Don't be the Asshole Neighbors

I live in a small-ish suburb of Milwaukee. Most of my neighbors are older people. I like that. They keep their house and yards up and don't do stupid shit. I talk to them, keep an eye out for them and help when they need it. But then there are the "others".

You know them. They are the ones who just move into the neighborhood and disrupt the good juju of it.

A new family moved in a couple houses down this summer. Mom, dad and two kids under the age of 5. They didn't start out very well when the first weekend they moved in their dog was running around the block. The dog is a bigger dog, maybe 60-65 lbs or so. They pretty much opened the door and let the dog out. They were never outside with the dog, so the dog would wander around to people's yards and poop. It would go across the street, they didn't seem to mind. I put a stop to that the 2nd day when I took the dog and the bag of poop and took it back to their house and asked that they keep the dog restrained and supervised or I would be contacting the police. I have three little dogs and one of them was attacked two years ago by a Pyrenees at the park. I didn't want a repeat performance. They were kind of taken back but said that they would. For the most part that has been taken care of. They now let the dog outside in the fenced in back yard. It is out there almost all day, every day. How do I know this, you ask. Well I work from home usually 2 days a week. I can't take my dogs outside in my back yard if the dog is out there because all it will do is bark and bark and bark. There are days when that dog barks almost all day long at the squirrels and other critters outside. I'm not sure if they are deaf or what but I'm two houses away and can hear it.

Last month, we got about 1.5-2" of snow. It was a wet, heavy snow. Well, these people didn't bother to shovel the sidewalk. I walk my dogs a couple times a day and use the sidewalks on my block. The first day I walked on the snow. By day 3, I called the city. You have 24 hours after a snow to clear sidewalks. By this time it was trampled down and because the sun was out it was melting a bit and now icy. I had to walk on the grass. The people were home, I seen them outside. They shoveled part of the driveway. Someone from the city must have stopped over there or something because it was about three hours after I called that they were out there chopping the ice/snow from the sidewalk. It took them the better part of the day to get it all cleared because they had to chop away at it.

Garbage pick up is on Mondays, usually by 8 am. Last week, they took the carts (two 85 gals one that were overflowing (how can people generate THAT much garbage??)) tot he street just before they picked the trash up. Then the carts sat there. and sat there. and sat there. Until Wed night. I seen them coming and going several times over the two days so it is not like they were not home.

Today I see them hauling out piles of trash to the curb. Not just a bag or two but boxes, chairs and quite a few bags

We are suppose to get rain/snow over the weekend and this will for sure now be a wet, soggy mess.  I am half tempted to copy this picture and tape it to their front door but doubt they would pay attention to it anyway. I should call the city on them.

I guess I just don't understand why people do stuff without regards for other people. I really don't want to look at their trash sitting there for the next three days. Once it rains I'm pretty sure the garbage guy doesn't want to have to pick it up. Don't make things harder than they have to be. Do what's right and don't do shit that will impact someone else.

PS. These are also the people who for the first month they lived here parked on the street and got a parking ticket every night for almost a month. How hard is it to pull your POS minivan into the driveway?

PPS.. as I've been writing this post their dog has been outside barking the entire time. I tried to get a sound clip but I'm not that stealthy. 

Five Years Later

Five years ago today, my world was tossed upside down. You can read about it here. You don't expect to be 39 and wonder how will you go on.

Some days, I am still sad. Some days, I am happy. Some days, I am still angry. Some days, I find that there is something I want to share with you. Some days, I wonder what might have been. Some days, I don't think about you at all. I think that Rufus still misses you.

I look back over the past five years and think about  how my life has changed. The things I've done that I never thought I would or could do. The places I've gone. The people I've met. I probably would have never done any of that if you were still here.

I found out that I'm stronger than I ever knew could be. For that I'm so glad.

Big Eddy and the Angels

This post is a long time in coming. Just never got around to taking the pictures off my phone.

Last month, Barley's Angels was invited to the Miller Caves for a Leinenkugel's tasting. I had met the 10th and Blake representative, Lisa Zimmer about a year ago for a Beer Club event she hosted. We later found out that we are both space geeks and would have been at the same NASA TweetUp for the last ever shuttle launch. I had contacted her to see if she was interested in hosting an event for the Angels. She was.

The meeting was being held at the historic Miller caves. The caves are where Frederick Miller first stored his brews over 150 years ago. It was a pretty cool (literally) place carved into the hillside. The theme for this month's meeting was Leinenkugel's and their Big Eddy series of beers.

