schultz (e?) Lake on any one of the several days I was there and immersed, including the one where I locked myself out of my car. Yes...you were baptized by an idiot that day. Welcome to the faith.
5.) Chris Sells, Microsoft guy. I had a drink of your berry soda to see what it tasted like. You are baptized. Your mother and stepfather both gave me a beer - they are also baptized.
6.) Anyone who drinks coffee from the coffee dispenser in the c-building at work at any time. How can this be if I'm not there? I am at that coffee dispenser so often that the times between cups don't suffice to interrupt my holy, exalted presence - if you are at that particular coffee machine, you are basking in my coffeeness and you are baptized. Erik, please note that this supersedes item #2.
7.) If I've ever spit on you, you are retroactively baptized as that's a whole lot of holiness. I think that Chris (#5) is the only one that applies to, but he triple dog dared me while I had a mouth full of water and was a stupid eighteen year old, so it's his own fault.
8.) If my tongue has ever touched your body - this obviously involves liquid and you are baptized. Some of you more so than others. This is spit, so like #7, we'll retroactively apply it.
9.) Note that licking your arm is my tongue touching your body, so Christy, you're baptized.
10.) If you use my parents' cabin, I've been in the water in the foundation so much that it permeates the whole structure. You too are baptized.
11.) I think my dentist and oral hygienist are unbaptized - they wear latex gloves. This is very unrighteous of them, but it would be gross otherwise, so good choice.
12.) Farting may be part solid, part gas, part liquid. The church is undecided about whether I can qualify this as baptism.
13.) If I've ever worked with a plumbing system that involves you. This includes all of our renters.
14.) If you've looked at any picture I've posted to my blog involving water, you're on dangerous ground. You'll have to decide for yourself whether it counts, but if you had to think about it, it's likely you're baptized.
I'm sure I'll think of some other appropriate situations, but for now 80% or so of you who have come in contact with me in the last year can consider yourselves baptized members. I like to think of myself as the Typhoid Mary of Faith. You don't have to agree with any of the planks of the faith, we're fully inclusive of schismatics, heretics and nonbelievers. Even if you don't believe in us, we believe in you. Peace.
Posting from Opera 9
This is my first post from Opera 9. Neither Yahoo nor Blogger are particularly fond of it when it comes to inline editing - the WYSIWYG editor refuses to do anything other than allow me to type in my HTML manually and the upload file for Yahoo mail doesn't do anything at all. It just sits there staring at me like I've lost my mind. So, other than total non-support, I like Opera 9 plenty. It has tabbing, and tabbing with tab preview to boot - you can float over the tabs to get an idea of what's on the tab before you commit. It has an aggregator for RSS feeds (as well as discovery), and another area where you can handle your bittorrents without using a separate program. Putting a bittorrent address into the address bar will actually push the bittorrent there automatically.
It's got a "I don't want my wife to know I've been surfing for porn" button that allows automatic cleanup of all downloaded materials and history. And if you're using a public computer and hoping around a bit, it'll clean up all of that and any saved passwords so it doesn't appear as though you ever sat down (useful if you don't want to leave a password behind for someone else to read). It has a widgets feature that drops floating applets into your space so you can search for bittorrents or play a game of Tetris on top of the screen while you wait for a download (I like the tetris game that's played like you're in a three dimensional circular area - Torus).
Nice javascript/css error console, ability to tailor access from different sites easily (cookies, images, etc). Right click to check spelling, add a message about the site (if you use the Opera communities), or create a search. Trash can to recover your removed tabs if it was an accident. Fast Forward and Fast Backward (like forward/backward, but all the way to the end of the history).
Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in something different.
It's got a "I don't want my wife to know I've been surfing for porn" button that allows automatic cleanup of all downloaded materials and history. And if you're using a public computer and hoping around a bit, it'll clean up all of that and any saved passwords so it doesn't appear as though you ever sat down (useful if you don't want to leave a password behind for someone else to read). It has a widgets feature that drops floating applets into your space so you can search for bittorrents or play a game of Tetris on top of the screen while you wait for a download (I like the tetris game that's played like you're in a three dimensional circular area - Torus).
Nice javascript/css error console, ability to tailor access from different sites easily (cookies, images, etc). Right click to check spelling, add a message about the site (if you use the Opera communities), or create a search. Trash can to recover your removed tabs if it was an accident. Fast Forward and Fast Backward (like forward/backward, but all the way to the end of the history).
Definitely worth checking out if you're interested in something different.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Fourth of July
of course, all liberals are un-patriotic a-holes. But that aside, this is my favorite video from the Fourth.
Mean Mr. Mustard...This is For You
I hope you think it's funny...because the one I tried first with me singing in the background...that's been destroyed. Don't even try to get my wife to look for it in the recycle bin, it's been eliminated in ways she can't comprehend. I do release this under a Creative Commons license, so Emma can use it for any presentations she may have lined up.
Seeing as it's the fourth, and that's personified by Uncle Sam, I guess these must be his...
Seeing as it's the fourth, and that's personified by Uncle Sam, I guess these must be his...
