Phriendly Phil’s Velociraptor Pharm n’ Pettin’ Zoo

Mr. Man:

Can we watch Dave and Becky now?

Daddy:

I don’t care what we watch as long as Daddy doesn’t have to struggle not to bawl.

The fermentation chiller project is on hiatus until I know whether getting a chest freezer makes sense.  Now hop off those tenterhooks.

The Michelle Obama “Whitey” video:

The Great Hop Shortage of 2008 convinced me to take up hop gardening this year. It’s something I’d always wanted to do when I had space, but it took five-dollar-an-ounce hops to give me the real kick in the pants I needed.

I ordered a half-dozen hop rhizomes from The Thyme Garden but, due to the strange weather this Spring, waited until April 19 to put them in the ground.

Some of them took longer than others, but they’re all up and doing pretty well. The varieties I planted, and photos, below the break:

Read the rest of this entry »

I saw a similar game in Meijer a couple of days back called “Tailgate Toss.”

That sounds like the title of one o’ them “behind the counter” movies.

I’ve just set up OpenID sign-on for commenting. What this means is that if you have an OpenID login (which you already have if you use AOL, AIM, Yahoo, Blogger, Flickr, Livejournal, Wordpress.com, and some others) you can login using that.

AOL/AIM users, for example, would use openid.aol.com/screenname as their logon. You’ll be briefly whisked away to an AOL logon site that will ask for your passowrd, and when you’re done with that, you’ll come back here.

You don’t have to use OpenID, but it’s there if you want to.

Since the early 90s, the major brewers have made feints in the direction of the craft brewing movement — does anybody remember the all-malt Miller Reserve line, including their Velvet Stout? These excursions, while definitely in the right direction, have never really gone far enough, and have usually been short-lived to boot.

Still, they’ve done nothing to disabuse me of my idea that the brewmasters at AB, Miller (okay, SABMiller) and Coors (okay, Molson Coors) are real pros, and if the marketing and accounting let them off the leash, they could make a world class Bud (Coors, Miller) Stout.

Apparently Anheuser-Busch has filed for label approval of Bud Ale, due out in October. The label mentions Cascade hops and that it’s brewed “with barley from America’s Heartland,” although it’s not clear whether this will be an all-malt beer.

I’ll probably pick up a sixer when it rolls around in October, to see how it turns out. I’m not expecting too much, but maybe, just maybe, this time the brewmasters are getting to run a little freer.

Thanks to Seen Through a Glass.

EDIT: Read the last paragraph of this.  Like I say, these guys are good — it’s just that making insipid beer is their job.

Last weekend I cut down some old yews that were becoming overgrown near our deck.

Today I dragged the carcasses to the burn pile. My 4-year-old son is going through a particularly helpful phase, and dragged a lot of this wood to the pile with me.

Later, as naptime approached, I flashed the fingers of both hands at him, telling him that he had “this many minutes” left to play before his nap.

“And then this many?” he said, showing me the fingers of his left hand.

“No, this many,” I said, repeating the original offer.

“I helped you lots today,” he said.

“You stinker,” I laughed, “you’re calling in a favor on me!”

I gave him fifteen, and then some.

A masterpiece on Gamers with Jobs:

This is just to say

I’m sorry that I
unloaded a whole clip
of 10mm JHP

Into you
Ian
Dogmeat
and Tycho

Forgive me.
I am not yet used to
How this SMG vibrates
And you guys were in the way