The Miller caves are carved into a hillside and is the original stone

When we arrived, we were treated with Honey Weiss or Orange Shandy paired with either spinach, mozzarella and tomato flat bread or roasted red pepper and basil flat bread. I liked mixing the two beers together and having what was called an Orange Blossom.

The first course was the Hoppin Helles paired with rosemary chicken breast stuffed with herb garlic and topped with a balsamic cream sauce and caramelized onions over pearl couscous. The sauce was made with the Hoppin Helles and really brought out the citrus flavors in the beer and food.

Hoppin Helles

Next up was the Snowdrift Vanilla porter paired with sweet potato puree topped with brussels sprouts with bacon and vidalia onion. The porter and sweet potato was perfect together. I even ate a brussles sprout an it was ok. Just not a big fan of them.

Snowdrift Vanilla Porter

The main course was the Big Eddy Baltic porter served with prime medallion filet mignon with the porter demi-glaze and fingerling potatoes. This was fantastic!! The steak was so tender you didn't even need a knife to cut it.

Big Eddy Baltic Porter

For dessert we had Bid Eddy Russian Imperial stout that had been aged a year. It as paired with a flourless chocolate torte with Door County cherry and raspberry melba sauce. OMG!! This was fantastic. The stout really was so good with the berry and chocolate. I could have had that every day and I would be happy.

Big Eddy Russian Imperial Stout 2012

I was blown away by Lisa, Amanda and Chef Ernie. We had a great evening and I hope that Barley's Angles and 10th & Blake can pair up again for an event.

Cutting the Cord

Most everyone has cable. Every couple of months it goes up. Not a lot, a few dollars here and few dollars there. After a while you realize that your cable bill is damn near a mortgage payment.

It started almost a year ago when Time Warner (TW) started charging for "leasing" their cable modem. I've had the same modem for almost five years and now they want $5/month to lease it. After talking to a few people, I discovered that you can use your own cable modem. I went to TW's website and found a list of modems that are supported. I bought one on Amazon. Do your homework as prices can vary quite a bit. I wanted one that if I ever upgraded my internet speed the modem could handle it. It took about 15 minutes to set up. You have to call TW and give them the MAC address of the new modem. Make sure you return the old modem to avoid still being charged for it.

I work from home two days a week and some days spend 3-4 hours in meetings so having a land line is essential. Using my cell phone would eat my minutes up in a couple of days. So, I started doing some research on VoIP phones.  A few days later Woot.com had a Ooma as one of their daily deals. I snapped it up. I liked that Consumer Reports gave them a good rating. An added plus was that when you register your device you enter your address and it can be used by 911 to determine your location. It is now $40 to port your existing phone number. They said it would take a month. More like a week and there was no loss of service. You get emails from them at every step and know when things are going to happen and are done. They even notified TW to cancel their phone service for you. The call quality is excellent and have never had an issue with it. All I pay for is taxes which comes to $3.71/month. That saved me $30/month

TV service is where things took a bit longer. I started out by making a list of what I DVR'ed. Everything I watched except Finding Bigfoot (which I may break down and get on iTunes, unless some kind soul will let me watch it at their house) is available for free. I can either watch most shows live or stream from the networks websites. 

I've had Netflix for years so I can use that as an option for some shows

I had a digital antenna I got when the gov't was giving them out for free several years ago. TW was giving them out for free, so you may want to ask them if they sill are giving them out. Otherwise you can get one at Target or Best Buy for $20. If your tv is newer it may already be built in. I already had a Roku player. That can get lots of channels including Netflix/ Hulu. There are several options available.

My DVD player was about 10-ish years old (it was a PJ’s raffle one from like 2002) so for $75 I bought a blue ray that has internet and Netflix built in. It can get several other channels as well. I have a Wii and stream Netflix from there as well.

My laptop is older and does not have an HDMI port so I bought a little converter on Amazon. I can connect the laptop to my tv and stream network shows from there if I want to watch something that has already aired.If you have an HDMI port on a laptop, you can stream using a cable to the tv without the converter

One of the biggest things I watched on cable was sports. Namely the Brewers games. Come next baseball season I can stream MLB.tv from any of the devices. If you are wanting to watch your local team they are delayed. So I found a website that will switch your IP address for $25/year so you can get the games live instead of on delay. The Brewers season ended on Sept 29th. I returned my cable box on the 30th. 

My last cable bill was $143/month. Next month it will be about $53. I call that a huge win to my pocket book 

World of Beer Festival 2013 - Angel Style

Yesterday was the World of Beer festival sponsored by the Beer Barons of Milwaukee. It is a small, by choice, beer festival that boasts it is "By beer nuts, for beer nuts". The breweries in attendance were fairly standard but many brought out the rare and normally not available in this area beers. Lots of special casks and barrel aged treats to sample along with a whole section of meads.

