Rancid-Tea

My thoughts on life

Quick beer update

Last night we kegged the Karl’s Ninety. It was about a week overdue, I think, but I’m told that the beer is safe in that state for awhile, and no harm seems to have come to it.

We took a small sample and both agreed that it tasted pretty good. It’s difficult to tell what its final flavor will be once it’s carbonated and fully chilled, but it definitely tasted like beer. It was lighter than I expected for a scotch ale, but the flavor is pretty malty.

We decided to make some changes to our kegerator to make everything easier to move around. Commercial kegs and home brew (or soda) kegs have different connection mechanisms. Right now our CO2 leads to a two-way splitter, and then to each keg. When we switch between having two commercial kegs and one commercial, one home brew, we have to swap out a gas line on the splitter. It only takes a few minutes and a screwdriver, but it’s sort of annoying. Last night we discovered it’s even more annoying when we just need the gas line for a few minutes to prepare a keg that won’t be going in the fridge for awhile. To make this easier, we’re going to get a four-way splitter and have two lines for commercial kegs and two for home brew kegs. That way we don’t have to do any fancy connecting and disconnecting to swap out kegs.

 June 17, 2013 Home Brewing , , ,

Chicago

On Friday, Ethan and I took the day off and flew down to Chicago for one night to see Dylan Moran. He’s easily my favorite comedian, and if you haven’t, you should check out his stand-up; there are plenty of videos available on youtube. He was definitely worth the trip down there. Continue reading →

 June 16, 2013 Travel , ,

Ten Years Ago

After hearing that I’ve been posting again, my friend Kai pointed out that the 10 year anniversary of my first post on my blog is coming up in a few weeks. He said I should do some anniversary posts, where I revisit some of my old posts and compare and contrast with my feelings on the same subjects today. Though there has been a long gap with no posts, and before that, a long period with very intermittent posts, it still amazes me that this blog has been around for nearly 10 years.

I did look back at my older posts, and I don’t remember writing many of them. Some I find amusing, some trigger memories and bring up old feelings, and some seem totally foreign to me, as though they were written by another person. I’ve been mulling over that thought for a few days, and realized that in many ways, I was a different person 10 years ago. Who was I? If I met that person today, would I like her? Would I dismiss her as childish and immature? Would I be able to impart some wisdom and help her through tough times? I can’t say. Continue reading →

 June 9, 2013 Blogging, Personal

Rugged Maniac, 2013

Yesterday Ethan and I ran the Minnesota Rugged Maniac for the second year in a row. Both this year and last year the course was challenging and fun. The RM is held at a ski resort and the entire course is on ski slopes. All of the obstacles are designed to be achievable by a single person, though for some a bit of teamwork can be helpful. The hills are hard, being both long and steep.

We completed the ~5K course in about 55 minutes. Had we done more hill training, I am certain we could have finished much faster, but the hills wiped me out. Even so, I felt pretty good when we finished. Continue reading →

 Fitness ,

Site Updates

Yesterday I installed and then heavily manipulated a new theme for the site. The new theme is mobile and tablet friendly, and has big, friendly font. I also moved the archives to their own page. Ethan was also updating his online portfolio and I helped him execute a couple of design changes.

I did more CSS work in the last two days than I have in months, or possibly years, and I’m pretty happy with the results. Also, I finally got my hands dirty with updating wordpress templates, so I feel more comfortable about the idea of edits in the future.

 June 2, 2013 Site Updates ,

Race photos

Mile 10

Ethan’s mom was gracious enough to lug my camera around to get some photos of us during the run. This is us just after the 10 mile mark, prior to the big hill. I like that we’re both sporting our “jacket skirts.” Continue reading →

 June 1, 2013 Fitness, Photography

My First Half Marathon

Ethan and I finished our first half marathon, and it went well! We ran and finished together, and our finish time was 2:23:46 (pace: 10:59 min/mile). I’m really happy with that achievement, especially since my goal pace was about 11 min/mile.

The Madison Half Marathon started at 7 am on Sunday 5/26, so we had to get up at 5:30 am to get dressed, eat something, and get to the start line. I was a little nervous about getting up so early, but it worked out pretty well, in that it was too early for me to get nervous about how the run would go. My primary concerns leading up to the race were that one of us would get injured and half to stop and that the hills would be too much for us, since we live in a very flat place, and it’s difficult for us to train on hills.

Continue reading →

 May 30, 2013 Fitness , ,

One week to go

I’m running the Madison half marathon in just 7 days. Today I ran the last long run of my training plan. It was 8 miles, and a pretty good run. I ran it with Ethan and we did a good job of sticking to a target pace of about 11 min/mile. When we had about a mile and a half to go, Ethan pointed out that last year, we couldn’t have run just the distance we had left without stopping, not to mention the 6 and a half miles we had just put behind us. Thinking of that made me feel like I’ve really accomplished a lot.

At this point I’m somewhat nervous, because 13.1 miles is a long way to run! I do feel like we’ve trained adequately, and unless one of us gets injured, I think we’ll both finish. All the things I’ve read about running say that your first race of any distance, don’t run for time, run to finish, and that’s exactly what I’m doing. I have an idea of what our time will probably be based on our 12 mile run a couple of weeks ago, but there are going to be more hills on the course, and it’s earlier in the day than we usually run, and we don’t know what the weather will look like. I’ll be happy as long as we finish.

 May 20, 2013 Fitness , ,

Saving for a Down Payment

A little over a year ago, Ethan and I started saving up for a down payment on a new house. We want to save up enough to put a 20 – 25% down payment on our next home to avoid mortgage insurance, plus cover moving expenses, and possibly cover any gap between the sale of our current home and its mortgage.

When we started saving up, we figured out an amount that seemed reasonable, and tried to determine how long it would take us to save up that much. The shortest timeline we could come up with was about 3 years, if we tightened down our expenses a bit. Ethan and I have always lived pretty frugally, so I was initially concerned with our plans, but I figured that at worst, we’d have to adjust them and push back our move out date by another year.

So what did we do to bring down our expenses and increase our savings? Primarily, we made a conscious decision to spend less money on restaurants and alcohol. Continue reading →

 May 13, 2013 Home Brewing, Personal Finance

Scottish Ale Status

Two weeks ago, I brewed up a batch of the Northern Brewer Karl’s 90 Schilling kit and started it fermenting. Today Ethan helped me transfer it to a carboy for its secondary fermentation, which should last 4 – 6 weeks.

This is our second homebrew and I’m excited to see how it turns out. I learned a few lessons on our first batch (which did turn out pretty well), and I’m hoping for a smoother taste.

We discussed the possibility of buying a second keg so we can brew two batches at once, so depending on how quickly we execute on that, we might have a second batch brewing soon.

 May 11, 2013 Home Brewing ,