You know it's a crazy week when in your rush to head to work you repeatedly attempt to turn the kitchen TV off with the remote and after a minute realize you're holding the garage remote and you've just opened and closed your garage door 20 times.
Or when you get in the car and your heel catches on the floor mat and shoves it all the way forward and the moment you reach down to pull it back you feel that muscle in your back give out.
Better yet, when you get up at 3am to use the bathroom, you whack yourself on the foot board and leave a large blue bruise on your thigh.
Yeeaahhhh.....it's been that kind of week.
How was yours?
The weather here in SE MN is on another roller-coaster. It's breezy and warm (40!) today and expected to zoom 50 degrees down to the below zero zone in the next day or so. We're a hearty bunch up here...we have to be acclimated to the 50-70 degree temperature swings that occur on a fairly regular basis. I'll admit to feeling peckish as my favorite defense against winter sinus issues, 4Way Sinus Spray (non-medicated and menthol-enhanced) is not to be found in any store. (Thanks flu epidemic!) That stuff is amazing for keeping sinuses moist when the cold and dry air take over. I resorted to getting some plain old saline spray, but that's like snorting seawater.
In other news, I read an article this week about the whole kerfuffle about people still using TWO spaces following a period when writing. *aghast!* I can remember in high school typing class, hammering away on manual typewriters, being drilled on the elements of page structure. TWO spaces behind each period! No exceptions! I don't think I do it. Nope, just checked. I only leave one space. Between using word processors in college and years and years of Word Perfect and Word, I think I've had that habit auto-corrected out.
What else is new this week...thinking...thinking...
We made a batch of honey weiss last Sunday. Took us about 3 1/2 hours from start to finish, which is not bad. Different kinds of beers have longer steeping and boiling times. Making beer is a hobby I got my husband started on last Christmas and we've really come to enjoy it. It reminds me a lot of making bread since you need grains, liquid, sugar of some kind, hops for bittering and yeast. The rest is a measure of infusing water with the flavors of the grains, the sweet, the bitter and letting the yeast convert it all to alcohol. Once the wort (the liquid, not-yet fermented beer) is created, it rests in a warm place for two weeks with an air-void lock (so bacteria can't enter the wort and contaminate it) and the magic happens. Ours is bubbling merrily away so I assume we are getting a good sugar to alcohol conversion. This process takes two weeks. Depending on the beer, it is either then bottled with an addition of priming sugar which feeds the yeast and creates the carbonation, or it goes into a carboy (glass bottle) to secondary ferment, two weeks later it is then bottled with the priming sugar. Then it's another 2-4 weeks for the final carbonation. The downside is not knowing if you have good beer until you pop that first bottle cap.
We made a batch of honey weiss a few months back and when we opened that first bottle, happily anticipating a FSTH! sound, we got-nada. No bubbles, no head, no nothing. We have a batch of flat beer. Which is a bummer to say the least. So my husband go online and read up on the beer forums and decided might be able to salvage it by moving it to a warmer location, or opening a bottle and mixing it with another beer that is fully carbonated, like creating a black and tan. My suggestion was to dump it and start over. But I can be a little dismissive that way. Don't like it? Toss it. Don't want it? Toss it. My husband, on the other hand, is a nurturer and problem solver so he's up to the task of coaxing a little fizzy out of his home brew.
Yes, running to the beer store, plunking $12 on the counter and putting up your feet to a cold one in under 15 minutes is a very good option as well.
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