It's Spring Again

You can always tell when Spring is really here. At least I always can. You can have your warm days, your rain showers, and plants growing from bulbs. Maybe you even see your first dandelions. But it isn't really Spring until you break out one tool.

The lawnmower. And I had to mow yesterday, for the first time this Spring. The first of what I'm sure will be many times this year. I used to absolutely hate mowing the lawn. What is there to like about it? It's hot, sweaty, dusty, boring work. But somebody has to do it.

Now though, I really don't mind the whole mowing the lawn thing. Well, I mind it in the heat of August. But yesterday it wasn't too hot or dusty. And I listened to the radio while I mowed, so I wasn't that bored either.

And besides. It's always nice to know Spring has finally sprung.

Homebrew Club

I had homebrew club last night.


I brought and IPA and an American Brown. And for the first time, I got good reviews!

My IPA was a nice hoppy IPA, that has stood the test of time pretty well, it has a nice hoppy nose, with a little hint of caramel. The body of the beer is good, and the hop flavor is nice and strong. And the swallow and aftertaste leaves hops on your palate exactly the way I wanted it to.

My Brown Ale went over well too. Despite a small lactobacillus infection.

It tasted great and I had a couple return visits to that bottle. So i'll have to put that on the brew again list.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with the meeting. After going to meetings for year, and constantly having things wrong with my beer, it's nice to know that I learned the lessons I had to learn to make good beer. Only one problem.

Now that I've made good beer, I need to make great beer.

National High Five Day

Let's all take a moment to celebrate a holiday that is very important for our national psyche. National high Five Day.

I think everyone knows how to celebrate this day too. Of course it's with lemonade and high fives. So get out there and celebrate! Friends, strangers, it doesn't matter, just go give out high fives!

And, Hey there Internet Friend, come on, you know you want to...


Bam. Happy Holidays.

Stephen King

I feel as though I haven't written any book review posts lately. So, after realizing how many people read Stephen King, I have decided to put up a Stephen King post.

Stephen King has written some pretty famous stories. Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, Cujo, It, Pet Semetary, Salem's Lot, Carrie, The Body(Stand By Me). The list goes on. But in my opinion, some of his best stories are his short stories. In anthologies such as Nightmares and Dreamscapes, Stephen King writes some of his most suspenseful work, and many of these tales only last 8 pages.

A prime example is the short story, The Ledge. In the 8 page Ledge, Stephen King puts as much suspense and fear in your mind as he does in the biblically long Salem's Lot. And in Nightshift, a short story about cleaning an abandoned warehouse, Stephen King strikes terror into your heart in 10 pages. It took 100 pages of Pet Semetary to start getting scared.

And not all of his short stories are scary. The Body, though tense at parts, is not scary. Neither is The Green Mile, and yet both of these stories sold well as books, and went on to be turned into classic movies.

So if I can offer a piece of reading advice, go read some Stephen King. And if you don't want to read a terribly long book, or get scared, there are still options for you.

Enjoy, and as always, have fun getting scared.

Recently, at my House...

First off, let me say, I hate ellipses. I mean, really, who even uses them anymore? I don't know any real application for them...

But in other news, an exercise machine was just purchased and put in the Schwarz basement. This is what it looks like.

Essentially. Now, upon viewing this you probably realize that the whole point of this machine is to exercise your abs by placing your knees on the black cups, holding on to the handles, and swinging back and forth.

You would be dead wrong.

The true workout from this machine, and it is harder than you would imagine, is getting on and off. It is not exactly the most balanced machine, and the knees cups swing side to side. So getting on and off is like trying to kneel on top of a horse and getting your knees in the stirrups.

I suppose you could try to exercise by swinging back and forth, but only if you have the endurance of a marathon champion, since it takes about 3 hours to get on and off this thing.

Or does it....

Hip Hop Marmalade spic And span

Met you one summer and it all began


Ahh pop music. Some people criticize the lyrics being written today as garbage. For example, let's examine a sone by some name kedollarha.(I refuse to spell her name with the $ sign she uses).
Wake up in the mornin' feelin' like P- Diddy (Hey what's up girl)
Grab ma glasses I'm out the door I'm gonna hit the city (Let's go)
Before I leave brush ma teeth with a bottle of Jack
'Cuz when I leave for the night I ain't comin back
Kedollarha "Tik Tok"


Shakespeare would be proud of the place that this:

has taken the English language. I know when Shakespeare was writing Hamlet, he envisioned a time when people would be putting the beautiful act of brushing your teeth with bourbon to song.


And it doesn't end there.

God knows why she decided to go out wearing a bunch of London Broils. Maybe she eats raw meat. And I refuse to put down lyrics to poker face, because frankly, it is musical vomit.


But the whole reason I put these "artists"(their words, not mine) down on this page, is because I want to contrast them with my favorite pop band ever, LFO.


LFO was terrible, I have no idea what they looked like, and to the best of my knowledge they were laughed out of the music industry. But instead of brushing their teeth with hard liquor, or ruining a perfectly good steak by wearing it as clothes, LFO wrote this:
You're the best girl that I ever did see,
The great Larry Bird Jersey 33
When you take a sip you buzz like a hornet
Billy Shakespeare wrote a whole bunch of sonnets


and later on, in the same song:
There was a good man named Paul Revere
I feel much better baby when you're near
You love fun dip and cherry Coke,
I like the way you laugh when I tell a joke


Come on people. What happened to us? Now we have to listen to a crazy lady sing about god knows what, and some girl talk into a microphone about bourbon toothpaste. When we could have LFO!!! Or similar lighthearted pop!!! 


I ask you, youth of today, When did you lose your innocence?


I'll leave you with this:
Sometimes its black
Sometimes its white
Sometimes shes wrong
Sometimes im right
Sometimes we talk about it or we figure it out
But then she just changed her mind

My First Trip of the Season

I guess enough time has passed since my first fishing trip of the season to post an update. Here is essentially the results of my fishing trip to Lake Hopewell.
Dad-4
Philmin-0

Yea, I got handed a good oldfashoined buttwhooping by the denizens of the deep. Got to see some hunting Ospreys though, and they always came out of the water without a fish too. So my Dad not only bested me, he bested the 3 or 4 Ospreys flying around.

We got to see the new Beaver lodge the beaver made. I don't know why he abandoned the old lodge for the new one, but he is cutting down some trees I don't approve of. On this particular lake, there are two small islands. And on these islands, there are some really cool trees. The stereotypical horror movie trees you only see on islands in the center of lake. The kinds of trees that have legends about how the devil strikes down anyone who attempts to cut them down. Unless the cutter is a beaver, and then he is good to go.

In short, we saw some birds, some beavers, and some bass. Well, my dad saw some bass, I didn't see any. But there's always next time.