The gathering crowd

The nice thing about the festival is that it is small and not a drunk fest like other festivals I've been to. One of the coolest things about the festival is that it had its own app. You could check off what beers you wanted to try. It then gave you a little map of where the beers were located. I would love to see this for other beer festival. It really helped me put a plan of attack in place.

 This year I went not as a participant but as an exhibitor. Barley's Angels (@BarleysAngelsMKE) is now a registered home brew club. We were invited to serve up our home brews on the patio with other local clubs.

Paula and Erin working hard. Don't you love the bright table cloth we had?

The weather was perfect. Warm and sunny. Erin and Paula arrived early to secure a prime spot on the patio. As women, we are naturally well organized and were so efficient that we were often mistaken for the check in table.

Paula is getting her taps ready

Erin is wicked with a mallet and a tap

We had seven different beers for folks to sample. A special cask of Natalie's British session ale, two versions of English Milds, a Wheat Ale, Black IPA, Hefeweizen and Paula's very popular cranberry cider called Candy Crush. Aptly named after the addicting game.

Natalie is tapping her cask of British Session Ale

The festival kicked off and our tent was always steady. There was even a crowd (three's a crowd, right?) waiting for the tapping of the cask at 2 pm. It was fun to talk with people about our beers while they sampled them.

With having four of us there, everyone had some time to go off and sample other beers. It was great to see Alex from Rustic Road, Scott from St. Francis Brewery and fellow Angels Meagan, Tallgrass and Joan, Oscar Blues. I didn't get to sample as many beers as I would have liked but made the most of the ones I did try. Some winners were Psuedo Sue from Toppling Goliath, Tounge Thai-ed from Blue Moon's Graffiti collection and the Fleur de Houblon from Ommegang

We got to meet lots of women and introduce them to Barley's Angels. I'm excited for our next meeting to see how many come out and enjoy a good beer with us.

Baby, You Can Drive My Car

Over the past few weeks I have noticed some terrible driving around town. Are the drivers here just that dumb/ignorant/clueless or too self absorbed to actually drive decently??

I was coming home from the grocery store after work a couple weeks ago. Stopped at the light. Car in front of me stops. Sits there for about 10 seconds and then proceeds to drive thru the intersection. There was still traffic going the other direction. It is a miracle he didn't get hit. A couple blocks later another car did the same thing.

Brookfield is known for having a lot of speed traps set up along Capitol Dr. There will be five cop cars sitting in a spot and picking speeders off bing, bang, boom. The funny part is that they are sitting there in plain sight, in marked cars. Do people not see them sitting there??

Driving home from work seems to be the worst. Car will drive down Capitol Dr, turn their signal on and then proceed to drive past four or five driveways. Leaving people to wonder if or when they are going to turn.

Getting on the freeway is another tough task. Do drivers not know what the metered ramps mean?? Stop on red and when your light turns green, one car goes. It even says that on the signs. One car per green. People won''t stop or if they do, a couple cars will go at once. The worst part is that they were in such a hurry to go until it comes time to actually merge, then they fail to get up to speed before the end of the ramp.

Last night was another perfect example. I stopped at Subway on my way out to meet a friend for a drink. I have to do a left turn/half U turn to get in the driveway. Cars coming towards me had a red light. Do you think that any one of them would maybe stop before the driveway/median break to let me through. Nope! It was not like I was going to slow them down in any way.

Being in LA last fall, made me really realize how inconsiderate our drivers are. LA may have a lot of traffic but they were always driving smart. Using turn signals when turning or changing lanes, speeding up to merge, stopping at the crosswalk if you know you won't make it through an intersection before the light turns red. Nothing that is all that big of a deal but sure makes the other drivers around you less stabby.

So stop talking, texting, eating or whatever else you do in you car and just drive.

Things I've Learned today

It is barely noon and I've learned all sorts of interesting things today.

1. The St. Francis recycling center does not take old garage door openers. 
2. The St. Francis recycling center does take yard waste including grass clippings! I've lived here for 5 years now. How did I not know this? I always bag my grass clippings.
3. I took my old garage door opener to the recycling place and I got $10 for scrap metal! Win
4. Petco, where the prices on everything are crazy expensive, so I never shop there, price matches. Need a store ad or previous receipt.This will now save me the time driving over to Pet World and $18 on a bag of dog food. When you buy a 30 lb bag of dog food every month that adds up quickly. Now if they only sold the bird food in bulk.
5. There is no 5 yet. But the day is early.

