Well, shit.

So, it’s been awhile since I wrote anything on my blog, and to my faithful readers I must apologize. I have let you down. Or, I have relieved you of the duty of reading whatever tripe I spew forth for a few months. Well, now it’s the beginning of a more free time for me (i.e. classes are over) and I shall be once again populating the cyberweb with all sorts of crap.

Now, it is with a heavy heart that I must say that this entry has not the rosy demeanor you’ve come to expect from me - oh no, it is filled with anguish and loathing, for I must have a root canal. Wait, strike that, make that two root canals. Yes, apparently not going to a dentist for several years is not the best thing for your dental health and an infected abscess is just the remedy. When suddenly it feels like all the pain in the whole world resides in your face and that someone may have just hit you across the jaw with a 2×8, you know something’s wrong and it’s time for professional help. So, I went today and found that over the next two months, starting on June 25th, I will be the lucky recipient of: 2 rounds of endodontic therapy (root canals), 2 crowns, 2 new fillings and a 2-step gingivitis treatment (upon which subject they were less-than-forthcoming, thereby filling me with the old familiar dentist-dread). Yay.

In happier news, our garden looks fan-fucking-tastic. I cannot be more proud than I am of how well our efforts are being rewarded with the wee to not-so-wee shoots of green that have SHOT up in our yard. I hope to document in pictures the p’tite ferme in coming entries…you know, a little photojournalism piece. We do have a furry little visitor to the farm, though, who goes by the street name of “Pedro Conejo” and has been seen in the wee hours of the morning, skulking about our bean shoots. Needless to say, we’ve put a small bounty on the little bastard’s head. And by “put a bounty on the little bastard’s head”, I mean I reinforced the fence around the garden today. Though I do love the taste of rabbit, I doubt I could ever kill one myself, let alone strip it of its skin and all that nastihood.

I’ve had no time recently for beer nor cheese…but soon, my friends. Soon.

Ciao.

greenstar…a nice, weird place.

It being Good Friday and us with some extra time on our hands made for the perfect opportunity to go the Greenstar, the fantabulous Coop in Ithaca. Though we wandered around a bit inside, it was primarily for goat’s milk that we made the foray into the weird, wild world of the Coop (that’s cooperative, not a pen for chickens). What a busy, crazy, intense place. There is pretty much everything in the world for sale in there, especially things that are otherwise hard to get in upstate New York, such as goat’s milk. Needless to say, I found my goat’s milk and have already started a batch of Chèvre (French for goat, American for tasty French-sounding cheese made with goat’s milk). Also while in Greenstar, we perused their spice selection and noticed that I can buy bulk hops - no idea what variety, but it’s about $2.00/ounce (not TOO bad). While in spice-land, I heard someone say my name, turned and saw my former French Literature professor, Tim Gerhard. After introducing him to my wife, as they have each heard tell of the other, we had a short chat. During said chat, he told me he really enjoyed reading my final exam essays….which were incredibly long and hand-written (i.e. PAINFUL) and almost everyone who took them had that look of “well, I guess I’ll see you at the re-takes in June”. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I had passed them all (as component re-testing is a possibility) and in one case, actually received a very high mark - all good things. But, to find out that my professor had enjoyed reading mine was a nice little bonus.

And, if my faithful readers had not figured it out or heard it directly, it is official: I have completed my Master’s Degree in Secondary Foreign Language Education - French. I have my diploma. Here. In my house. And I am done. Finally. Whew.

And, just as a quick addendum, I have ordered supplies for a couple more batches of beer - an Anchor Steamer clone for Eric (the long-awaited birthday brew) and a funky Ginger-Honey Lager that sounds incredibly good to me…more to come!

rhizomes

SO!  With the incredible increase in the price of hops, due to the fires that claimed a large portion of our nation’s hop crop, I’ve decided to grow my own.  I went through my brewing books and researched them on the cyberweb, and selected four types of hops that I will plant and grow this season.  I selected Cascade, Fuggle, Northern Brewer and Willamette and I ordered live rhizomes from www.freshops.com.  I purchased two jumbo rhizomes and two single rhizomes.  The jumbo will grow to full size in the first year as well as producing a full crop in teh first year, as they were harvested from a large and well-established plant.  The smaller rhizomes will grow quite a bit in the first year, and will produce a crop, but will not be strongly established and “flourish” until next year.

