Category: General

Categories
Beer Food General Movies

Detox, and then more BEER

Yesterday was a detox day. Kelly and I got up around 11am, made cheese & red bell pepper omlettes (I added a bunch of jalapenos and hot sauce to mine, naturally), and sat around a bit before going out to my folks place for my Mum's birthday. Kelly prepared a delicious chicken parmesan dish (despite the fact she's vegetarian and couldn't eat it herself) for dinner, ate some cake, and then came home to watch Stranger Than Fiction, which was really good. I ate way too much, but felt all the better for it.

Tonight I met Snooks at Kennedy School after work for some beers and some manly/nerdy conversation about Battlestar Galactica, life, the universe, and everything. Kelly met us later as she headed home from a happy hour hang-out with her soon-to-be ex-coworkers. Fun evening. And yes Aaron, this is for you, since you made such a big deal about me not blogging over the weekend 🙂

Categories
Beer General Work

Pouring the perfect pint of Guinness

Since Guinness now flows at my office, I thought it would be nice to make up a nice 'how to' sheet for folks who have never poured it and are only used to domestic microbrews. What you see to the left is my enhanced illustration of an old metal sign image I found online (here's the original). The photo was too small and blurry for printing, so I made a new one in Illustrator. I even illustrated thousands of tiny bubbles to make the settling look right! Finding a vector version of the Guinness Draft logo online made the whole thing pretty easy.

I finished the sheet up by adding a right panel with an Esquire.com interview with Guinness brewmaster Fergal Murray, where he describes the six steps in more detail.

Here is my 'how to' sheet (PDF)

Enjoy! 

Categories
General

Ants… you will be EXTERMINATED

Thanks to Miranda and her tip about Terro, it seems that the ant extermination is underway. We got some of it set up around the house last night. You put some drops (nearly an inch in diameter) on little the cardboard cutouts provided in a few places around the house (obviously out of reach of the cat). We'd been seeing the ants in two places, the kitchen, and more recently, the garage (they found the cat's food), so I placed one under the kitchen sink behind the trash can (so far, still no activity), one tucked away in the garage under and inbetween some things so Guinness doesn't get to it (very little activity), and lastly we placed one in the downstairs bathroom (which is next to the kitchen). As of tonight, there's a stream of ants running along the baseboard between the bathroom and a spot in the cracks under the kitchen cabinets. I looked at the drop of the poison in the bathroom and there's hundreds covering the spot, actively feeding on the stuff. Thus the extermination begins. Providing enough get back to the nest.

Categories
General

Smart = Sad

Found an interesting article via Digg just now, "Why Intelligent People Tend To Be Unhappy". Worth a read. If author Bill Allin is correct it would explain a lot about people I've known, past and present, and why they always seemed a bit down. Next time you see someone who looks sad, think of how brilliant they might be.

Categories
Beer General

Ant killing, and a quiet night at home

Slept late today (because I could, dang it!), then spent day on a cleaning rampage, primarily in the kitchen, trying to eradicate the sugar ants we've been seeing over the past couple months. I still haven't exactly figured out where they're coming from (probably under the house somewhere) but the kitchen has become something of a game… spot the ant, kill the ant, wipe area clean, repeat. It's never been a massive infestation, just a few here and there, always around the counter tops and cupboards. We'd clean, and for days, nothing, and then all of a sudden, we'd spot 10 here, 4 there, etc. We've sealed all our foodstuffs, and had been fairly good about keeping things clean, but the persistent little shits still keep popping up. The other day, Kelly picked up some eco-friendly (orange peel based) insecticide spray, so today I cleaned. Big time. Under the sink, around and under the oven top, floors, etc. The kitchen still (hours later) reeks of orange peel, but it seems to have had some effect. I've only spotted a couple since.

Tonight Kelly got together with Miranda and another friend to play games, drink wine, and relax. I dropped her off at around 7:30pm, and since Miranda lives fairly close to Belmont Station, I stopped in to check out the new digs (moved, no longer on Belmont) and pick up some beers. Got a few interesting things, a couple English ales from Morland Brewery ("Hen's Tooth" and "Tanner's Jack"), and a couple old favorites, Adnams "Suffolk Special Bitter" and Coniston Brewery's "Bluebird Bitter". Having a nice quiet night at home relaxing, sipping on beers, reading through emails, and writing in my blog. 😉 Hopefully tomorrow, two things will happen… 1) more relaxing, and 2) I won't see any sugar ants. Stupid bugs.