Yesterday several of us got together for a great hiking trip at Burgess Falls State Park near Cookeville, TN. The hike is a very easy one - more like a short walk until you get to the main waterfall - and is considered to be one of the most rewarding hikes per step walked because there is so much for such a short trail. There were 11 of us hiking together and 3 more joined up later (Ob1Shinobi and his family were running late). Jeff Wee-Eng represented the 865 area code for us and Ob1 was there for the 931s. The rest of us were local to the Nashville metro area.

SkyDog even tried a new smoking cessation program with ware. Here you can see SkyDog applying the penalty for ware lighting up (which is now illegal in all TN State Parks, by the way).



After we hiked we went to Mamma Rosa's Italian restaurant in Cookeville and enjoyed an excellent meal. The stromboli there beats anything else in the entire Southeast region, and trust me, I've tried to find another as good. However, even after eating a giant stromboli, Jeff Wee-Eng ordered a sausage foot-long sub... to eat right then. Once the waitress got over the shock and brought him the sub, he ate it all up. When she came back to see if we needed anything else, he ordered a piece of chocolate layer cake. I think this boy can give Tim Ball a run for his money in eating contests.

Here is a short video of the waterfall and our resident ecotaku, Jeff Wee-Eng walking along the rocks at the bottom.

Last weekend we had a fun little outing. We started off at Chick-Fil-A where my son decided that playing in the indoor playground was much more interesting than eating chicken. We did eventually get him to come around and eat something, though.



Later that afternoon I decided that we should go bowling. We had a party at the bowling alley for his birthday back in November and he had a blast, and since the weather wasn't too hospitable, that seemed like a good indoor activity to burn off some of his energy. Here's the score after the first frame. It's amazing how hard it is to bowl your own frame when your son keeps trying to take the ball out of your hand.



He loved using the ramp to bowl with, but the 6 pound ball that they gave him to use was simply too light. He's got the strength to pick up my 16 pounder and the 6 pound one just doesn't have enough weight to build up much momentum. I think next time we'll get him something in the 10 pound range.



All was well until the end of the night when I tried to pick him up and carry him to the car. He wanted my wife to carry him, but she hurt her neck/back and couldn't lift him. When I went to pick him up he jumped right into my chin and made me bite a nice chunk out of my lip. We were both in pain after that, but everything up to that point was a great Saturday.

I need one of these...

(From Jan 12)

For Christmas I got a kit to convert my beer fridge into a kegerator. This weekend while I had the house to myself I ran to Lowe's for a 2.5" hole saw, got out the power drill and went to it. It didn't take long at all to do - about 1 hour - and looks as good as a pre-made kegerator. The only drawback is that as I was moving the kegs out of the fridge I noticed how close I am to being out of beer! Fortunately I realized that about 30 minutes before the home brew store in Murfreesboro closed and was able to make it down there in time to pick up one kit. I'll be making an American Nut Brown Ale tomorrow morning, apparently.

(Finally uploaded a picture on Feb 19)

Batch #9 - Apfelwein Me Dine Me

I decided to give another try to Ed Wort's Apfelwein recipe, but with the correct amount of sugar this time (2 lbs). I did make some other alterations, though, which are the addition of:

2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

As with the Pumpkin Ale, the cinnamon tended to clump up and stick to the sides, so that is why I have such a high amount in it. My sampling before adding the yeast yielded a very tasty, yet very stout (in terms of sugar) cider. If that taste can hang on through the two months of living in the fermenter then we'll have a tasty batch indeed.

Mixing Date: 9 Feb 2008
Kegging Date: 29 March 2008
Starting Gravity: 1.065
Estimated Final Gravity: 0.992
ABV: 9.57%
Calories/Pint: 283

Final Notes : Since I left this one in the fermenter for so long it really kicked up the ABV. I took both the original and final gravity measurements three times each just to make sure that I was accurate on them. You can really smell the alcohol content when around the stuff, so it's truly that stout. Taste of the batch is very much like a wine, which makes sense because I used Montrachet yeast. There's a very slight taste of apple to it, mainly because so much of the sugars were converted to alcohol. You can also taste a hint of the cinnamon, but I can't detect any of the vanilla. However, it's a very nice batch all around.

I've had OTA (over the air) HDTV for a while at my house, but whenever the smallest amount of cloud or rain activity came in I would lose the NBC station. I also had issues with picking up what used to be the UPN station at times. I'd been trying to coordinate with Mirage for months to make it over, but either it was raining on his weekends off, or he was sick, or I was sick. Anyway, that finally happened yesterday afternoon. We moved the Winegard SquareShooter (this antenna rocks) from the corner of the house to the very front of a dormer extension at the front of the house. Now there is a true clear line of site all the way back to Nashville, save for a few hill peaks. Since I'm near the top of a hill already, though, I'm picking up signals like nobody's business. With the HDHomeRun I'm now showing 100% signal strength on every channel except for the NBC station, but I've gone from 55% to 75% on it, now.

Mirage also helped me out in finishing up Batch #6 so that I could free up the keg and put Batch #8 in it! Publix has Juicy Juice on sale this week so I plan on going by there and picking up 5 gallons so that the next batch will be Apfelwein. I'm almost out of Batch #7, but Apfelwein stays in the fermenter for so long that I might even be out of Batch #8 before I keg it.