Hops plants can grow up to (and occasionally beyond) 25 feet in a single season, before dying back down to the ground for winter, only to come back strong the next year.  So, obviously, it would be hard to have a big-ass hop plant, let alone four, in the back yard in the middle of Homer; due to this fact, I’ve inlisted the help of my father, who owns several acres next to his house in a more countryfied setting.  I plan to build a nice little pergola up on a hill, in a field, overlooking his house.  I will plant one type of hops at each corner and train the vine to climb the corner post and spread out across the roof of the pergola.  I think if it comes to play out as I hope, it should look pretty damn nice.

So, yeah…that’s about it.  More to come.

As the good book says, “Relax!  Have a homebrew!”

Snippets

Here are a bunch of song lyrics and shit that I find particularly profound, touching, funny, enigmatic, and other words, too.

“Nothing worth having comes without some kind of a fight.
You gotta kick at the darkness ’til it bleeds daylight.” ~Barenaked Ladies

“Home. Home again. I like to be here when I can.” ~Pink Floyd

“As life gets longer, awful feels softer
and it feels pretty soft to me.
And if it takes shit to make bliss,
well I feel pretty blissfully.
And if life’s not beautiful without a little pain,
well I’d just rather never ever even see beauty again.” ~Modest Mouse

“We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of dreams.”  ~Willy Wonka

Pygmalion

SO.  It’s been awhile since I worked on a show at the Center for Arts in Homer, since the completion of Noises Off, which I directed and built, last year.  I had planned on auditioning for a part, but I was unfortunately left off the email distribution list for the audition announcement.  Once I heard rehearsals had started, I was a bit put-out.  Granted, if I had stayed active on the Steering Committee I would have known from the start and not missed them, so I couldn’t really bitch all that much.  But, in expressing my disappointment in missing auditions, I was informed of a vacancy in the cast and I took them up on the offer of the part of Freddy.

I am a bit old for the part, but I am going to give it my all.  I attended my first rehearsal on Tuesday and we ran through Act I several times and I think I’ve already got my lines down.  AND, since I am only in Acts I, III, and IV, I only have to stay through half of the rehearsal most nights…which is NICE.  It’s the usual group of folks doing this play, with some new additions…which is nice.  It’s comfortable.  However, I must say that I am sick of actors that direct while acting.  Just do your part and get the hell off the stage.  Why can’t people just take direction and be happy with it…I mean, I know that sometimes the direction is not the best in the world and an actor may have a great idea and when properly proposed this can really help a play.  Unfortunately, there are too many people in this cast who are “overly helpful” to other members of the cast and can be downright argumentative with the director while explaining why s/he changed something from the way it was directed.  Oy.

For anyone who knows Homerians, I’ll list the cast as I remember them…Ahley Huyge is Eliza, Paul Yaman is Mr. Doolittle, Tom Corey is Higgins, Alan something-or-other is Pickering, Carl Moses is a bit player, Ellen Rahner is Mrs. Eynsford-Hill (me mum), Britney (Brittany?) Corduck is Clara (me sis), some other people so some other things…I’ll try harder next time I blog

Brau. Bière. Cerveza. Beer. A thing of beauty in any tongue.

So today, thanks to the benevolence of Mother Nature giving us hellish ice and a snow day, I was able to complete the final step in my latest batch of beer.  This was a batch that was plagued with issues from the very beginning.  First, finding time to get everything started was a royal pain in the ass, but I finally set aside a few hours to do so.  I found the directions that came with the malt extract and yeast to be less than thorough, so I looked up basic extract brewing in my Homebrewing for Dummies book and sorta followed those and sorta followed the original.  I boiled it for an hour, sans hops, as it was a hopped extract, and then cooled it before transfering it to the fermenter.  I added 1 kg (2.2 lbs) of dextrose, diluted in some water, then topped off to 5 gallons.  I had bloomed my yeast prior to pitching….wait, let me amend that.  I tried to proof the yeast….but I feared it was dead.  I pitched it anyway, hoping it would do some crazy Lazarus shit and end up fermenting anyway.  A couple of days later, and still no action in the airlock, so back to Ithaca Beer I went, in search of newer, living yeast.  They helped me out, I proofed it and pitched it, and a day later, my airlock was as busy as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.  High Kreusen, here we come.