Watermelon Ride 2006 (Among Other Things)
Our long weekend was pretty relaxed, particularly as most of my clan took a two hour nap whenever possible. Eryn because she needs a two hour nap each day. Me from caffeine withdrawal. Pooteewheet...well, she often takes a nap on the weekend. Can't say as I complain too much - those are usually my only two weekly hours to myself unless I'm on my bike.
But, we did accomplish a few things. Pooteewheet saw Superman and liked it, agreeing with Rotten Tomatoes that it was about a 70-75%. I, on the other hand, took Eryn to Cars. She'd already been to it with Pooteewheet while I was in Fort Lauderdale, but was excited to go again. Pooteewheet told me, surreptitiously, "Maybe you should take her to C-A-R-S today." I shook my head, knowing I was going, because the next words out of Eryn's mouth (Pooteewheet didn't know she knew how to do this, I did) were "Cars! I want to go to Cars!" Yeah...she can spell. Pain in the butt. We'll be moving to pig latin next. The movie was great. Eryn liked the story, and I was fascinated by the technical aspects (and the story). Every time something is happening on screen, a million things are happening in the background - it's an appropriate use of the technology, unlike those damn Star Wars scenes with the kitchen sink and the Millenium Falcon.
My friend Chris Sells was in town and his mother threw a party for him up in Plymouth. I've met Chris' wife (and her twin sister), but I've never met his boys, and they're now both in their double digits, so it was a treat to meet them, even though they were huddled on the couches upstairs traumatized over a showing of Sean of the Dead. Kyle overcame his heat exhaustion and showed up so we had enough players for both bocce and 500 (cards), the later going on until after 1:00 a.m., albeit with a break for some Minnesota-style fireworks (you know, no air bursts and a million mosquitoes). I went to school with Chris, and if you're not familiar with his name, you don't do much with .NET - he wrote the definitive book on Windows Forms (his mother proudly showed it off), and his name appeared as a footnote in my MCTS study guide at the coffee shop only hours earlier.
Today was the, um....it was the sixth year I've done registration for the TCBC Watermelon Ride (Eryn called it the cookie ride - you can see where her priorities lie), so it's probably the eighth year I've done the ride. That would make sense - since we first moved to Richfield, and then subsequently to Eagan. Dang... Unfortunately, this was the first year we did t-shirts and I dropped the ball, forgetting to include them on the sign-in sheets. Luckily, Pooteewheet doesn't like to show up at 6:30 a.m., so I could call her at home, have her kick up Access and the appropriate table and read me the values over the phone - it's kickin' to have a pc-literate wife. We - my father-in-law, Pooteewheet and Eryn (in the Burley) - did the 15 miler again this year and it was perfect weather. Seventy degrees, light wind, dry on the trails. Couldn't have asked for better weather.
According to the ride coordinator there were approximately 775 people at the ride. That's huge! I think that puts the ride in contention for the top 4 or 5 in the state (after the Ironman and Bike Classic, and I exclude AIDS rides and coordinated fund raising events - they're just plain different). Here's everyone waiting for their hotdog, smokey beans and post-ride cookie.
This is Eryn at the first rest stop, enjoying a bit of lemonade and all the M&M's out of my cup of gorp.
Eryn didn't ride alone. Grandpa and Grandma bought her a new Gumby and Pokey (although Grandma/Manna thinks Pokey is a donkey - wtf), and Gumby claimed shotgun.
Here's Eryn and Grandma enjoying the actual watermelon part of the Watermelon Ride - the lunch. This was before she had quite so much ketchup on her face (Eryn, not Grandma).
Eryn thinks the Burley ride is fun, but I think she truly prefers the big park at the end.
And this...I just thought it was a cool bike trailer. It allows you to clip in a car seat for a kid, or remove it so you can just haul things with you. I'm a little skeptical about the lack of a roll bar, although that's easily remedied. And I'm more skeptical about how much that bad boy weighs - but it's got serious panache.
But, we did accomplish a few things. Pooteewheet saw Superman and liked it, agreeing with Rotten Tomatoes that it was about a 70-75%. I, on the other hand, took Eryn to Cars. She'd already been to it with Pooteewheet while I was in Fort Lauderdale, but was excited to go again. Pooteewheet told me, surreptitiously, "Maybe you should take her to C-A-R-S today." I shook my head, knowing I was going, because the next words out of Eryn's mouth (Pooteewheet didn't know she knew how to do this, I did) were "Cars! I want to go to Cars!" Yeah...she can spell. Pain in the butt. We'll be moving to pig latin next. The movie was great. Eryn liked the story, and I was fascinated by the technical aspects (and the story). Every time something is happening on screen, a million things are happening in the background - it's an appropriate use of the technology, unlike those damn Star Wars scenes with the kitchen sink and the Millenium Falcon.
My friend Chris Sells was in town and his mother threw a party for him up in Plymouth. I've met Chris' wife (and her twin sister), but I've never met his boys, and they're now both in their double digits, so it was a treat to meet them, even though they were huddled on the couches upstairs traumatized over a showing of Sean of the Dead. Kyle overcame his heat exhaustion and showed up so we had enough players for both bocce and 500 (cards), the later going on until after 1:00 a.m., albeit with a break for some Minnesota-style fireworks (you know, no air bursts and a million mosquitoes). I went to school with Chris, and if you're not familiar with his name, you don't do much with .NET - he wrote the definitive book on Windows Forms (his mother proudly showed it off), and his name appeared as a footnote in my MCTS study guide at the coffee shop only hours earlier.
