I always have a theme in mind when I’m inspired to bore you all with my ramblings. Lately I’ve had to change the words in the subject line in order to get them all to send. Judy has said that she missed getting a particular one and was left off the list, but when I went back and looked she was there. I looked at the subject and it had a word in it that could have more than one meaning and the spam/porn blockers look for those words and block the message. I suppose blow is one of those words, so if you don’t get this, let me know and I’ll change the subject line.

I brewed beer on Saturday, as many of you already know. This is the first time I’ve brewed at the condo and, not going into the boring details, there are a few logistics that I’ll have to rethink. At any rate, it’s a “BIG BEER” (An Imperial Stout) that’s very dark, very heavy (Jean said it looked like molasses), and will probably be high in alcohol. This is my 14th brew session and I haven’t had this happen yet, but when some beers ferment, they create a huge amount of foam and literally blow-off the airlock and spew crud all over the place. The way you fix the problem is to sanitize and insert a 1 1/4 inch O.D. plastic tube into the fermenter with the other end in a pail of water. If it foams over, it goes into the tube and into the water. No problem. It’s like a new baby; I’ve been checking it constantly since Saturday evening. The foam was about an inch thick on the top of the wort (it will be beer once it ferments) until this morning. By 11AM the foam was within an inch of the airlock so I inserted the blow-off tube. (With all the “blow-offs” and “inserted” in the story so far, maybe none of you will get this and I’ll be on the Channel 8 news as an internet predator).

Bill helped me dump the mash grains in the little wooded area behind the condo Saturday. I expected to see the deer over there going crazy (no…not drunk…there’s no alcohol in the mash) but they haven’t seemed too interested. It’s covered with snow so maybe they can’t smell it, but I’d rather think it has so much black, toasted, malted barley that they don’t like it. Oh well…some of the critters will eat it.

My “watching what I eat” since December 10 (except for the week and a half that included Christmas and New Year) has been working. I had a doctor’s appointment last Friday (January 10th…one month later) and I was down 8 pounds. It’s a good start and I have to stay with it. I’ll be in Florida for a week and it will be difficult, but Mom said she has lots of oranges and grapefruit from Aunt Sharon and Uncle Fred, so as long as I don’t eat too many each day, I’ll be fine. Besides, I can’t go there without a trip to Inn On The Gulf for their deep fried Grouper Nuggets and Manhattan Clam Chowder.

With the holidays being over and not much going on here, Fred Jacobs will have trouble selling papers, so I expect him to stir people up with another editorial about how dumb the hospital board is for wanting to build a new hospital way out in the country (less than a mile from the city limits and less than three miles from downtown Hastings). That’s a good thing. Every time I start to get too cocky and smug about my decisions, I need a kick in the pants to bring me back to reality.

Just (Ready For Warm Weather For A Change) Jack