The batch fermented for a solid 8 days before the bubbles slowed to the point that I thought it was safe to bottle without risking explosions.  So this morning, the call came that school was canceled and I thought, “PERFECT!”  I set about nice and early sanitizing and drying all my bottles and hoses and filling apparatuses, etc.  With all pieces of the puzzle clean as the proverbial whistle, I opened the fermenter.  WHEW!  It smelled like the strong stout I had hoped for.  Black gold, Texas tea….it was gorgeous.  Unfortunately, as it was a one-stage fermentation recipe, I had to add the second lot of priming sugar to the bottling bucket and give it a solid stir to mix and aerate, thereby stirring up some of my dead yeasties.  SO, patience again, waiting ’til the sediment had settled again.  From there it was just a half hour to fully bottled and clean-up time.  From there, it’s down to the basement for a couple of weeks and then, IN MY BELLY!  I shall call it:

Black-Ass Stout.  Delicious.

Parmesan.

So, I started the batch of Parmesan last night that I had meant to start last weekend. And really, it should be done on a weekend…

The heating, holding, curding and molding were all fine. It was really just the time-scale of trying to get it all done on a Wednesday night that was difficult. I finally got my curd into the mold around 9:45, pressed it, pulled it from the mold, redressed it, repressed it, pulled it from the mold, redressed it, repressed it, pulled it from the mold, redressed it in new butter muslin, and repressed it until later today, when it comes out and has a little brine bath, for another 12 hours. SO, tomorrow morning, I will pull the parm out of the brine and send it down to the cheesery to age for the next 10 months. Good times. I did take pictures this time, of most steps in the process. If ever I do anything with them, I shall post that here.

It’s rapidly approaching Valentine’s Day, which is the unofficial “Hey-My-Cheddar-Is-Ready” day, as it started aging on 1/1/08. I will most likely let it continue aging for at least another month, as I am a fan of sharp cheddar….and I am afraid that it might suck. I mean, I am only human and I do make mistakes. Who’s to say that my first batch of cheese ever had SOMEthing go wrong? So, let’s say I am cautiously optimistic.

Well, so far so good.  The Parm is looking good - floating in its brine until this evening when I remove it, and it begins the long, boring aging period.  Granted, it’s only boring to non-cheesemakers…I find it riveting, going down to the cheesery daily to flip over the cheese for the first few weeks, then only once a week…but I’ll still visit.  Okay, I’m lying, it’s not riveting.  BUT, since it ages best in higher humidity, I rigged up a pretty sweet humidifier-on-a-timer system.  Okay, that’s boring too.  So, yeah…I’m boring.  I’ll deal with it

thick as a brick…

Sometimes, the cranial density of some of the people with which I have contact truly amazes me. Me dí cuenta de eso hoy en mi clase de español. I spent the first 5 minutes of class (seriously, it was a full span of 5 minutes) explaining the test my students were about to take, including tips for success in each section. I handed out the test and settled in to watch the amazing faces students make when the encounter things with which they are not nearly familiar enough to tackle, when I see a hand shoot up in the back of the room. “What are we supposed to do in the first part?” I patiently explain that if he had been paying attention, it was already explained, but that I’d be happy to do it again. Another three minutes or so go by and another students motions me over to her desk and asks, “What do you mean put these verbs in the past, using the preterit or the imperfect?” This question killed me, as this was the focus of the entire unit (also known as the last two weeks of class). I tried to calmly explain that both tenses indicated past actions, but were used in different ways (blank stare)…….you know, like we did on the worksheets this weeks, and in the conversations, and in the reading, and on homework. Oy.

To their credit, I put a wee tidbit in the directions that they could choose 10 of the 12 questions from the first part to answer, and did not need to do the other 2 - which several people actually read and then called me over to ask what it meant. It was written in English. Seriously.

Salutations

So, here it is: my first post on my first personal blog. I do have another blog, which is all about my role as a Tech Mentor for Ithaca High School (feel free to read it…just change “polyglot45″ above to “mholl”).

I have a bunch of things I am currently enjoying, hobbies and such, that I will blather on about (at great length) in the near future. Some of the topics I plan to expound upon are: cheese-making (naturally), beer-making, sewing, screen printing, student apathy, my apathy, hockey, pets, British idioms, the Nintendo Wii, and all sorts of other random and trivial “stuff”.

So, that’s that…enjoy.