Today was the, um....it was the sixth year I've done registration for the TCBC Watermelon Ride (Eryn called it the cookie ride - you can see where her priorities lie), so it's probably the eighth year I've done the ride. That would make sense - since we first moved to Richfield, and then subsequently to Eagan. Dang... Unfortunately, this was the first year we did t-shirts and I dropped the ball, forgetting to include them on the sign-in sheets. Luckily, Pooteewheet doesn't like to show up at 6:30 a.m., so I could call her at home, have her kick up Access and the appropriate table and read me the values over the phone - it's kickin' to have a pc-literate wife. We - my father-in-law, Pooteewheet and Eryn (in the Burley) - did the 15 miler again this year and it was perfect weather. Seventy degrees, light wind, dry on the trails. Couldn't have asked for better weather.
According to the ride coordinator there were approximately 775 people at the ride. That's huge! I think that puts the ride in contention for the top 4 or 5 in the state (after the Ironman and Bike Classic, and I exclude AIDS rides and coordinated fund raising events - they're just plain different). Here's everyone waiting for their hotdog, smokey beans and post-ride cookie.
This is Eryn at the first rest stop, enjoying a bit of lemonade and all the M&M's out of my cup of gorp.
Eryn didn't ride alone. Grandpa and Grandma bought her a new Gumby and Pokey (although Grandma/Manna thinks Pokey is a donkey - wtf), and Gumby claimed shotgun.
Here's Eryn and Grandma enjoying the actual watermelon part of the Watermelon Ride - the lunch. This was before she had quite so much ketchup on her face (Eryn, not Grandma).
Eryn thinks the Burley ride is fun, but I think she truly prefers the big park at the end.
And this...I just thought it was a cool bike trailer. It allows you to clip in a car seat for a kid, or remove it so you can just haul things with you. I'm a little skeptical about the lack of a roll bar, although that's easily remedied. And I'm more skeptical about how much that bad boy weighs - but it's got serious panache.
Sunday, July 02, 2006
Flying Spaghetti Monster
My friend Ming was once looking for a (Darwin Fish - oops) Fish-n-Chips logo for his car. The other day Pooteewheet and I saw one of these Flying Spaghetti Monsters on an SUV in Eagan. Might I suggest it as a semi-cutting edge alternative? Only $6.00 and you can buy it local at Northern Sun (I couldn't find it on the Walmart online site). Show your support for Pastifarianism.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
Tohono O'odham
I left a comment on She Says' blog the other day about the Tohono - just a story my mother had told me about diabetes and the native diet. I just realized that almost on the same day I left the comment, I was actually reading a book based on Tohono O'odham culture. When I was in Arizona, I bought Eryn a signed ("Ole!") copy of "The Three Little Javelinas" (Los Tres Pequenos Jabalies) by Susan Lowell (illustrated by Jim Harris) - pages in both Spanish and English. The last page states:Besides the calssic European-American tale, my sources include the many Coyote fables told by southwestern Indians, particularly those of the Tohono O'odham, (toe-HO-no O-OH-tam) or Desert People (formerly known as the Papago tribe), of southern Arizona and northern Mexico [my note: just like you said, She Says, they bracket the border]. In these stories, Coyote is always a laugher and a trickster who is freuqently outsmarted by other animals.
The setting for this story is in the vicinity of the Tohono O'odham Reservation, near Tucson, Arizona, in early summer....
Even without the lessons about native culture, it's a great book, and Eryn often has me read bits of it in mutilated Spanish, particularly when Coytoe gets singed in the fireplace and in English screams "Yip, yap, yeep, YEE-OWW-OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!", but in Spanish screams, "Aa, aay, aaay, Aaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!" Before the three little pigs I didn't even know a translation was necessary in that case.
Freedom Celebration
I'm not talking about the 4th. The local Cedar Valley Church invited me, as their neighbor, to their "Freedom Celebration." The highlight? Guest Speaker HUGH HEWITT (not my caps) with a full orchestra and choir (though not in Eagan - read the fine print). Not only will Hugh Hewitt be speaking, but the event, the church event, is sponsored by AM 1280 "The Patriot". Church event...corporate sponsorship. It's a freakin' Simpson's episode, literally (2001, Mr. Burns sponsors the First Church of Springfield, Lisa becomes a Bhuddist).
Is Your Vote a Blue Light Special?
I guess it's really not all that surprising - maybe it's a good thing Ming can't vote yet...from Three Way News:
Make of it what you will.
85 percent of frequent Wal-Mart shoppers voted for President Bush's reelection in 2004 (and 88 percent of people who never shop there voted for Sen. John Kerry)
Slip and Slide
Addendum: I notice the video is not viewable yet. I'm still new to this YouTube thing, and it looks as though I shouldn't actually post a link to a video until it's available, as processing time from upload to presentation can take quite a while (18 hours or so in this case). If you can't see it right now, try it again in a little while - it'll work. I'll change my linking in the future so I don't post until it's definitively out there.
