Anne and I have been busy with the yard lately. We've been moving some plants and adding a few here and there and also trying to grow some food plants. We moved a lot of the peonies and tulips last fall and they seem to be doing well in their new location. A few tulips we missed and moved early this spring, they didn't like that so much, we'll see if they come back next year I guess.

We got a ton of hostas from a lady selling them on craigslist and planted those along the fence in between a lot of the tulips that we moved last fall, then we put down mulch around them, it looks pretty nice!

We also went to home depot and got some yews to plant in the front of the house. That area was looking pretty bad, part of it was sort of being overrun by irises, but none of them were flowering, probably because they're almost always in shade. We dug up and moved some of the larger irises and just kind of turned the rest into the soil and planted our yews and then mulched the area. It looks a million times better.

Next to the rain barrel you can see one of my vines. Speaking of, my vines are doing really well, lots of new shoots and leaves. They also all have produced a number of clusters. However, since they are young and in their new home this year, I want them to concentrate on growing strong roots and good cordons, so I removed the clusters from all of my vines. I did leave one, I just couldn't bring myself to remove them all, I want to taste my grapes!

Four years ago today Anne and I got married. It doesn't seem like it's been that long, but it also seems like it's been longer? Does that make any sense? It sort of feels like we've always been together, possibly because we will always be together. Either way today is the 4th anniversary of the day of our marriage if you're living in the dimension of time.

I love you Anne!

It's a light replacement extravaganza, or quite possibly a bonanza. The fact is, we've had a bunch of these lights that we've been meaning to replace for a long time now, some close to a year. We'll we're finally getting around to it. Today we're featuring a brand new foyer light as well as a new dining room light. Next is the bathroom light which I hope won't utterly suck. These have actually been getting easier? maybe?

Starting with the foyer, it was a very difficult decision to replace this beautiful fixture that showed off the light bulb itself as the focal point of the fixture. It was especially nice with a twisty CFL in there. Anyway, as usual it was sporting the crazy cast iron box and extra misc wires as well as a wealth of vermiculite insulation to pour out on me. This fixture was installed on a rafter, which I actually prefer since I can just get a low profile box and screw it into the rafter. It's better and easier than those 'old work' blue plastic boxes with their little plastic flaps.

We got this light for a crazy awesome price from someone on craig's list, the only problem was the cord coming out of the light was cut really short. Fortunately there was a bunch of excess cord in the ceiling fan that I had cut out so I replaced the cords in this light with those, yay recycling! It looks awesome and provides light, what more can you ask for?

Additional foyer light photos

The new dining room light also came from someone on craig's list. The supports were originally metallic aluminum but Anne painted them bronze and then did some nice dry brushing over the top for an awesome antiqued look that matches with the rest of the house. She also added a little yellow glass paint to the back of the glass and added the prairie style lines that really add character to this fixture. The former light was a seriously ugly number from the 60s that we were glad to see go.

This box was also nailed to a rafter in addition to the iron rod that had to be hacksawed, luckily I only had to hacksaw one side of the box instead of both due to the rod not going all the way through. Long story short, the new light got installed, Yay!

Additional Dining room light photos

I'm starting to become a pro at replacing the lights in our house. I'm still not a fan of hack sawing; don't think I ever will be. I've described before the electrical 'box' that the existing lights use. This crazy cast iron thing that's embedded in the lath and plaster that I have to hack saw to remove.

I'm also a huge fan of the number of wires I have to deal with. A simple hot and neutral would be way too easy, instead lets have three neutrals all stuck together, one hot, and three others (one black two white) that are just together for the fun of it! It's like a little party inside the new box I installed!

Luckily the placement of the box in the ceiling was right next to a rafter so I could attach the new box to that, when you're putting in a fan it's important to make sure the box is well secured and that the weight and motion of the fan isn't going to cause it to tear out of the ceiling at a later date. To ensure this I installed the first plate of the fan to the box, it has a hook on it to hang the fan motor on while you're wiring it up. I filled a backpack with 40 pounds of weights and hung that from the hook for about 30 minutes to make sure it was secure. It didn't budge, much to my pleasure. Sorry, I forgot to take a photo of that.

In the end, of course, all the hassle is worth it. The new light looks and works great. More photos

Apparently the senate came to an agreement and passed a stimulus plan that now has to go back to the house for approval. The stimulus plan will cost the US government $838,000,000,000. That's $838 billion dollars.

President Obama was hammering on congress to pass the bill which will "save or create 4 million jobs."

Lets do the math!

$838,000,000,000 / 4,000,000 jobs = $209,500 per job

I don't know about you but I think I could probably create more than one job if I had $209,500 in cash to toss around...

UPDATE:

The bill paddes the house, the final price tag is $789,000,000,000 (789B) and number of jobs saved or created 3.6 million.

That comes out to: $219,166.66 per job.

I hope all of my four loyal readers had wonderful Christmases. Anne and I had (and are still having) a wonderful time in Michigan visiting her parents. In fact, we were having such a great time that our car decided we should extend our stay by breaking down and leaving us stuck here until we can get it fixed (hopefully today). Either that or the Big Three have turned to the desperate measure of using voodoo on foreign cars that venture too close to Detroit.

I just got a call from the mechanic. We need new spark plugs and wires and we may have melted the catalytic converter but he won't know until he gets it running again. If the CC is busted it is supposedly under warranty for 80,000 miles which we are about 1000 miles away from. I hope it's not broken but at least VW should pay for it if it is.

UPDATE: The catalytic converter is fine but the distributor coil is also broken so that needs to be replaced. It should be fixed by 1 or 2 and then we'll hit the road.