Being Sick

The last few days have been rough. It started on Tuesday evening when I ate dinner before a meeting after work. My stomach was all sorts of rumbly. Sounded like some dinosaurs where fighting in my belly.

On Wed, I worked from home because I was doing a guest brewing thing at Rustic Road Brewing in the evening (blog post coming soon). I had not been feeling great most of the day. Some GI issues but felt good enough to go. I had not eaten anything but an apple during the day and we stopped at Subway for dinner on the way to Kenosha. I only at half of my sub.

The guest brewing was fun but didn't drink a lot as my tummy was still wonky.

Thursday, I woke up and felt lousy. I was sooo cold and could not get warm. GI issues were still hanging around. I knew I had some stuff that only I could do for work and of course my laptop was going thru a Notes upgrade that took FOREVER. So I sat at my desk with a long sleeve tshirt, my heaviest hoodie on. I had a blanket wrapped around me and Rufus on my lap. I was still so cold. By time 4 pm rolled around, I was toast. I took the pups outside and grabbed my comforter, two blankets and my pillow and lay down on the couch.

When I got up at 8:30, I knew I was not good. I was still so cold. I took my temp and it was 101.7. I took the pups out and went back to sleep on the couch.

When I was a little kid and I would get a fever I would have hallucinations and night terrors. One of the dreams I only have when I have a fever. I dream that I a being chased by King Kong. I am in an Oak Creek subdivision where we used to live. But when I was little that was all forest and fields. I eventually escape him by crawling into a culvert.

I also have the sensation of lightning coming from my fingertips. It is weird, I know. What is even more bizarre is that I had the tv on while I slept on the couch. I had a dream that I started a fire on a house with the lightning coming from my fingers. Now I'm pretty sure that I must have heard while sleeping the reports of a house fire in West Allis (I'm not even going there). But is was most strange.

About 4 am I woke up just sweating to death. My fever had broken and I was now drenched. My GI issues were still going on but I no longer felt like a truck had run over me.I took the dogs outside and went back to bed.

I got up about 9 am and felt pretty good compared to the last few days. Stomach wasn't rumbly. I wasn't freezing and no more lightning from my fingertips. I actually feel hungry. Something that hadn't happened since Tues.

I don;t get sick very often. I'm glad it was fairly short lived.

Now to get prepared for BEER WEEK!!

Boys of Summer Are Back

Baseball is back!

Baseball means sun, warm weather and enjoying time outside once again. 

I was going to get rid of cable until I found out mlb.TV will only show out of market games live. I wouldn't be able to see the games live. Sure, I could listen to them on the radio and love listening to Uecker but I love watching the games on TV.

The past couple of years I only made it to 3-4 games a season. This year is different. I bought a ticket package. I'm kinda excited about the package we got. We start out with seats that are in Bernie's Terrace.  If the Brewers win you move up to a better section. By the last game, if they keep winning, you could be sitting in field level diamond box seats.

How fun would that be?

Little Free Library

As most of you may know, I am a big reader. I have always liked to read. My library card gets a workout. Now I find myself with more books to read than I have time. As a result, I pay lots of overdue book fines. I was so jealous of my friend, Renee, who was on vacation for three weeks and was able to read over a dozen books. I long for that kind of free time.

Lately, I've noticed that there have been lots of Little Free Libraries popping up around my neighborhood.

What is a Little Free Library? They are little structures that are placed in public places that house books. Their mission is to build more than 2510 libraries around the world and to promote literacy and the love off reading. They are operated on the "leave a book, take a book" principle. I love the concept that books are available for anyone to read and is never closed.

The libraries often are decorated in various themes or styles. Some look like the home where the library resides, some look like schools or churches. You can go to the website and see some them. If you go to the map page, most of the spots on the map have a picture of the library there.

Here is the library on the northwest corner of Oklahoma Ave and Lake Drive in Bay View

Lots of different books in this one

How much is that doggie in the window?

The kitten wants to keep an eye on things as well.

This one is on the southwest corner of Howard Ave and Lipton Ave in St. Francis.

Fairy tale themed

The castle and mermaid

Dragon!

Unicorns too!

I encourage you to find or even build a Little Free Library in your neighborhood. You never know what or who you may find there.

Bock This

This post is a little, ok, very late in coming. Almost two weeks ago, Laura and I went up to Stevens Point for the weekend. Why Stevens Point you ask? Well, beer, duh! And a race, of course. You know I like to take run-cations.

Back last fall, I won a package from the Stevens Point Visitors center. It included a free hotel night at the Country Inn. When I seen that registration was opening up for the Point Brewery's annual Bock Run, I asked Laura to run with me. She agreed and we both signed up for the race when it went on sale at noon on New Year's Day. As always the race sold out in like 18 hours.

