Monday, March 24, 2008

Poetry

Yes, poetry. I have decided to work on one of my "Things To Do". Especially since learning Latin is not going very well. So I settled on poetry as my next attempt. I figured "how hard can it really be"? Come on folks, they are only words.

Oh how wrong I was. I should have known that since I am not the best writer to begin with that it would be a lot more difficult than I thought. I did figure that one of my strong points would be my vocabulary. Mine is slightly larger than a lot of other people's. It is still not great, but I do know what copacetic means. Unfortunately, all those 50 cent words don't seem to come to mind when I could really use them. It doesn't help that, like most people my age, I was so traumatized by High School English classes, that it is a wonder I enjoy reading anything at all and even more amazing that I am willing to try writing something. That, however, is a subject for some other posting. It is amazing how I can have all of these thoughts racing around my head until I pick up a pen. Once that pen is in my hand, all the wonderful ideas I had dive for cover in the deepest, darkest corners of my brain and refuse to come back out and play. I end up having to grope through all the dusty crevices in my gray matter to find those @#^&%$$# ideas.

So, I have been working on this for about 2 weeks now. I've done some research on writing poetry. I've been reading bits and pieces. I scribbled down nonsense lines, I've even come up with a few that may even be tolerable. So, folks, y'all get to be my guinea pigs. I've included my first poem below. Let me know what ya think about it. Keep in mind, I'm a newbie.......

The Beach House

A Saturday drive.
Quickly,
Unpack the car.
To reach the prize,
The first Corona!

The sand, sun, shade and heat,
A porch around the house,
A racetrack made for little feet,
A path to our paradise.

The Matriarch sitting on her throne,
Watches her domain.
Dolphins and pelicans bring the news
Of children below.

Alex, raging, held at bay,
Wind harnessed by towels and skateboards,
Power transmuted to race around the deck,
An afternoon reading and playing games.

Dolphins during the day,
Fireworks at night,
Waterfights in the dinning room:
The kids better behaved than us.

Friday, March 21, 2008

St Paddy's Day Weekend

Just a few photos...........













Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Ads by Google

I've been watching the ad box on the left since I put it up. Its not that I thought I'd actually get any money from it, but I was curious to see what kind of links it brought up. It is really quite interesting to watch how the subjects change over time. Now I realize that it is pulling content from my postings and trying to match them up with paying advertisers, but it is interesting none the less. I got links for baby items when I posted about my baby blankets. I get all sorts of websites about all things Scottish when I even think about posting anything about kilts. I had a link to some wine making supplies when I posted about the great NC wine tour, even though I didn't mention anything about making my own wine. Perversely, I receive the same link for wine making supplies when I post about home brewing beer. I need to write to someone about that, its not right. And I even got a link for kitchen renovations at one time. I have no idea where that one came from. (I don't believe, however, that I got any ads for anything NASCARish after my beer and NASCAR posting. I wonder what was up with that. One would think that since NASCAR exploits everything else that they would certainly exploit content ads.) My braces posting generated a lot of ads for braces, orthodontists and dentists in general. It seems like every time I go back there is another posting. They must be desperate. I hope there is some geekly person reviewing my files somewhere wondering what the hell is going on with me. For some reason, that thought gives me great pleasure. I am sure that those of you out there with a psych hobby will have a field day with that.

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

More Beer!

If you have not noticed, beer is a recurring theme on my blog lately. Well, what can I say. I've got a new hobby. I'm a kid in a candy store. I'm the proverbial happy pig in the mud! And guess what? this is gonna be another post about BEER.
The Marquise and I bottled our second batch of beer last night. Everything went a lot smoother than last time. We got a bottle filler from the store and that helped tremendously. What a great invention. It is basically a long tube with a spring loaded valve at one end. You connect the free end to the bucket-o-beer with tubing and insert the other end into the beer bottle. You press the spring down against the bottom of the bottle and the valve opens up and fills the bottle up with beer. When the bottle is full, you just lift up the contraption and the beer flow stops. Wonderful!!!!
We did make a couple of changes to the beer this time around. Instead of using raw cane sugar, we used corn sugar. It is really interesting the difference in taste between the two sugars. The cane sugar mixture was a lot sweeter and the beer foamed up a lot more. The cane sugar produced a beer that had a slight "cidery" taste to it. The corn sugar is a lot mellower and there was almost no foaming during the bottling. I guess that is actually the way it is supposed to be, but so far, with the preliminary tasting, I think I liked the cane sugar a little better. I'll give a final review when the new beer is ready (about 3 weeks).
Now for any beer purists out there, yes, I know beer is not supposed to have sugar added to it. But, give us a break we are just starting out here. The Marquise and I decided to start out simple and easy. We wanted to get a couple of batches under our belts before we started on the more complicated recipes. I have already picked out another type of beer mix to try, so we will probably stay with the KISS method for the next batch also and then gradually get more complicated. Hopefully more complicated will equal better beer (even outstanding beer, maybe). I think our next step will be to substitute malt extract for the corn sugar. The question with that is what type of malt extract do we use and how much?