UPDATE: UPDATE: The catalytic converter is partially blown out and needs to be replaced but the car can run and we got home just fine. I will try to get a VW dealer to replace it for free since there is a federal mandate of warranty on catalytic converters for 80k miles and our car is only at 79500!

If you're going to make wine, then you should also make cheese, right? I mean, you've got to get the whole snobby skill set rounded out. Have a look over on Men That Cook for details of my first foray into cheese making with a quick cottage cheese.

Since I've been making wine, it's only logical that I try my hand at beer as well. Making beer is a lot faster than making wine, generally you can go from fermentation to bottling and ready to drink in about 6 weeks with beer. With most wines you want to let them age for at least about a year.

Making beer is also a lot more work, in my opinion, than making wine. Beer is made from fermented malted barley (or wheat) and hops. Malted barley is sprouted barley. Once the barley seed sprouts it's sugar content increases and we all know that you need sugar to make alcohol. So to make beer, you have to get a bunch of barley (or wheat) and get it to sprout by keeping it wet or something. Then you have to boil your malted barley or wheat along with a flavoring/bittering agent in the form of hop flowers. Basically you make a sort of tea out of it which is called wort (pronounced wert). After boiling for about an hour you then need to cool down your wort as fast as you can, apparently this helps preserve flavors vs letting it cool slowly. Once you have your wort sufficiently cool you have to add oxygen otherwise your yeast won't be able to reproduce and your fermentation won't start (boiling removes most of the O2 so you have to add it back). Finally you can add your yeast and let it ferment for a few weeks before bottling and aging for an additional couple of weeks before it's ready to drink.

Fortunately in this day and age the home beer brewer does not need to start by malting their own barley or wheat. You can buy malted barley and wheat extract syrup, essentially skipping the biggest pain in the ass step of the process. A few weeks ago I brewed up a big pot of water, added malted wheat and barley extract syrup, and hops. Boiled it for about an hour, cooled it in the sink poured it into my fermentation bucket added sufficient water to increase the volume to 5 gallons, stirred it up to add in some oxygen, pitched the yeast, put the lid on with a ferm lock and let it sit.

After about a day it hadn't started vigorously fermenting, I'm pretty sure this was due to how cold it had been and how that subsequently made our house rather cold as well. Yeast doesn't die when it gets too cold but it does go dormant. So to get my fermentation off the ground I employed a wool coat and applied a small space heater for about an hour. Soon after the ferm lock was bubbling away merrily.

The Original Gravity (OG) of the wort was 1.042, I checked it a few days ago and it was down to 1.020 so it still has a little ways to go to finish fermentation. It's been a slow fermentation probably due to the initial coolness of the house though thankfully it's warmed up recently. It tried it when I checked the gravity and it was pretty good; tasted like beer so that was encouraging.

This is only a week or so late in posting, actually I'm behind on posting about a lot of stuff from about a week ago. Last week Anne and I dog sat for two dogs, Lily and Oliver. They were good dogs, though they loved being on furniture; not a big deal.

Lily is the little black and white sheperd/terrier? mix and Oliver is the white husky.

More photos here

Shatner Hasselhoff ‘08

They'd do just as good of a job as anyone else.

for growing!

Even though we're in Wisconsin doesn't mean we can't grow good wine grapes. There are quite a number of hybrid grapes that are very cold hardy and also produce a good wine. In addition to cold hardiness, many of these hybrids are resistant to various diseases that plague traditional Eurpoean vinifera vines.

The University of Minnesota has developed a few hybrids that I'm currently investigating, particularly Marquette grapes. They're very cold hardy (down to -35°F) and also very disease resistant. They create a good red wine that some have compared to shiraz, and others merlot, thought Pinot Noir is Marquette's grandfather. The acidity is a bit high but that can be corrected for in the winery either through blending, cold stabilization, or other methods. It also yields a fairly high sugar content, around 25 brix.

Another grape I'm investigating is the Sabrevois. This variety was bred by Elmer Swenson in Northern Wisconsin (he also did a lot of work along with the University of Minnesota). Sabrevois is also hardy down to -35°F very disease resistant and makes a complex red wine. Similar to Marquette it gives slightly high acids and its recommended to combine with a grape with higher sugars (Marquette perhaps?). It is also recommended to to a semi-carbonic maceration to ferment these grapes or at least pressing early to avoid an off flavor that often results from a full maceration.

Those two I have done the most investigation of, they're appealing to me because of their extreme cold hardiness, strong resistance to disease and the good wine they produce. Some other varieties I'm interested in but haven't investigated as much are: Marechal Foch, Noiret™, St. Croix, and Cabernet Severny. Cabernet Severny is an interesting one to me since it's not a hybrid with american grapes but was actually developed for growing in Russia. It's been hybred with a hardy Mongolian grape vine as well as some french varieties and of course Severny. Not sure how that all works out as there's not a lot of information about it online; not even sure if I'll be able to find anyone selling it.

Well, technically Cathy is pregnant. Either way, congrats you guys! How exciting!

I think it's official now, Anne and I have exited the wedding phase of our life and are now in full blown baby phase. Many of our friends are pregnant or have had a baby, and I have a feeling more will be following suit in the near future. Maybe even we will be, who knows? But we're still not ready for that yet.

In addition to the wine I also tiled the kitchen this weekend. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, though it did take nearly all weekend to complete. Also, Anne painted the trim in our bedroom white (formerly pink) it's like a whole new room!

Things left to do to the kitchen:

• tile edges of the tiled area (after painting)
• grout tile
• paint walls
• paint trim
• install new light fixture
• add second light switch
• kick board with vent
• connect water to fridge for ice maker

Soon.

Well as you all may or may not know, the author of this blog has finally reached 3 decades old! You are a great husband, friend, and guy. I hope and pray God gives you many many more decades to spend with me...your nagging wife:)