We decided to make it a beer weekend since the run was sponsored by a brewery and Laura is my assistant at Fartlek Brewing.

We left bright and early Saturday morning. The race wasn't until noon but we wanted to make sure we a) got a good parking spot and b) had plenty of time to get there and not be rushed. We made it up there by a little after 10. We hit up the gift shop at the brewery and bought a few things. I had only worn some yoga pants because my tights are way to warm to spend 3 hours in so I had to change. There were no real bathrooms nearby so I changed in the car. Which was now beginning to resemble a Ragnar van, minus the stink.

After we pick up our packets we go back to the car. As we are sitting in the car keeping warm, a woman decide to park in front of us in her Prius. In front of us was a home with a wheelchair ramp and the front was all a huge snowbank where they cleared off the sidewalk. After go back and forth several times, she now has her car on the snowbank at such an angle. the right side of her car is almost a good foot higher than the left. She gets out, looks at it, gets back in, goes back  forth a few more times. Not that it did any good. She gets out again and decides that it is good enough. Laura and I are cracking up at this. Laura decides that we are too close to the corner and pulls forward a foot or so. Cuz, you know?

Laura and I pre race.

It is almost race time so we head out to the party.

We line up and away we go. I had not run much since Disney 6 weeks before so my goal was to not die.

First mile 11:11, ran the whole time. Mile 2 12:10, still ran it all but a bit slower. The course is nice and flat. Mile 3 12:35. Took a short walk break, made the halfway turn at 29:50 walked thru the water stop. Mile 4 13:13 a few more walk breaks but it seems like it is going fast.. Mile 5: 13:12. I am almost done. I kept pace with another guy for the last mile and a half. We turn the corner and know it is only a block or so left. About 100 yards left the guy says "race ya to the finish" Game on. I ran my ass off the last few feet and clocked in a super speedy 9.1 mph. Total time 1:02:14. Laura was also super speedy and finished in a little over 53 minutes. She had a beer waiting for me at the finish.

Laura and I post race. Yes, we are smiling. We have beer!

My cousin and a couple of her friends had come down to hang out with us. She missed us crossing the finish line but had some great signs that we forgot to get pictures of. We forgot to tell her this was outside and muddy and it was decided that they would meet us back at the hotel later.Laura and I hung around for a few hours enjoying the party and several barley pops.

We weer hanging out at a table where a bunch of flyers were in boxes for other local races. We found it hilarious that there was one for breast feeding. Seriously?? Do they really need a fund raiser for that? I wanted to run it with two dolls attached to my boobs.

Breastfeeding 5k??

We are now out of beer tickets and decide to head back to the hotel and shower and warm up.

Coming soon: Beer tours

Surviving Boot Camp

Remember when I last posted that I was going to do a boot camp?? Well, I did it! And I didn't die.

There were only four of us in the class with Tracey. It helped that I knew Laura and Nicole and "knew" Chelsey from twitter. I wasn't going to be surrounded by all these super fit people and I would feel like a lumbering ox.

We focused this week on lower body. I was scared that with the impending snow storm I was going to be so sore from the boot camp that I would not be able to shovel the snow on Friday.

We started out with a nice warm up of jumping jacks. I remember why I don;t normally do them. They hurts your boobs. The best sports bra in the world can't keep them in tight enough. Luckily the jumping jacks ended quickly.

We did some circuits that were fun and while challenging not so difficult that I couldn't keep up. Jumping on the bosu ball was freaky. Thought I was going to bounce right on my ass a couple times. It definitely got the heart rate going.

We ended it up with core ab work and stretching.

On Friday, the snow fell and I was able to shovel it. I then got lazy and used the snow blower for the rest. My butt muscles were a bit sore but once I got moving they were fine.

It was fun class and Tracey kept us all motivated and from feeling like we were dying. I am looking forward to next week and doing upper body stuff.

Comfort Zone

Tonight I was sitting in my chair with Rufus on my lap, reading the newspaper (Yes, I still get a real newspaper). I had The Biggest Loser on tv. I wasn't really watching it but had it on for more background noise.

This year they have kids on the show. I can't remember the girls name but the boy is named Bingo.

One of the girls (red team) wanted to be a cheerleader. The show arranged for her to practice with a squad. It looked like she was doing pretty good and had fun. In the interview she gave after practice she said that she had to step out of her comfort zone. She said it was scary but she did it and had a great time.

That struck something in me. I live a very safe and comfortable life.

For a couple years after hubby died, I learned to step out of my comfort zone and tried a lot of new things. I met lots of new people and had some fantastic experiences. While it was scary at first, I learned to embrace that fear and just jump right in. The water was always fine.