Today we put up the slip and slide for the second time. We haven't been able to get Eryn to really use it except as a glorified sprinkler, so we invited Conner over to see if he could show her the ropes. For the first hour or so, he wasn't having it either, but he finally figured out that the plastic slide was there for getting a run at the thing, and you'd just slide that much further.
So, I present Conner slipping and slidding in the Scooter Family back yard (note, Cookie Queen, I didn't put up the video with you being sort of a potty mouth in the background).
Today we put up the slip and slide for the second time. We haven't been able to get Eryn to really use it except as a glorified sprinkler, so we invited Conner over to see if he could show her the ropes. For the first hour or so, he wasn't having it either, but he finally figured out that the plastic slide was there for getting a run at the thing, and you'd just slide that much further.
So, I present Conner slipping and slidding in the Scooter Family back yard (note, Cookie Queen, I didn't put up the video with you being sort of a potty mouth in the background).
Thursday, June 29, 2006
You, Me and Dupree
I keep seeing trailers for the stupid You, Me and Dupree movie. Today, however, I gave it a spin that will keep me smiling when I see it when I joked to Pooteewheet that Cookie Queen's sister-in-law's recent marriage troubles might be an opportunity for a reality version of the movie, "Me, My Mister and His Sister (and all our children)". I'd pay to see that, especially if it meant I never had to sit through more than 2 hours of it.
Landlording
I too have had my share of bad rental experiences: the big hole in my ceiling where water drained down from the unit above, the iceberg that fell on my car, the shootings in the lobby, the fire in the garbage chutes, et al. But over all, I was fairly happy with the several apartments I rented and how management responded to issues (except that hole in the ceiling thing - they were a serious problem in that case).
Now that I'm a landlord myself, I get to see the other side of the coin: renters who are constantly late on their rent, or non-paying, yet want to know why an improvement to counters or fencing isn't going in, renters who break their lease and ask for their deposit in the same breath, renters who leave cigarette burns in carpets after writing no-smoking clauses into their leases themselves, phantom charges from waste disposal for sofas and appliances, holes in the ceiling, refinished wood floors and trim to accomodate DirectTV (now DirectTV actually asks - they don't always), unreported drips that could be easily fixed but are ignored or even covered up, spilled aquariums, porn stashes in the drop-down ceilings, and then there's the insidious, horrible, disease-infested leavings on the walls, floors, and ceilings, some residue presumably as old as the renting. As my wife has grown fond of telling me just to see me squirm, "I am sick of cleaning up other people's pubic hair."
At the same time, I find myself somewhat disturbed when I realize how much most landlords don't do. For example, five bot over at MNSpeak posted today about the great legal help and documentation you can find at the MN Legal Services site, like the Tenants Rights in Minnesota document. Only today I met with a tenant to sign a lease for one of my properties, and on the list of the things they initial for is a copy of the Landlords and Tenants: Rights and Responsbilities document by Mike Hatch. It's always our hope that an informed tenant is a tenant who will report a leak or answer their phone/mail regarding a maintenance visit. So far that's been mostly wishful thinking.
Now that I'm a landlord myself, I get to see the other side of the coin: renters who are constantly late on their rent, or non-paying, yet want to know why an improvement to counters or fencing isn't going in, renters who break their lease and ask for their deposit in the same breath, renters who leave cigarette burns in carpets after writing no-smoking clauses into their leases themselves, phantom charges from waste disposal for sofas and appliances, holes in the ceiling, refinished wood floors and trim to accomodate DirectTV (now DirectTV actually asks - they don't always), unreported drips that could be easily fixed but are ignored or even covered up, spilled aquariums, porn stashes in the drop-down ceilings, and then there's the insidious, horrible, disease-infested leavings on the walls, floors, and ceilings, some residue presumably as old as the renting. As my wife has grown fond of telling me just to see me squirm, "I am sick of cleaning up other people's pubic hair."
At the same time, I find myself somewhat disturbed when I realize how much most landlords don't do. For example, five bot over at MNSpeak posted today about the great legal help and documentation you can find at the MN Legal Services site, like the Tenants Rights in Minnesota document. Only today I met with a tenant to sign a lease for one of my properties, and on the list of the things they initial for is a copy of the Landlords and Tenants: Rights and Responsbilities document by Mike Hatch. It's always our hope that an informed tenant is a tenant who will report a leak or answer their phone/mail regarding a maintenance visit. So far that's been mostly wishful thinking.
Monday, June 26, 2006
My First Try at YouTube
And it's a kid video - sorry if you were expecting grandiose art or pointed political commentary. Have to start small and give the bulk of my audience (mom, dad and the inlaws) something to appreciate. I'm doing a link instead of an embedded object because 1.) I don't know how to embed it, despite the code YouTube gives me, because Blogger doesn't like embed codes, and 2.) because I still use dial up, and I don't want to wait for 10 megs of download everytime I preview my own pages. Call me selfish if you must.
Eryn and Amelie spin ride a chair at the lake cabin.
Eryn and Amelie spin ride a chair at the lake cabin.
