So, my birthday started a bit earlier than I expected. (Yes, today is my birthday. I am now 35. gasp!)

First off, my friend Jonathan gave me a disc golf driver disc from the first Surly Brewing Co. disc golf tournament. I had hoped to play in it but we were at camp that weekend. I will most definitely make it for the next one (schedule permitting). The disc, if I remember correctly, is a 168g Discraft Elite Z Surge driver. I think he gave it to me as a birthday present. He said it was $10 but then said "Happy birthday". But, by that point I'd had 3 of Surly's Furious ales and another home-brewed brown ale. So... Yeah. That's at least what I remember.

The capper was last night. I came home from work early so Shelly could go back out to the MN State Fair and spend some quality time in the Creative Activities building. On her way out the door, she said that my birthday present was sitting in the box on our dinner table. I resisted as long as I could and then plunged my hands into the packing material to see what might be in there. What I found was pretty much everything that was on my Newegg.com wishlist (minus the motherboards listed there). I was stunned.

Now, I just need to decide on a mobo and get it ordered. A new rig is on the very near horizon!

Plus, the Q6600 that I got came with a free copy of Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 2. But really, I think the first thing I'm going to play when I get the build done is BioShock.

So far, my mom called and sang "Happy Birthday" over the phone and then Shelly and the girls called and did the same.

Well, it's already Monday again. My weekend was uneventful aside from the nearly foot of snow we got between Saturday and Sunday.

I spent two hours feeding the snowblower on Sunday morning. I had to occasionally do some shoveling because the snowblower I have is underpowered and too small for the amount of snow that got left at the end of the driveway and walks by the city's snowplows. So, I would smash the wall of snow into smaller pieces that the snowblower could handle. Move all that stuff. Rinse and repeat. I am surprisingly not sore from all of that effort. The snowblower helps even though I was cursing it at times. Honestly, I wish the thing would just die so I have an excuse to replace it. Instead, it continues to run and I'm left putting up with some minor annoyances while using it. I also get to keep the $500 or so I would end up spending on a new one, too.

After I finished all that up, I went and met up with a couple friends for lunch at The Bulldog Restaurant. Thanks to Shelly for letting me go and do that! The food was good (I had the Tillamook Cheddar and Bacon burger). I had two pints of Bell's Hopslam (one was free). The beer was excellent as are quite a few of the beers from Bell's (their Two Hearted Ale is one of my favorites). It was also 10% alcohol by volume. That's a boozy beer!

Rushed home from the restaurant so I could play outside with Julie in the new snow. I have had very little chance this winter to do this. Mainly because it was too cold or because there wasn't any snow. So, it was fun to play outside with Julie. You can see some pictures of what the girls did before I got home here.

Remember those two pints of Hopslam I mentioned earlier? Made me almost useless for the rest of the night. I ended up spending my evening watching volume 2 of Basilisk. Which I highly recommend if you like samurai/ninja anime like Ninja Scroll. Rated TV-MA, though, so not for the kids.

Now, back to work! Ugh!

I never thought I'd be interested in an Anheuser-Busch beer, but I just read about a new wheat-free beer from them. It's made with sorghum instead of wheat.

The linked article also mentions some other beers that are wheat-free.

Finally, I can kick back with Julie and have a beer!

It seems like it's been a long week. I think it's because of all the stress over the possible outcome of the elections before they actually happened. What can I say, I expected the worst possible outcome.

Went out last night with a few friends. Mainly to sit around, drink a couple beers and shoot the breeze. I had a Bell's Two Hearted Ale and a Sierra Nevada Harvest Ale. Both were tasty. We were at the Bryant Lake Bowl. A friend handed me some music to check out:

• Lamb of God "Sacrament"
• Isis "In the Absence of Truth"
• Oren Ambarchi "Suspension (Reis)"

Yes, it's all kinds of metal (or metal-related). The Lamb of God is probably my favorite of the bunch so far. I just wasn't in the mood to listen to the Isis today. The Oren Ambarchi was an interesting work. I wasn't sure what to expect. I would classify it as "ambient" but not in the lame sense.

