Running of the Bulls 2006 - runner's point of view

weeeee! run, run run!!!

why does rrreealllly silly man,man,man,man behavior make me grin? that bull is crazy! those men are crazy! did you see that dude get totally stomped? one of these days, i really want to be there and do that.......

adrenalin rush. i think that's what it is all about. it could be riding the big top in las vegas, zip lining down a south africa mountain, running the bulls, changing careers midway through...that "dear God, why am i doing this" sick feeling. i feel for my brother riding his own change of life roller coaster. he's cresting that top of the hill climb, peaking over and thinking, oh man. and then things are gonna start zooming.

when boy1 was very little, i used to read to him, "oh the places you will go" by dr. seuss. i enjoyed that book as much as he did. i liked the candid way in which the seuss-meister handled rough spots that occur in life. like coming down from a lurch, the waiting place, being alone, playing useless games against yourself and then getting yourself unstuck—the man was spot-on.

so i salute you, morgan, as you scream by me in your personal rollercoaster with your hair on fire. i'm really proud of you. you're in my top 20 people that i know. you've done well in getting here and i bet i'll be posting the same sentiments 20 years from now:

So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life's
a Great Balancing Act.

Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3 / 4 percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU'LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
—Oh The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss

Morgan: Time Keeps on Slipping...

As I get closer to my retirement, I have numerous song lyrics going through my head. Do you know where your going to?...Take this job and shove it!...Time Keeps on Slipping...I am feeling a little stress as I quickly approach that day. I'm running out of time! I have less than 10 days to finish my outprocessing and locate other employment. Stress? yeah a little. On top of the stress I'm on some kind of emotional rollercoaster that has me going from excitement to remorse in seconds. Yes I'm excited to move on, to the "next level" in my life. At the same time, I can't help but think about how much I have enjoyed the U.S. Air Force. It has been such a huge part of my life since I was 17, I am Air Force. What happens to me when you take that uniform away? 10 Days...wtf. I'm taking 20 days permissive TDY, 10 days Terminal leave and I'm selling 59 days of leave. I'm thinking about hitting the Appalachian Trail by myself for a week, I just want to be by myself. Colette says I should go someplace special...I don't know.

Work in progress...I need a break

OurGirl: a whine about wine

For one thing, wine consumption in this country has nearly doubled in the last decade, while beer sales have been pretty much stagnant, growing less than 1 percent since 2000. Even more galling, in 2005 a Gallup poll revealed that, for the first time ever, Americans preferred wine to beer. This was an astonishing development, akin to Americans jilting baseball for bocce.
—Beer in the Headlights, Slate Magazine

First of all, after a super hot day toiling in the newly established eastern vineyard this summer—i've come back to the farm house and my beverage of choice?

Widmer Hefeweizen
I drank my first in HOTlanta this past june. and it was wiltingly hot in atlanta. but the hefe? it was so refreshing. it was clean and so, so easy to drink. i love the bready-wheaty flavor. i love the cloudiness of the beer. why do people prefer products filtered? like apple juice or cider—ever get the real stuff? the flavors are so much more complex. from what i understand, the hefe is pretty trendy. and the lemon slice—websites galore bemoan the lemon slice. whatever. i'm one of the dorks drinking the cool kid's beer. in late fall/winter til st. pat's day, though, i drink guinness stout with my husband's family. that's the extent of my beer drinking.

wine.

wine is all about the place, the food you eat with it and the people you are with when you consume both the wine and food. at least that's my current theory. to wit: my third date with my husband was an impromptu trip to new orleans. yeh. jezebel. so we eat at the creole kitchen (circa 1995), a literal hole in the wall restaurant with the dining set out in their cozy courtyard. i had a blackened filet mignon, a total food heresy. my husband had a fish dish. we drank a nondescript beaujolais and i fell so hopelessly in love with my husband i still sleep in the same bed with him every night. that's the power of place, food, wine and the person you share it with. here is another story about a less romantic setting, better wine, and a total recommitment of love.

people will tell you different. some will actually taste wine and then spit it out (this happens at a wine tasting, not at a meal). personally, i find this disrespectful of the grape. however, i am a wine novice and worse, an unrepentant one. i suppose spitting is inevitable at tastings. at a certain point, you could get a bit loopy. The oldman's guide to outsmarting wine has been a great reference book for me, you should check out mark's site. he writes about wine in a totally accessible way. i also enjoy reading michael steinberger's wine column @ slate.com. oh, and i can't forget jancis robinson!

bon appetit!

Morgan: Beer or Wine?

Sommeliers are wine experts, right? They know everything to know about wine and make very educated recommendations about what wine is most appropriate with your fish or veal. But is wine the most popular beverage with a meal? I don’t think, I’m too far off the reservation, when I say no. Beer is the more popular beverage with meals. The fact is that real beer is a far more versatile beverage than wine, bringing a wider range of flavors and aromas to the table. Now you can say I have no class or I’m low class…that’s alright, you won’t break my achy-breaky heart. Let’s talk about beer, baby!

Making beer

Brewing is the process of changing water and grain into beer through a yeast catalyst. The quality of the water is extremely important. Hard water produces a bitter ale, soft water produces bitter lager. Barley or hops, or a combination of them, is used for the grain.
Getting dry grain ready for fermentation is called malting. The grain is steeped in water until it sprouts. The sprouting or germination is not allowed to end naturally but is interrupted either by drying or roasting in kilns.

Barley

Barley has been a grain of choice for thousands of years. The longer the roasting of the malted barley, the darker the beer. Barley, or wheat beers have a sweet taste.