Formulary
It seems sort of strange that my company health plan has a drug formulary that excludes the version of a drug for my wasp sting that has almost no side effects in favor of the slightly cheaper one that makes me so sleepy as to be almost nonfunctional while it's at its peak. An hour after I take a pill my eyes start drooping, thirty minutes after that I'm crabbier than a bear after fish season, and thirty minutes after that I'm almost conked out (so at least the crabbiness isn't long lived). Isn't it cheaper to just pay the extra $10 or so for the other drug than for me to lose a few days of productivity or argue with the drug company that it'll interfere with my work productivity?
Oh well, I'll be catching up on four days of email anyway - I think I can do that with only half my brain involved.
Oh well, I'll be catching up on four days of email anyway - I think I can do that with only half my brain involved.
Sunday, June 25, 2006
Cabin Fever
I'm hoping this story cheers up Mr. Mustard.
I took off two days for a long weekend so that I could take the family up to my parents' cabin. Pooteewheet was excited, and then realized after I'd taken the days off that she'd agreed to watch my niece for the weekend, so we'd be taking her with us for four days, much to the irritation of my sister, who thought she'd only be away from her daughter for the first lengthy time for two days. We were going to haul up the canoe in my garage which I never use and which interferes with my ability to store appropriate amounts of junk, so we got my father in law's truck. But after spending an hour going from sports store to sports store on Thursday, I discovered four foam blocks would cost me $60.00. I refuse to buy foam blocks for $60.00. They're f-ing foam - I throw it away when it's computer packaging...give me a break. However, once I loaded the truck with the stuff my Dad left last time he was up here, a crib for my friend Adam (actually for his on-the-way kid), and my sister's sail boat, it wouldn't have fit anyway.
None of this is the interesting part - it just points out that we did several hours of packing/unpacking. The interesting part began when we got to the cabin and I had to put the filter on the water/pump system. I've had problems with this system before. I once went up for a bike ride and the water didn't work. I had to crawl under the cabin and lie on a freezing floor, in water, to try and tape brand new pipes that had pinhole leaks everywhere because the contractor had installed used pipe and never started the system. This time was a little worse.
About a foot and a half of water so cold I couldn't stand in it for more than sixty seconds without having to get out and warm my feet (you could see your breath when you were down there). And that white thing near the pump...that's the filter unit. You'll notice the top is missing. It's not in my hand while I took this photo because it was in the entryway and I discovered this after I grabbed it, it's somewhere under all that murky, rusty water (and it's much darker down there without the flash). So I had to haul down some planks and the bricks from the stairs to create a small working area, then venture into the water in a systematic search pattern until I found the filter cover.
Once the filter cover was in place, the water worked inside. But a trip back to the underworld showed water spilling out of the pipes, spilling through the pipes (in the case of the burst shower pipe) and bubbling up from underwater. I waded in again, swearing that between the bursts of water I could hear critters scurrying away to the furthest corners of the foundation, and turned off all the open spigots, turned off the underwater spigots, and investigated the unrepairable (with my available resources) shower drain pipe. We could be fairly certain there would be no hot showers for the long weekend - we were going to be engaging in a bit of sponge bathing.
Fortunately, I had the pump my Dad had left in all the things I hauled north, so I pulled it out, attached an intake pipe, and headed to the shed to find a hose for the drainage end. I was in the shed for a few seconds when I felt a sharp pain in my neck. Then my arm. And then I heard the buzzing and felt the rebounds as several invisible things bounced off my tshirt. I hightailed it for the cabin with a single look back that validated, yes, many wasps are after me. At the cabin, I picked two wasps off my shirt (I'm so happy I'm not the skin-tight tshirt type. I bet there are others thankful for the same thing), and surveyed my damage. Welt on my arm, pain at my neck. On my neck...oh s*it. Last time a wasp popped out of the railroad ties at the duplex and caught me on the calf, it swelled up like a grapefruit for two weeks - I pictured that happening to my head. It was a waiting game - safe...or shock?
Pooteewheet waited out the first hour with me and I was fine, so she headed off to the local store to buy a hose and two cans of Raid for wasps. By the time she got back, my arm was starting to swell a little, but nothing serious. So I hooked up the pump and got it running at full tilt (picture below). Then I went back to look at the wasp problem (on the door - above). The big issue was I was pretty sure they were on the door I hadn't opened. But how to tell, as the door was balanced so that it swung shut. My solution, chuck a few large pieces of wood at the door and see if the wasps immediately erupted. They did (sorry about the dents on the door, Dad). After that, it was a really long stick and the can of Raid. It was like something out of Tora Tora Tora! Wasps were flying right at me, and I was shooting them out of the sky with the Raid, trying to aim it in such a way that it would hit the nest as well, although spraying everything in the shed with toxic chemicals. I was the Clint Eastwood of wasp killers. However, I recommend Dad not lick any of his wrenches until after they've been in the rain for a few hours.
So, at that point...flooded basement, on the way to a ten hour draining. Wasps, dead. Next issue...no dock, and just me and Pooteewheet. And a new rock wall and low lake water, so the dock pieces had to be hauled across the yard, down the rock face, and into the water. But wait! They'd been mixed up since last season, so the first piece was too high and wasn't adjustable, and the following pieces were out of order and had different clip widths, so they didn't actually fit together unless you found the right two pieces. Did I mention we had two children with us ages 3 and 1? We got five pieces of dock in that night - one jutting out about six feet off the water - of no use to anyone, and four heading out until they reached a water depth of about 2 feet - no where near deep enough for a boat (and the last piece was simply sitting on top of the piece before it as it was one of the unmatched pieces). Pooteewheet was primarily concerned about this arrangement of the doc pieces next to the pine trees, which she was sure indicated an abundence of spiders. The dead waterbugs in webs on the planks indicated very large spiders.