Before I went out, though, I attended "Family Interaction" night for Julie's pre-school program. Julie attends a pre-school program 3 mornings a week. One night a month, they have an evening where the kids come with their parent(s). The kids have their usual playing and learning time. The parents go off to discuss issues with parenting and whatnot. Last night, they had a developmental psychologist (I think) come in to talk about developmental issues for kids and how to cope with some of the things that come up (behavioral, social, emotional). It was a really interesting talk.

Today was spent trying to get a product release out the door. But that got held up because the developer wants to review some stuff before answering a question I had about the documentation. No big deal.

I finally spent what was left of the iTunes Music Store gift card that Shelly had given me for my birthday. I purchased edIT's "Crying Over Pros for No Reason". I'm glad I was able to finally use that up. That money was just sitting for all this time and I couldn't find anything on iTMS to really spend it on.

In the future, though, I think I'll avoid buying music from iTMS. Mostly because there isn't much there that I'm interested in buying. If I were spending the money to buy music online, I'd much rather spend the money over on bleep.com. They have a lot more of what I'm interested in. Besides, their music comes DRM free.

Not sure what's going on this weekend. My mom doesn't have to work tomorrow evening because of Veteran's Day (she works for the USPS) so she's offered to take Julie for the afternoon. Yay! For us, for my parents and for Julie. Julie gets so little one-on-one interaction these days from Shelly and I because Sophie is around now that I think she'll enjoy the attention from my folks. Besides, they need to spend more time with her. Not sure what we'll do with our Sat. afternoon, though.

Jack Palance has passed away. I'll always remember him as the host of the 80's version of "Ripley's Believe It or Not". He was the perfect person to host that show.

It's a few days late but last weekend was very relaxing. I managed to come home refreshed and excited to see the girls.

I went up to stay at my friend's cabin (i.e., lake home or summer cottage). Technically, it's his parents' cabin but I'll just call it his for ease of reference.

There were four of us this time around (one friend couldn't make it because of a work engagement at his relatively new job). Three of us went to college together. The fourth is a childhood friend of one of my college friends. We've all known each other for over 10 years now and I'd say that we're all pretty good friends.

We golfed a bit, swam in the lake a bit, hit the new sauna in the cabin one night, drank plenty of beer, stayed up late, slept in, and generally sat around shooting the breeze.

We also listened to music. This time around, we ended up listening to lots of The Unicorns (Wikipedia) and Tapes 'n Tapes.

I think the biggest "ear opener" for me was The Unicorns. A friend had given me a copy of their album, "Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?", over a year ago. But, it got lost in the piles of CDs that I got around the same time and I never got around to really listening to it until this past weekend. Some fun stuff from this now defunct band ("Islands are forever!"). My favorite songs would have to be "I was born (a unicorn)" and "Jellybones". But, the album as a whole is really good. Definitely worth checking out.

Here's my "bootlegging" operation:



and here's the beer in its current state:



What you can't see from the picture is that the wort is churning around in there like crazy. When I brewed my beer I pitched the yeast at around 82F or so. They recommend you do it at 70F. I was worried that it might be ruined. So, I was pretty happy to come down the next morning and see that the strip thermometer was at 70 and that the wort was churning around as it fermented.

Every time I open that cabinet door, it smells heavily of beer. If it tastes as good as it smells, I'll be pretty pleased.

It's been one of those weeks where I'm so busy during the day that I can't always find time to make posts. By the time I get home, I'm so tired that I can't muster the energy there either. So, this comes a bit late.

I finally brewed up my second batch of homebrewed beer on Saturday night. It's a hobby that I was introduced to by a friend. My first batch was a nut brown ale that turned out reasonably well. Shelly wasn't much of a fan of nut brown ales so I promised her (and myself) that the next batch would be something she might actually enjoy drinking.

( See the rest of the gory details after the cut... )