Tonight, I realized, that I have settled into the comfort zone and need to try some new things. Time to shake things up. I signed up for a boot camp class. Tracey has just started teaching the classes. She was promoting them this morning on Twitter and I did look and noticed that they were in Bay View. So I said "What the hell! I need to step out of my comfort zone and try something new". So I went over to the book of faces and clicked that Join button.

I'm excited, a bit nervous and hoping I don't die. Ok I know I won't die but I'm hoping I can still walk the next day.

Random Vacation Thoughts

Some random thoughts on my vacation to Southern California.

• There are a lot of dentists in Tijuana, Mexico. The locals all had very bad teeth.
• Sunsets over the water are just as pretty as sunrises.
• The USS Midway was a big fucking boat.
• The HMS Queen Mary is also a big fucking boat.
• Endeavour is a cool space shuttle. Seeing it up close was breath taking
• CA people don't drive like assholes. There are just a gazillion people trying to go the same place you are.
• Parking anywhere in California SUCKS!! Have they never heard of parking lots??
• California does not believe in signs telling you where you can and can't park. They paint the curbs. Red curbs mean no parking. Yellow is a loading zone and no paint mean you can park there. 
• There are a lot of curbs where the paint is barely visible
• I hate driving thru the mountains. I thought I was going to cry or puke or both.
• Jay Leno was pretty cool.
• Lots of gay people like Betty White. (I had no clue)
• Taylor Launter has extremely white teeth.
• I had no clue who Taylor Lautner was until a few weeks ago
• Eddie Cibrian is even hotter in person than on tv. 
• I don't watch enough trashy tv. 
• I have no clue who half of the celebrities people were talking about were.
• I'm ok with not knowing who those people were.
• Running along the ocean was awesome.
• I had to skip half of the Reagan library exhibit that was about his funeral. They played "taps" and I started tearing up.
• Pandas rock!
• California makes some pretty damn tasty beer.
• I'm ready to eat my "normal" diet of food again. Eating out was hard for me to do. 
• 8 days is too many days to be away from my dogs. I missed them something fierce.

Beer Church

Yesterday, in addition to being a cheerleader for several friends running the Lakefront Marathon, I attended Beer Church.

It is not the traditional church service so don't get all offended by it. But just an amusing name for an event that will be hosted on the first Sunday of the month at John Hawk's Pub in Milwaukee.

Beer church is being hosted by Kurt Mayes (aka BrewerKurt), one of the brewers at Milwaukee Brewing Co. The goal is to learn about different styles of beers from around the world in an informal and casual setting.

Yesterday's theme was Oktoberfests. Oktobertfest is a 16 day festival held in Munich, Germany each year in Sept/Oct. (You can read the Wikipedia article for more details on the festival). Traditionally, Oktobertfest beers are a marzen style, that has more of a malty flavor with no real hop taste to it.

The beers we tried were two categories, German and American.

For the German beers we had

• Warsteiner Premium Oktoberfest by Warsteiner Brauerei
• Erdinger Oktoberfest Weißbier by Erdinger Weissbräu
• Oktoberfest Märzen by Paulaner Brauerei
• Spaten Oktoberfestbier / Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen by Spaten-Franziskaner-Löwenbräu-Gruppe
• Oktoberfest Märzen by Hacker-Pschorr Bräu

Warsteiner Premium Oktoberfest, Erdinger Oktoberfest Weißbier, Oktoberfest Märzen, Spaten Oktoberfestbier / Oktoberfest Ur-Märzen, Oktoberfest Märzen

My personal favorite from this group was the Warsteiner. It had a nice malty flavor. I did not care for the Erdinger which was more like a wheat version of an Oktoberfest. The Paulaner tasted a bit metallic-y for me. Like there was foil in it.

Next up was the American beers

• Hoptoberfest by Milwaukee Brewing Company
• Oktoberfest by Lakefront Brewery
• Oktoberfest by Sprecher Brewing Company
• Samuel Adams Octoberfest by Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams)
• Oktoberfest by Great Lakes Brewing Company

Hoptoberfest, Oktoberfest, Oktoberfest

 Here my favorite was Hoptoberfest. I like hops and this had a nice hoppy flavor that complimented the sweet malty flavor. The rest of the beers were solid and I would drink all of them again.

 While the inaugural meeting was small, it was still a nice group of people with different beer backgrounds. You don't have to be a beer geek to come out. You just have to not be afraid to try something new and different. Who knows, maybe you will find your new favorite beer

Senseless

Today started out like any other Sunday. Walked the dogs, went for a run, did some yard work.