Did I mention I killed a grouse? Up at a cabin in northern Minnesota, you'd probably think I was hunting. No, nothing like that. I scared a grouse on my parents' property and it took off around their pine trees. Then there was a loud "bonggggg". I walked around the corner and saw the neighbor's garage with its six windows. The grouse was lying near the second one from the left, dead as a doornail. Apparently, in the great scheme of horrible wildlife accidents involving my family this weekend, this was a minor incident. While I was accidentially killing the grouse, my dog was at Steve's (and Christy's) house (my neighbor) mauling three baby bunnies in his back yard, forcing Christy's son to deal with the predator-prey aspect of life in the (Eagan, suburban) wild. The way I hear it, Ty actually tried to nurse back to health the bunny with the broken leg (the eviscerated and de-throated bunnies being beyond aid), only to have it die on him. Ty now refers to my dog as "killer".
After that, it went downhill. I did have a good day playing games at my friend Adam's house the next day (in our initial cabin-ing plan) with Adam and Kyle while Pooteewheet hung with the kids at the cabin. But Pooteewheet was stuck inside all day because of rain, so she was a little stir crazy by the time we got back around midnight (Kyle and I saw a freaky giant weasel just down the road from the cabin - it was an adventurous trip from Pillager to the cabin).
Whereas my gaming day, though productive in terms of gaming, was somewhat suffering due to my sleepiness from the all the benedryl (and beer) I was taking to combat this...click the picture, you can see my giant, smooth, baby hand. This isn't even when it was the worst - it puffed up until my finger joints were outies, my knuckes were innies, and my arm looked like a particularly red sausage in a shiny casing, with the redness creeping upward about an inch every six hours until it was over my elbow. And damn did it ever itch.
I made it through the night, but the next day it was looking even worse, so without ever putting the boat in the water or taking the kids swimming, we packed everything back into the car, detached the pumping equipment, locked the wasp shed, and took me to urgent care in Eagan (sure, not really urgent, but that's what was available).
The nice doctor (Dr. Carlson, if you must know, Cookie Queen. She's kind of hot!) came back to talk to me after an hour in the waiting room and an hour in the medical room to ask me, "Do you have mono?" I told her I was pretty sure I didn't, and she noted that my white cells were doing a weird little dance that looked exactly like a reaction to mono. I thought, "Well that's nice - the wasps didn't sting me, they kissed me." Then she put me on two meds - one for itchiness, one for swelling (the drug I used to take in my Boy Scout days for poison ivy, which led to a discussion with the doc about Fels Naptha as a poison ivy preventative), and sent me home with directions to come see her in Bloomington if things got crazy with the arm.
So, it's getting better, and although I have a day off and am not at the cabin to use it, I have fond memories of introducing my niece to The Wiggles and giving her what I can only assume, based on my sister's aversion to sweets, is her first Twizzler (can't give her cousin a Twizzler to eat in front of her and not give her one, that's mental abuse - her favorite thing to say, "More please!", which applies equally to Twizzlers, fries and mandarin oranges, the last one being her hands-down favorite). When we got back home, I brought in a big box of stuff with the Twizzlers on top of it and set it down in the kitchen. A minute later, Amelie came walking across the floor with three Twizzlers gripped in her two hands and the biggest grin on her I've ever seen. She not only recognized the candy - she recognized the packaging. Settle down, Sis, she only ate one of them, and gave the others to Pooteewheet and Eryn.
Finally, just for the cuteness factor - here's Amelie, courtesy of Eryn, who's busting her chops on the children's photo circuit before moving on to bigger things.
I took off two days for a long weekend so that I could take the family up to my parents' cabin. Pooteewheet was excited, and then realized after I'd taken the days off that she'd agreed to watch my niece for the weekend, so we'd be taking her with us for four days, much to the irritation of my sister, who thought she'd only be away from her daughter for the first lengthy time for two days. We were going to haul up the canoe in my garage which I never use and which interferes with my ability to store appropriate amounts of junk, so we got my father in law's truck. But after spending an hour going from sports store to sports store on Thursday, I discovered four foam blocks would cost me $60.00. I refuse to buy foam blocks for $60.00. They're f-ing foam - I throw it away when it's computer packaging...give me a break. However, once I loaded the truck with the stuff my Dad left last time he was up here, a crib for my friend Adam (actually for his on-the-way kid), and my sister's sail boat, it wouldn't have fit anyway.
None of this is the interesting part - it just points out that we did several hours of packing/unpacking. The interesting part began when we got to the cabin and I had to put the filter on the water/pump system. I've had problems with this system before. I once went up for a bike ride and the water didn't work. I had to crawl under the cabin and lie on a freezing floor, in water, to try and tape brand new pipes that had pinhole leaks everywhere because the contractor had installed used pipe and never started the system. This time was a little worse.
