cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Sorry for the uncharacteristically long lapse between entries. Christmas, etc. Hmmm. Do I even want to write up an entry all about Christmas? It was unremarkable this year. Relatively stress-free. I got a bunch of presents. Most notably a nice meat cleaver, a meat grinder and a video camera thingie. There's only another week left to deer season. To be honest, it's a bit of a relief. All of this meat has become a bit surreal. Tonight is New Years Eve and I have a party to go to. I have a case of home-made beer that I am bringing. This batch turned out well. Not as well as I'd hoped but still pretty good. Our hostess has some weird thing for giraffes, so the label has a picture of a giraffe with the following text beneath it: WARNING: This product contains up to 26% giraffe and may be hazardous to persons with severe giraffe allergies. Quitting giraffe now greatly reduces your risk of cameleapardus. I think it will be appreciated. Oh, that g1ngered wheat ale that I thought of while writing a recent diary entry? I made it. It wasn't quite done fermenting yet as of yesterday morning but I've tasted it and it's going to be really fucking good. I got the amount of ginger just right. It's only a one gallon batch since it was highly experimental. But strong stuff, alcohol wise. I did it 50/50 and used half extract but the other half of the malt I mashed myself starting with the whole grain. What a pain in the ass it is brewing from whole grain. The results are stunning, though. This is a really fucking good beer. Like drinking a gingersnap made with molasses. Not that there are molasses in this beer, but the combination of Munich and wheat malts certainly create an implied flavor not unlike that of molasses. So I have a video camera now. I should make porn. Yesterday was Ida's birthday. She is now 4 years old. The baby is very into playing peekaboo lately. And he follows me around everywhere when I am at home. Ida keeps asking for a baby sister and Trish keeps making comments that make it clear she's prepared to provide one in the next year. I dunno. Man, not a fucking thing gets done around the house, partially because Trish is holding or watching a baby all day long. When does this end? I'm sick of living in such a shit-hole. Plus we NEVER have any time for ourselves. And I just cannot afford another one. As it stands, I'm really looking forward to the baby being old enough to start Kindergarten in 4 years and then Trish can start working part time again at least. Maybe if we had more money I'd be ok with another baby soon. But not like this. If we had a bigger house, some extra money for a maid and a babysitter now and then. That might be ok. Otherwise I just cannot handle another baby right now. I got $1,000 from my grandfather for Christmas. That was nice of him. I'm hoping to spend all of it having construction materials delivered to work on the workshop. We'll see what happens there. It would be nice to have a couple extra thousand somehow to get me through until mid-March, when I get my dividend check for $10k or whatever it will be this year. Salary is never enough. Oh, we got another deer last Thursday. It's an interesting story but I already wrote it up for my other blog and don't feel like re-hashing it. Long story short, I went hunting and got nothing but afterwards my littlest weinerdog/beagle mix found a wounded deer hidden in the tall grass of my lower meadow. She did a whole 'Timmy's down the well' routine until I followed her out there to see it. The deer only had a few hours to live no matter what due to it's severe abdominal injury so I shot it and quartered it and gave Alice as much meat as she could stuff into her cute little mouth. I finished butchering the quarters last night and the meat is lovely, tender stuff. It looks like tuna sashimi. It was so picture perfect that I spent probably an extra hour butchering the meat just so I would get it exactly perfect. Each piece cut to symmetrical perfection, every shred of fat or connective tissue removed. This is venison that belongs on the cover of a food magazine or something. It's just beautiful. 1:44 p.m. - 2007-12-31 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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