Name : Brewer's Best Kit - American Nut Brown Ale
Recipe:
6.6 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
4 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
4 oz. Crushed Chocolate
1 oz. Crushed Black Patent
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 55 min)
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing Flavoring, 15 min)
1 oz. Galena Hops (Finishing Aroma, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast

Brew Date: 13 Jan 2008
Secondary Date: 20 Jan 2008
Kegging Date: 3 Feb 2008
Drinking Date: 6 Feb 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.062
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.013
ABV: 6.4%

Notes:
I thought I'd try a different recipe kit, but not too different since I'm still pretty new at this. I think the next batch I'll diversify even further and go for an Irish Stout or a Red Ale.

Holy smokes, I've had a blow out! I went into the closet this morning to discover that there was so much kreuzen (beer foam) that it had popped the airlock off and had spilled out all over the carpet, and some of my wife's clothes. Oops.

There's one thing that I think everybody can agree on when it comes to strategies for paying off debt - you stop going out to eat.

I think there's one thing that everybody employing that strategy can agree on - they miss going out to eat.

So, I started scheming and plotting to come up with a way to continue to go out to eat without impacting the bottom line in an adverse way. When I was a teenager, my parents knew someone at church that worked for the corporate office of a company that owned some restaurant franchises. They got hooked up on a schedule to mystery shop one of their locations once a month, and we would be reimbursed for our meals. Knowing that having to send a paper letter to corporate headquarters to ask about mystery shopping was antiquated and frankly, barbaric, I started looking out on the internet.

The first thing that I found is that the top hits on Google for Mystery Shopping will yield you the sites you don't want to visit. First and foremost, never pay to get listings of mystery shops, because you're not dealing with the schedulers - you're dealing with information scavengers. Actual mystery shopping companies pay you, and you never pay them to get started. Certification is the only thing you should ever pay for, and that is through just one company, the Mystery Shopping Providers Association. There's also a job board on their site and it's where I got my list of places to sign up for shopping.

The second thing that I discovered is that there's a heck of a lot more out there than restaurant shopping. Department stores, big box retailers, pet stores, entertainment attractions, and even casinos. From September, 2007 through December, 2007, I have personally been reimbursed between $900 and $1000 to eat steak, seafood, pizza and fast food; buy household goods and pet supplies; shop for a motorcycle; and gamble. Even nicer is the fact that since most of that is reimbursement, and not income, it's not subject to income tax. While some of that $900 is for things that I wouldn't have otherwise spent the money on (like eating at expensive restaurants as often as I have), at least $600 of it is, which means we've been able to pay $600 more off of our debt in a 3 month period of time.

Now I'm sure that everybody has skipped the bulk of my post and is looking for the URLs to sign up. It's not ethical for me to say what companies are represented by the shopping companies listed in these links. However, it's perfectly ethical to simply list them and let you find out for yourself.

Nearly every provider requires a valid SSN to sign up. Some require a bank account for direct deposit. Practice safe depositing - set up a separate account for mystery shopping that isn't linked to any of your other accounts.

Best Mark
BARE International
National Shopping Service
Speedmark Vision
Nationwide Service Group

There are lots and lots of other companies out there, but these are the ones that I've found work best for my area - Middle Tennessee. One thing that you have to remember with every company, though - you have to do some of the smaller, pain in the ass shops before you'll get assigned the easy, high paying shops. For example, you may have to do a fast food shop that will take you an hour to complete and only pays for a burger combo meal just to get "rated" in the system, but once you've done that, you can get the $100+ steak house reimbursement.

Good luck.

Name : pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale
Recipe:
3.3 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 60 min)
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing, 5 min)
2 Tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
2.5 Tbsp. Imitation Vanilla Extract
11g Nottingham Yeast

Brew Date: 11 Nov 2007
Secondary Date: 17 Nov 2007
Kegging Date: 20 Oct 2007
Drinking Date: 22 Oct 2007

Starting Gravity: 1.048
Final Gravity: 1.009
ABV: 5.2%
Calories: 157.1 per 12 oz.
Carbs: 14.1 per 12 oz.

Notes:
This is the same recipe as the pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale, but with just a couple of tweaks. I dropped the light brown cane sugar from the recipe to hopefully bring a little bit of the bitterness of the ale back. I also added another 1/2 tablespoon of vanilla extract to bring out that flavor even more. We'll see how well it works.

Name : Brewer's Best English Brown Ale
Boil Time : 60 minutes
Variation : Added 1 lb. light brown pure cane sugar at the beginning of the boil.

Brewing Date : October 27, 2007
Starting Gravity : 1.052
Final Gravity : 1.011
Alcohol By Volume : 5.5%
Kegging Date : November 4, 2007
First Draw : November 7, 2007

This week my wife's alternator went out on her car, so I needed Troy to come over and help me to replace it. The clearance in the engine compartment was so small then even he couldn't reach everything without having to remove the radiator. Yeah, definitely a two man job. So, my wife agreed that I owed Troy some more beer, so here we are. Troy really liked Batch #3, but not the pumpkin ale - mainly because he doesn't like the spices and he's also allergic to cinnamon. However, one thing that I did in the pumpkin batch was add some light brown cane sugar to the boil. I think it boosted the alcohol just a bit, but also gave it a smoother taste, so I decided to add it as the only variation to this batch. The dry nottingham yeast also worked really well for the pumpkin ale, so I decided that there was no need to pay the extra for the White Labs yeast.