Came back in the house and checked twitter and facebook. I see a tweet from @Mkescan about 10:45 that says "Report of Officer down in Oak Creek. Active shooter." Woah!   I know a couple of guys that work for the Oak Creek police force. It has me a bit worried.

Keep watching my feed and a few minutes later I see this " @NewsHub: We are getting reports that 4 people were shot at Sikh Temple, 7512 S. Howell Ave., OC Police not giving out information"  Holy shit! this is not good.

It is now close to noon and I'm riveted to Twitter and Fox 6 for information. By 4:00pm we know this. A man walked into the Sikh temple and opened fire. It sounds like he then went outside and was confronted by the two officers. They exchanged gunfire. One officer was shot, the other officer shot and killed the suspected shooter. Thew officer who was shot is expected to survive. Six other people were shot and killed.

Some background: I grew up in Caledonia. The town just south of Oak Creek. Growing up we did most things in Oak Creek rather than going into Racine. We would go to the high school and swim, use the library, shop and eat at restaurants there. In 2001, late hubby and I bought a house in Oak Creek. I loved that house. We had great neighbors and several of our neighbors worked for the Oak Creek Police Dept . We sold the house in 2008 and I bought a house where I live now.

You hear about things like this on the news. Most recently in Aurora, CO. You think it is such a tragedy but think that is can never happen to you, to your town, your neighbors and friends. Today that changed. This was my town, my neighbors and hopefully not any of my friends (as of the time of this post they have not released the names of the two officers who responded).

About 5:00pm it is reported that an area of Cudahy is being evacuated. This is about 10 blocks from me. The authorities are now searching the home of the suspected shooter. As of 8:30 pm the helicopters are still flying overhead. With the suspected shooter dead, we may never know why this happened. The FBI has classified this as an act of "Domestic Terrorism". That is a term for not fucking around. I don't think the FBI uses that term loosely or frequently.

Normally stuff does not bother me too much. This has left me rattled to the core. I feel very unsettled. This is not the way I wanted Oak Creek to be known for.

My thoughts and prayers tonight are for the friends and family of those who were injured and killed today in another senseless act of violence. My hope is that we learn from this and hopefully never have to read or hear about another tragedy like this.

Rock n Sole

It has been awhile since I posted anything, I need to get posts up about Ragnar and my vacation to TN at some point...

Last weekend was the 2nd annual Summerfest Rock N Sole race in Milwaukee.  They had a 5k, which I did, a 10k and a half marathon. Last year this race was a cluster fuck from the word go. The race did not have enough water stops, ran out of water, no water at the finish, crowded finishers area... you name it, it probably went wrong.  I did not run it, for this I am glad.

My friend, Erica won an entry to the race from Fit Milwaukee so she asked me to do the race with her. Since I have talked her into doing a bunch of races I couldn't say no.

The morning started out rather comically. I told Erica that I would drive. We set the time for 6:00 am. I am about half way to her house when I pass a car that looks like her. I glance back in the rear view mirror and see her custom plates. Shit! Was she supposed to drive?? Didn't think so but I turned around and went back home. She seen me following her and realized that when I said I would drive I also meant that I would pick her up.

We get downtown and decide to park near the finish line. It is really foggy out and you can't even see the lake or the top of the U.S. Bank building. We wander to the Start line and wait for the half marathon and 10K folks to start.  They go and we get in line. We are about 2 corrals back from the actual start line. This is ok with me.

The gun goes off and away we go. We go down Lincoln Memorial drive and up the freeway on ramp. As we make our way up the Hoan bridge it is still foggy out. But the sun is starting to peek out. Erica and I wore our Team Fartlek Ragnar shirts. They were a bit warm. The climb to the top of the bridge is not as bad as I thought it would be. We still had to walk once we got about 3/4 of the way to the top. it was rather freaky to feel the bridge moving underneath your feet as 7400 runners made their way over it.

We got to the top and turned around to head back. The fog was still there and it looked strange to see the tops of the buildings poking out thru the fog. 

We got to the bottom of the bridge and circled around the Summerfest grounds. towards the finish line. There were lots of people cheering as you crossed which is always so cool. Erica and I finished with chip times of 39:49. Which for me is about average. Seeing as I had not run since Ragnar, I was happy with the time.

The finisher's area was spacious and well organized. You crossed, got water, got your medal, got food. You then went out into the Summerfest grounds. This was probably one of the best organized races I have ever done. I will definitely be back to do it again next year.

Erica and I before the race!

Slowing Down

Over the past few weeks I have noticed something that makes me a little sad.  My dogs are getting older and starting to slow down. Especially Riley. I think the years of allergies and shots and pills are starting to catch up with him.