About a foot and a half of water so cold I couldn't stand in it for more than sixty seconds without having to get out and warm my feet (you could see your breath when you were down there). And that white thing near the pump...that's the filter unit. You'll notice the top is missing. It's not in my hand while I took this photo because it was in the entryway and I discovered this after I grabbed it, it's somewhere under all that murky, rusty water (and it's much darker down there without the flash). So I had to haul down some planks and the bricks from the stairs to create a small working area, then venture into the water in a systematic search pattern until I found the filter cover.
Once the filter cover was in place, the water worked inside. But a trip back to the underworld showed water spilling out of the pipes, spilling through the pipes (in the case of the burst shower pipe) and bubbling up from underwater. I waded in again, swearing that between the bursts of water I could hear critters scurrying away to the furthest corners of the foundation, and turned off all the open spigots, turned off the underwater spigots, and investigated the unrepairable (with my available resources) shower drain pipe. We could be fairly certain there would be no hot showers for the long weekend - we were going to be engaging in a bit of sponge bathing.
Fortunately, I had the pump my Dad had left in all the things I hauled north, so I pulled it out, attached an intake pipe, and headed to the shed to find a hose for the drainage end. I was in the shed for a few seconds when I felt a sharp pain in my neck. Then my arm. And then I heard the buzzing and felt the rebounds as several invisible things bounced off my tshirt. I hightailed it for the cabin with a single look back that validated, yes, many wasps are after me. At the cabin, I picked two wasps off my shirt (I'm so happy I'm not the skin-tight tshirt type. I bet there are others thankful for the same thing), and surveyed my damage. Welt on my arm, pain at my neck. On my neck...oh s*it. Last time a wasp popped out of the railroad ties at the duplex and caught me on the calf, it swelled up like a grapefruit for two weeks - I pictured that happening to my head. It was a waiting game - safe...or shock?
Pooteewheet waited out the first hour with me and I was fine, so she headed off to the local store to buy a hose and two cans of Raid for wasps. By the time she got back, my arm was starting to swell a little, but nothing serious. So I hooked up the pump and got it running at full tilt (picture below). Then I went back to look at the wasp problem (on the door - above). The big issue was I was pretty sure they were on the door I hadn't opened. But how to tell, as the door was balanced so that it swung shut. My solution, chuck a few large pieces of wood at the door and see if the wasps immediately erupted. They did (sorry about the dents on the door, Dad). After that, it was a really long stick and the can of Raid. It was like something out of Tora Tora Tora! Wasps were flying right at me, and I was shooting them out of the sky with the Raid, trying to aim it in such a way that it would hit the nest as well, although spraying everything in the shed with toxic chemicals. I was the Clint Eastwood of wasp killers. However, I recommend Dad not lick any of his wrenches until after they've been in the rain for a few hours.
So, at that point...flooded basement, on the way to a ten hour draining. Wasps, dead. Next issue...no dock, and just me and Pooteewheet. And a new rock wall and low lake water, so the dock pieces had to be hauled across the yard, down the rock face, and into the water. But wait! They'd been mixed up since last season, so the first piece was too high and wasn't adjustable, and the following pieces were out of order and had different clip widths, so they didn't actually fit together unless you found the right two pieces. Did I mention we had two children with us ages 3 and 1? We got five pieces of dock in that night - one jutting out about six feet off the water - of no use to anyone, and four heading out until they reached a water depth of about 2 feet - no where near deep enough for a boat (and the last piece was simply sitting on top of the piece before it as it was one of the unmatched pieces). Pooteewheet was primarily concerned about this arrangement of the doc pieces next to the pine trees, which she was sure indicated an abundence of spiders. The dead waterbugs in webs on the planks indicated very large spiders.
Did I mention I killed a grouse? Up at a cabin in northern Minnesota, you'd probably think I was hunting. No, nothing like that. I scared a grouse on my parents' property and it took off around their pine trees. Then there was a loud "bonggggg". I walked around the corner and saw the neighbor's garage with its six windows. The grouse was lying near the second one from the left, dead as a doornail. Apparently, in the great scheme of horrible wildlife accidents involving my family this weekend, this was a minor incident. While I was accidentially killing the grouse, my dog was at Steve's (and Christy's) house (my neighbor) mauling three baby bunnies in his back yard, forcing Christy's son to deal with the predator-prey aspect of life in the (Eagan, suburban) wild. The way I hear it, Ty actually tried to nurse back to health the bunny with the broken leg (the eviscerated and de-throated bunnies being beyond aid), only to have it die on him. Ty now refers to my dog as "killer".
After that, it went downhill. I did have a good day playing games at my friend Adam's house the next day (in our initial cabin-ing plan) with Adam and Kyle while Pooteewheet hung with the kids at the cabin. But Pooteewheet was stuck inside all day because of rain, so she was a little stir crazy by the time we got back around midnight (Kyle and I saw a freaky giant weasel just down the road from the cabin - it was an adventurous trip from Pillager to the cabin).
Whereas my gaming day, though productive in terms of gaming, was somewhat suffering due to my sleepiness from the all the benedryl (and beer) I was taking to combat this...click the picture, you can see my giant, smooth, baby hand. This isn't even when it was the worst - it puffed up until my finger joints were outies, my knuckes were innies, and my arm looked like a particularly red sausage in a shiny casing, with the redness creeping upward about an inch every six hours until it was over my elbow. And damn did it ever itch.
