It was wonderful to visit with my sister Shirley in Richmond, VA for a few days.  Since we seldom make it to the left coast at the same time, we figure it's been six years since we last saw each other ( Read more... )

Sometime in the last 12 hours I was dreaming that I was in a hollow tube suspended miles over the earth with a few hundred complete strangers.  Then I woke up and found that it was true! I'm in Osaka for a couple of days of business meetings.  I would have arrived Monday evening but for the lovely weather in Wisconsin that delayed my departure by ( Read more... )

Cider time again!  The apples were sparse this year - the weather was not friendly.  We managed to pick about 4-5 bushels, compared to last year's 7 bushels.  We went to Hahn's apple orchard and press in Ada as we have for many years.  It is a very well run operation, with an automatic washer and a conveyor to an overhead pulper that drops the ( Read more... )

I made a mistake yesterday.  I looked at the online radar and thought I picked the right time to ride my bicycle home between the scattered thunderstorm cells.  Forgetting that the radar images are delayed somewhat.  My co-workers said I should "Ride like the wind" - the problem with that is that the wind was going north, strongly, and I wanted to ( Read more... )

Another beautiful morning for biking.  66F, absolutely no wind except that which I made for myself.  The humidity is really high with all the rain we've been having, so the low spots had light ground fog everywhere.  The songbirds were singing their hearts out, but everything else was quiet.  The frogs in the marsh were quiet also, so I guess that' ( Read more... )

Biking to work this morning took 3 minutes less than yesterday.  I'm slowly building biking muscles, and beginning to power up hills I had to creep up earlier.  Feel the Burn ( Read more... )

What a great day of soaring Saturday!  It was my first time in the 1-34 in several months, so I was a little rusty for the first 15 minutes.  But the reflexes came back and soon the glider was an extension of my body ( Read more... )

Today I opened the primary fermenter for the concord grape wine and made my measurements prior to transferring it to the secondary fermenter. It was ready to bottle instead! Due to various interruptions I had left it in the primary for two months, which is a pretty normal total brewing time. The concord grapes are from the vines in our side yard, ( Read more... )

I now know that a dry mead needs a strongly flavored honey.  The honey I usually use is not, and this dry mead is nearly tasteless.  Actually, it tastes like flat champagne.  So I added sugar to bring the SG up to 1.022 and bottled the batch.  This should ferment in the bottles to give a fizz similar to champagne, rounding out the experience. It is ( Read more... )

I bottled the Joe's today.  It is brewed with Red Star baker's yeast, which is supposed to be good up to about 8% Alcohol by Volume.  In fact, this appears to have achieved about 13%+ ABV, from the specific gravity difference. It filled 19 self-sealing 0.5 liter bottles, one 0.75 liter capped bottle for short-term consumption, plus 2 small glasses ( Read more... )