It seems like he doesn't want to go one walks as much anymore. Sometimes, he just wants to whiz and go back into the house. He doesn't seems to be in pain or have a hard time walking, he just doesn't want to. He will stand at the end of the driveway and stop. I don;t force him, I just take him back in the house and walk with the other two.  When he does go for walks he is slower than the Rufus and Boomer and sometimes I have to watch myself to not yell at him to hurry up or to start dragging him along. Then the walks are fun for no one.

Rufus and Riley are both about 9 1/2 so not that old but no spring chickens either. It just makes me a little sad to know that they are not the young, playful pups they once were. Plus side is that they both like to get extra snuggle time on the couch with me.

Strange Brew

A couple of months ago Groupon had a deal for a starter home brewing kit.  As I have learned more and more about beers, the process of creating my own beers has intrigued me.  A couple of the guys from Beer Club brew and some of their beers are really good. So I bought the kit and selected the Irish Stout as my first beer.

As with any brewery, the first thing to do is select a name. After sitting in my favorite pub with Laura one night, we came up with the name Fartlek Brewing. It combines two things I like, beer and running.  You can follow it on Twitter or Untappd. A couple of names that were rejected. Brains, Beer and Boobs and Sizzletits.

Thanks to my friend's daughter who is a good artist, I also have a logo. I may do some tweeking on the text/name part but it looks pretty good.

Last week, I finally got around to actually doing the brewing.

The directions provided in the kit were a bit vague at times. I found I needed a few things that were not provided. The big one being a thermometer. Hitting specific temperatures at points is critical.

The raw ingredients

Next I took some warm water and mixed in the dry yeast. It had to sit for awhile to starting working.

The yeast

Next you crush the grains and put them in a muslin bag and steep them in almost boiling water for about 30 minutes. This is where having a thermometer would have been handy. You were to keep the temp about 155*

Steeping the wort

Next you add the malt extract to the wort. This is really thick, like molasses. You have to stir it constantly until the malt is dissolved or it can burn.

Malt has been added to the wort

After that you bring it to a low boil for about an hour. You need to add the first batch of hops at this time. The hops I used looked like little rabbit food pellets. They dissolve in the water. You have to stir it a lot at this point as well to keep the wort from boiling over when adding the hops.

Wort with hops added

Once the boiling is almost done, I added the second set of hops. Lots of stirring again.

Then comes the cooling of the wort. You need to bring the temperature from boiling to about 80* as quickly as possible to avoid contamination of the wort. I used an ice bath. Another home brewer puts the ice cubes right in the wort. I may invest in a wort chiller if I decide to keep brewing. The chiller hooks up to the sink and you run cold water thru copper tubing that is placed inside the boil pot.

Chilling the wort

After that you put the wort in the primary fermentation. Basically a 6.5 gallon bucket. You fill it with water to the 5 gallon mark and stir the crap out of it to get lots of air into the wort. Oxygen is what the yeast needs to do its job. I got a good arm workout in. Here is where I may upgrade again and get an aquarium pump and use that to add oxygen.

Fermentation bucket

I then put the lid on it, put the airlock in the hole and put it downstairs.

A couple days later a guy asked how it was going. Was I seeing lots of action? I went downstairs and looked. Nothing. Crap! What is going on? After a pow wow with several tweeps, it was decided that the basement was too cold and it need to be warmer for the yeast to work. Thanks Tom for all your help and advice! I stopped at the home brew store to pick up a packet of yeast in case it was needed. Once I moved it into the spare bedroom, I gave it a few minutes of good swirling and waited.

By the next day when I came home, it had warmed up enough to get the yeast working again and I had bubbles!! The fermentation process was working!

I now have to wait for the bubbles to stop and take some gravity readings. One the reading are the same for three days in a row, I can move it into the secondary fermentation bucket where it will hang out for about another week or so.  Once again this is where the directions were a bit vague.No real time frames were provided.

After that I bottle it up and it conditions and carbonates in the bottles for about a month.
I will be posting more pics and updates as the process moves forward.

Garbage Day

Today is garbage day in the neighborhood. I am fascinated by the amount of garbage my neighbors generate.

Most weeks I have about five newspaper baggies of dog poo and a Pick N Save bag of garbage in my cart. Maybe if it was a big week, I will have another bag. Throw in the monthly furnace filter and that is about it. Some people will two or three carts of stuff. What do people buy and use that they generate that much stuff? I rarely eat fast or take out food so that is alot of waste I don't generate. I recycle everything I can.

Puzzling, I tell you....