I made it through the night, but the next day it was looking even worse, so without ever putting the boat in the water or taking the kids swimming, we packed everything back into the car, detached the pumping equipment, locked the wasp shed, and took me to urgent care in Eagan (sure, not really urgent, but that's what was available).
The nice doctor (Dr. Carlson, if you must know, Cookie Queen. She's kind of hot!) came back to talk to me after an hour in the waiting room and an hour in the medical room to ask me, "Do you have mono?" I told her I was pretty sure I didn't, and she noted that my white cells were doing a weird little dance that looked exactly like a reaction to mono. I thought, "Well that's nice - the wasps didn't sting me, they kissed me." Then she put me on two meds - one for itchiness, one for swelling (the drug I used to take in my Boy Scout days for poison ivy, which led to a discussion with the doc about Fels Naptha as a poison ivy preventative), and sent me home with directions to come see her in Bloomington if things got crazy with the arm.
So, it's getting better, and although I have a day off and am not at the cabin to use it, I have fond memories of introducing my niece to The Wiggles and giving her what I can only assume, based on my sister's aversion to sweets, is her first Twizzler (can't give her cousin a Twizzler to eat in front of her and not give her one, that's mental abuse - her favorite thing to say, "More please!", which applies equally to Twizzlers, fries and mandarin oranges, the last one being her hands-down favorite). When we got back home, I brought in a big box of stuff with the Twizzlers on top of it and set it down in the kitchen. A minute later, Amelie came walking across the floor with three Twizzlers gripped in her two hands and the biggest grin on her I've ever seen. She not only recognized the candy - she recognized the packaging. Settle down, Sis, she only ate one of them, and gave the others to Pooteewheet and Eryn.
Finally, just for the cuteness factor - here's Amelie, courtesy of Eryn, who's busting her chops on the children's photo circuit before moving on to bigger things.
The Gleaners
I've already determined that my flashback to my days in a cupboard in Oregon were accurate. Now I posit a new question for my parents...were we gleaners? I have indistinct memories of wandering around post-harvest potato fields, perhaps in Oregon, digging through the left overs for those that hadn't been chopped in half or were rotten. Personally, I'll be somewhat pleased if this is the case, as it makes me part of a medieval tradition, always a point of pride for someone with a bachelors in medieval to early modern British history.
Floam
I told Kyle not so long ago that Eryn was seriously interested in Floam. If you watch much television, you've seen commercials for the stuff - make a dinosaur, do this, do that, you can do it all with Floam! Eryn has absolutely figured out that when they show you things on television, you can buy them, attend them (movies), or do both (commercial product tie in to a movie at McD's). Floam has been her holy grail. It used to be "Eryn really wants that." Then it was "Eryn really wants Floam." And then, after she got used to her later-than-usual use of the personal pronoun (she can read out of my MSDN magazine, but she still wouldn't say "I"), "I really want Floam." What she hadn't figured out was Mom and Dad's personal belief system regarding things you buy off television, particularly vis-a-vis the price point of $19.95 for styrofoam + kerosene + food coloring.
All this was remedied when we saw the equivalent of Floam at Galleria on Thursday. After spending a full day hanging out at the duplex watching some poor smuck move several hundred square foot swaths of carpet from his van to my basement (I offered to help, but they always say no, I think it's an insurance thing) in a manner that seemed designed to remove years from his life in front of my very eyes, Pooteewheet and I celebrated the new look of the plex by having a late lunch at Big Bowl in the Galleria (there's a social inequality/economics lesson there I believe, but I refuse to dwell on it too deeply as it involves me). Afterwards, we were walking through Creative Kids Stuff and I noticed the faux Floam for only $10.00. It was like I was saving $9.95 and another 40 or 50 Floam commentaries. So, without further ado...I bring you a very happy Eryn (there are big grins in the other photos - here she's serious about the task at hand) and her faux Floam. Note - no dinosaurs as of yet - once you mix the faux Floam, it's extremely difficult to get apart, so she's yet to make the leap to serious integration of the faux Floam - for now it's a policy of miscegenation.
All this was remedied when we saw the equivalent of Floam at Galleria on Thursday. After spending a full day hanging out at the duplex watching some poor smuck move several hundred square foot swaths of carpet from his van to my basement (I offered to help, but they always say no, I think it's an insurance thing) in a manner that seemed designed to remove years from his life in front of my very eyes, Pooteewheet and I celebrated the new look of the plex by having a late lunch at Big Bowl in the Galleria (there's a social inequality/economics lesson there I believe, but I refuse to dwell on it too deeply as it involves me). Afterwards, we were walking through Creative Kids Stuff and I noticed the faux Floam for only $10.00. It was like I was saving $9.95 and another 40 or 50 Floam commentaries. So, without further ado...I bring you a very happy Eryn (there are big grins in the other photos - here she's serious about the task at hand) and her faux Floam. Note - no dinosaurs as of yet - once you mix the faux Floam, it's extremely difficult to get apart, so she's yet to make the leap to serious integration of the faux Floam - for now it's a policy of miscegenation.
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