Thursday, March 6, 2008

The Saga of the Braces Continues

It's been a while since I talked about the trials and tribulations of my orthodontically challenged teeth. Everything has been going pretty well so far, it really is quite amazing how quickly my teeth are moving around. It has gotten into a pretty boring routine. Every couple of weeks I go into the office and I get new wires and "chains" (they are plastic links that go between the teeth; no more rubber bands). My teeth immediately start to hurt all over again. They hurt for a couple of weeks and then settle down just in time to start everything all over again. A nice routine, until this past appointment. The orthodontist told me I needed to go to an oral surgeon to have some work done on my lower front gums. I need more support so that the four front teeth could be moved forward. Yeah, more fun!

Well, I had my surgery on Wednesday. I took the day off because I knew I wouldn't want to go back to work afterwards. My appointment was at 11:30. I got there a little early, just in case I had to do any extra paperwork. Luckily, I didn't. I was called back right around 1130; I thought this was going to be a really quick procedure. WRONG! Well, not exactly wrong. The procedure was not particularly long. The long part was waiting for the blasted surgeon for about 45 minutes AFTER he had numbed me. I was just getting ready to tell the assistant that we needed to reschedule when the doctor had more time when he came back. The Doctor comes in and starts immediately to work. No "sorry for the wait", no explanation, no "how are you doing Mr Lemis", nothing. I've had quickies in the bushes that were more talkative.

Well, I finally got out of there at 130p. 2 hours for a procedure that probably should have only taken about an hour. I made a quick run to Wendy's for one of their "shakes" ( I'll remember the name in a minute) and headed on home. I slept for about 2 hours and then picked up prescriptions and headed back home. Last night was predictably horrible, but today was much better than I thought it would be. It was a little uncomfortable from time to time, but I didn't have anywhere near the problems talking on the phones all day that I thought I would. So far everything looks really good. The added graft to the front of my gums has filled out my chin a little. I like the way it looks now.

FROSTY!!!!!!!! thats the word! Told ya I'd remember.

Monday, March 3, 2008

Beer and NASCAR

I have to say "God Bless the Marquise". She is my beer brewing buddy lately and (I'm not sure how this happened) we have been getting together on Sundays to drink our beer or brew our beer. For those of you who have not seen her blog, let me tell you one thing about her. She LOVES NASCAR. She is about as fanatical as one can be without getting scary. For those of you who have not yet experienced the joy that is home brewing, I'll give you one little insight, it takes a while. It is not a process that you can complete in an hour. I'm not even talking about the fermenting. There is quite a bit of prep work involved and a little longer "wait" time, just sitting around waiting for the wort to cool of enough to add the yeast. So, since we happen to be brewing on a Sunday AND we have all this extra time, the Marquise has been patiently explaining the weirdness that is NASCAR to me. Every time I think I'm getting a handle on the rules, mores, lingo, you name it, she throws something else at me that screws up my understanding of this phenomenon. She is trying, though. Trying really hard. The good thing about having the Marquise explain anything to you is that you get the full unabridged version. No Cliff notes for her. Not only did I get the recent events, I received instruction in the past glories, rivalries, wrecks and fisticuffs that had occurred over the past 20 years or so. I had to stop her when she started into everyone's wives, children and possible sexual orientation (OK, I didn't stop her on that one) . So far I have learned that the pit crew cannot let the tires go bouncing away, that there are no "passing" rules (it always looked to me like someone would just get out of the way all of a sudden). I'm still trying to figure out how they determine who is in 1st (especially after a major pit stop). Which I guess is really the most important part of the whole damn thing, isn't it? I'm still working on it though. The cars go round and round and round and round and...........