Mid Year Reviews

Yes, mid year reviews. My workplace has its mid year performance reviews in January. It seems a little odd, but that is the way it is. The review, by and large was OK. However, there was one odd portion. My Supervisor advised me that I was being to "authoritative" with my co-workers. I was not quite sure what she meant. During the course of the conversation, it kinda got (well, not kinda, it did get) more confusing. Evidently, I now must strive to be "authoritative without being authoritative". Whatever the hell that means. There was some "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" kind of behavior going on during the discussion. If anyone out there has some ideas, I'd love to hear them. I think I may be intimidating one or more of my co-workers. I certainly don't mean to be, but I have this funny feeling. I am still mulling this one over. I haven't really come up with a good working plan. I think I'm just gonna keep my mouth shut more often.

I think this is the first time EVER that I have gotten into trouble for knowing to much.

Happy Birthday

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!

Weekend Wrap-up part II

After the Great NC Wine Tour, the Marquise and I decided to head on out to the American Brewmaster store in North Raleigh to get some supplies for our first attempt at brewing beer. (Yes, it was an alcohol themed weekend.) The Marquise and I had been thinking about trying out hand at brewing beer off and on for almost a year now. This past December we decided we would give it a real try. I had been looking online for some brew kits. Trying to decide which way we wanted to go, what we wanted to start out with. All that kinda stuff. Well, one day last week I decided to check craigslist, just to see if maybe there was anything there. Lo and behold, there was a home-brew set up that had just been listed! And they were asking 50 bucks for it. I could not resist, it was a good deal. It has 2 plastic buckets with spouts (5 and 6 gal), a glass carboy, a bottle capper and caps and some other odds-n-ends.
So after our great foray into the world of wine we decided to continue the alcohol theme and get started on our beer. We found the store with no problem, even though I thought it was on Glenwood when it was actually on Stoneybrook (BIG difference). If you have never been in a beer brewing supply store, let me tell you it is a wonderful experience. It is worth a trip just for the aroma! We found a beer mix that we thought we'd like (its an Australian beer, of course). Bought some other odds-n-ends and called it a day. The next day, Sunday, I headed over the the Marquise's new place for our first foray. Everything was going great until....... We miscalculated on the volume. The kit makes about 23 liters of beer. Well, that translates into just over 6 gallons. We, naturally were working with the 5 gallon bucket, not the 6. We quickly cleaned and assembled the other bucket and started working with that. Unfortunately, we did not check to see if the spigot was on tight. It was not. It started leaking. We decided to transfer about 5 gallons to the smaller bucket, since we knew that was OK. I didn't want to transfer back and forth, so we left the wort in the smaller bucket. We transferred the remaining to a pot, fixed the 6 gallon bucket and then put it back in there. So we now have BOTH buckets with beer. A full 5 gallon and an almost empty 6 gallon. Both hopefully fermenting away. I don't think the 6 will work because of all the head-space there (to much oxygen). If this works at all, it will be a minor miracle.
According to the Marquise, the buckets seem to be happily fermenting away. We will see what happens. We bottle sometime this weekend or Monday. I'll let you know.......

The Great NC Wine Tour

Well, "Great" is probably a bit of an exaggeration. It only took one afternoon. And while "NC" is not an exaggeration, all the wineries were in NC, we only visited 3. It was however a very nice tour. We, the great Marquise and I, started out with the Chatham Hill Winery in Morrisville. It was a good one to start with because it was right between both of us. They had just moved into the new location (they were just down the street). It was the only winery where we had to pay for the tasting. We did get to keep the wine class, so it was OK. For my first winery, it was a little odd. I always thought there was going to be a vineyard right outside, but there was not. I thought about asking where they got their grapes from, but decided not to. The person who led (gave)(performed) the wine tasting was really knowledgeable and really entertaining. I think the really entertaining part was probably more important (are you supposed to tip these people? we didn't). I have to say, they were by far the most professional. However, the only wine I was enthused about was a fruit infused wine. It will be great as a summer "sangria" type drink.

The second winery we visited was the Silk Hope Winery ( could not get to their website) in Pittsboro. It was at the top of a hill that is the highest point in that county. They had a wonderful view. The owner was there to give us a tasting. He had sold out of all of his whites, he had 4 reds that I really did not care about. The last thing he did was to pull out this small pop bottle with some wine (yes, I did ask to make sure it was wine). He let us have a small taste of a batch of white wine he had just bottled. It was an amazing wine! It was a dry wine with a really, really fruity/citrus taste. He says it should be available in March. I hope I make it in time to get a bottle or two. Because of the frost and drought last year, he wasn't able to make a lot of it. I'm sure the Marquise will keep an eye out for it. It was the only wine we really agreed upon.



They also win the award for best sign!!!!


The last winery we visited was in Saxapahaw. I think they were probably the smallest one we visited, but they had a couple of good wines. The one I am drinking now is their white wine called "Carlos". It's not really a white colored wine, its more like cider colored. It has more of a fruity/apple-ish taste to it. They had a mulled wine which unfortunately smelled much better than it tasted.


I must say that for my first time really tasting wine, it was a surprisingly enjoyable day trip. I learned a little about wine and the different types and tastes. Most of the people were not disappointed when I told them I was definitely a beer person. And I actually found a couple of wines I liked. All in all, a very good day.

What the .......?!?

You are probably wondering what the heck is going on with these pictures. Well, the dishwasher went out and I decided to take a look and see if I could figure out what happened. Well, come to find out that one of the wires/connections had burned out. The connector, the reddish thingy in the picture above had melted. If you look at the first picture, you can see were it almost melted the yellow and red wires going into the motor. The main wire that actually burned was the main power. We were actually pretty lucky that it didn't catch fire when it melted. Since we usually run the dw at night, you can imagine what that would have been like. Well, I made a run down to our friendly little super duper Lowe's and got some heavy duty supplies to fix our little problem. I got heavy duty, maximum strength connectors and heavy duty electrical tape. I think I have everything well connected, taped and adequately separated. So far the dw is working fine.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year everyone. I hope that everyone had a safe and enjoyable holiday season. Mine was really good. I spent Christmas with the Marquise. We had an impromptu lunch (we planned it the day before), went to see Beowulf at the IMAX 3D theater downtown at Exploris. Beowulf would have been a great movie at a regular theater, however, in 3D and on a screen that's about 2 stories tall, it was phenomenal. After the movie, we noticed that Tir Na Nog was open around the corner so we stopped by for a quick drink. I had a Guinness (as usual) and the Marquise had an Irish Coffee. According to her, you should not use flavored coffee in an Irish Coffee. It just doesn't work.

I was at the piano bar in CC for New Year's. Greg and Kevin did a wonderful job. They were even more entertaining last night than usual because of the variety of people that kept showing up, (Lots of people only show up there on New Year's Eve.) and the number of previous parties they had attended. Depending on who was counting, they were at either 3 or 4 earlier parties. It was good low-key way of bringing in the new year.

I kinda, sort of, made some resolutions for this year. I really don't like the term and idea of New Year's resolutions because most people never keep them and the whole idea is almost a cliche nowadays. However, as I said, I kinda, sort of made some. The main one is to start practicing Yoga. Either with a DVD or if I can find an inexpensive class, with an instructor. The other ones are pretty simple, visit a winery (scheduled for later this month) and try my hand at home brewing. I always have the rest of my list of 43 things to work on, I just moved these three up to the top.

See y'all later on throughout the year!