Hops

Hops are herbaceous climbing vines and look like a cross between pine cores and artichokes. The bitter, dry flavour of hops counterbalance the sweetness of malt.

Yeast
Sugars in the malted grains are converted into alcohol by yeast. Different yeast ferment sugars into different flavours. For ales, top fermentation yeast is used, while bottom fermentation yeast is used for lagers.
The beer making process starts by germinating the grain, then steeping the resulting malt in hot water to get the wort. Base wort contents means the percentage of wort in the beer before fermentation. The alcohol contents is roughly one third of the base wort contents.The wort is boiled (brewed) and hops are added. After brewing, fermentation starts by adding yeast. After fermentation, the wort is drown into tanks where it is allowed to condition or age. Yeast and hops are sometimes added in a secondary fermentation process.

I’m no Brewmeister, but my taste buds are in perfect working condition. My Top 3 Favorites have to be…
1. Yuengling Traditional Amber Lager With its deep amber hue and mild hop character, traditional lager is a classic brew, reminiscent of turn-of-the century beers. This amber lager may also be characterized as an American Style premium lager that is a more flavorful medium bodied beer than just an American-style Pilsner. Each Brew has ruby colored highlights with a slight hop aroma and flavor. The degree of toasty sweet caramel-type character in the flavor and aroma results in a refreshingly balanced palate.http://www.yuengling.com/
2. Parkbrauerei Pirminator – Strong light bock originating in Zweibruken- Pirmasens, GermanyIt is known for its taste, which comes down to the particularly lengthy maturing process in the storage tanks.
3. Smithwick's Draut has a ruby red tone with a stable, but slightly thin head. It is produced using hops and special roasted, malted barley. Its texture is smooth and refined, with a bitter and complex finish. Smithwick’s was originally brewed in St. Francis Abbey Brewery in Kilkenny, known as 'Smithwicks Brewery' until c.2000. The brewery is situated on the site of a Franciscan abbey where monks had brewed ale since the 14th century, and has ruins of the original abbey on its grounds. It is Ireland’s oldest operating brewery, founded by John Smithwick in 1710.

Top 3 Interesting Beer Factoids
1. Worldwide, 20,000 brands of beer are brewed in 180 styles, from ales, lagers, pilsner and stouts to bitters, cream ales and iced beers.
2. Beer has been a popular beverage for a long time. Babylonian clay tablets show detailed recipes of beer making in 4300 BC. Beer was also brewed by the ancient Chinese, Assyrians and Incas.

3. An Egyptian text of 1600 BC gives 100 medical prescriptions using beer. A few years ago, the New Castle Brewery in England brewed 1,000 bottles Tutankhamun Ale from a 3,200-year old recipe found in the sun temple of Queen Nefertiti.

And malt does more than Milton can, To justify God's ways to man. A. E. Housman (1859 - 1936)

But if wine is your choice than you can't go wrong with Proof of Concept

Channeling TV history

way back in the late 70s/early 80s, in the landlocked state of misery—excusi, meant to type the mighty, mighty missouri—our intrepid protagonist watched pbs television with her dad on sweltering summer saturdays afternoons. it was an amazing mash-up of topics where in an hour and a half you could learn to cook food from exotic lands, paint fantastic landscapes in oil paints, work in wood or renovate an old house. there was no other timeframe in the whole tv-scape at that time with such an eclectic line-up. yeh, way before cable, that's what i'm talking about here. here are a few of my favs:

Justin Wilson! Oh, ah gawruntee! even as a child, i understood justin was a great (most likely, dirty) old man. he cooked and consumed some sincerely homey cajun cuisine. he had a kitchen studio and a wife half his age. he told stories like my grandpa. as an adult, i make his potato salad. its like your standard american potato salad dressed with mayo and mustard, but justin makes it with onyun, chopped pimento-stuffed green olives and several liberal shakes of tabasco. ooooo-weeee!

Yan Can Cook! if yan can cook, so can you! thanks, martin yan. my parents bought a wok and experimented with stir frying straw mushroom (just like the dancing mushrooms in the disney movie, fantasia!) and tofu and canned baby corn. in missouri, that was a feat. my parents were very daring for the time/place/culture. yan could cut up a chicken in, like, seconds. you can see him now on foodtv, as a guest judge on iron chef america. now he's super hunky yan in a black leather jacket. the dude rocks.

This Old House. ok, you knew bob villa was a total diva. you couldn't wait for everyone to get tired of him and then they replaced him with that steve dude ( and you knew steve had never picked up a hammer in his life) and all the while, you secretly rooted for norm abrams (nice guy!) how happy were you when the New Yankee Workshop came out? i typed that sentence? well, yeh. i watched it 'cause my dad really dug it. plus, you got to like a guy who started off his shows reminding you to always wear these (point to the corner of your face) safety glasses. oh, and the total slavish commitment to joining biscuits? the workshop was a drinking game, but i was in middle school so i missed out.

The Joy of Painting! William Alexander! Bob Ross! Paint amay-ya-ya-zing moutainous landscapes with all sorts of coniferous and deciduous (remember, mother of a ten year old) trees (HAPPY TREES!) William, an exuberant prussian, would fire-in his trees with alizarin crimson! Ross, weirdly quiet when he spoke/whispered, was for me, one of the last of the hippies (for which i was profoundly grateful, having experienced first hand the early 70s, which i refer to as the great american hang-over. shudder). they both created paintings using alla-prima oil painting techniques. everyone else (excluding my father) painted trash. and i think they still do at what now passes for an art store. ever noticed they just don't make art stores—now they are just a bunch of really poor craft stores?