Got my haircut

I am lucky to have a barber less than a block away from the office so I can easily get my hair cut. Yeah, nice n short and low maintenance!

AVATAR 3D

I saw Avatar 3D today. I can't say enuf good things about it. Awesome movie. Great story, great characters, great effects. Best movie I have ever seen.

Snowy morn

More snow today in Omaha...

The Wallet

A classic bit of video from Seinfeld about George's "good friend", his wallet.

Suckling ale with the Enforcer

This evening I hooked up with the Enforcer for some ale at a couple of Omaha locations.

We started at the Rock Bottom Brewery in the Old Market area of downtown Omaha. A pleasant surprise indeed. The ale and atmosphere were both superb!

Next we mozied (not sure if that is a word) to the Crescent Moon Alehouse, our old stomping grounds, for some excellent ales. A worthy evening of ale ingestion!

Lunch with the Shark

Today I had lunch with Mark the Shark at a neat little local diner called Shirley's Diner. I have been wanting to try it for quite some time and today was the day.

Good food and a LOT of it!

Thanks Ma and Pa

Thanks to my mom and dad for sending me some birthday cash I was able to get an iPod Nano!! Apple.com had some units on sale for a really great price. Nice thing is my lil Suzuki came with an iPod interface cable installed so I can plug it in and listen in the car too through the radio! Thanks ma and pa!!!

Another neato thing I got yesterday was a brand new set of floor mats for the lil Suzuki. When I was looking to buy it I noticed in the pics on the dealer's website that there were a set of floor mats in the trunk but when I bought it they were nowhere to be found. So I mentioned this to the dealer and they ordered me a brand spankin' new set. Yahoo! Now I don't even want to put them in due to all this sloppy snow and ice and slush. I think I need some nice winter floor mats :)

Here are some pics along with a couple pics of some free used floor mats the dealer gave me to use during the winter from a "lesser" car that got traded in for a Suzuki :)

A nip in the air at Wehrspann

This morning I bundled up and headed over to Lake Wehrspann to take a walk and get some crisp winter air.

Unfortunately none of the walking trails have yet been cleared, so I spent most of the time tromping through snow drifts that often were near knee height.

Additionally, there was quite a stiff wind out of the northwest, which made things not quite as pleasant.

Anyway, mission accomplished!

Tending to the homebrew

This morning as I was checking to make sure there was not any excess air in the party pigs containing the Simcoe Hop Ale, I decided to take a tiny bit form each pig just to check the carbonation, clarity and flavor of the brew, which has been conditioning now for about a week.

I must say I am more than pleased with the results. The ale has excellent carbonation already, with extremely fine bubbles and a great head quality. The color is a beautiful caramel tone and it has a wonderful aroma of malt and hop. No off scents whatsoever. Finally, the taste is very, very good. Still slightly sweet and slightly harsh at the finish, but both of those qualities will soften with more conditioning as the yeast and time do their thing. Overall the flavor is of an excellent, hoppy pale ale, just what Brewmaster Morhardt and I were striving for.

Note in the pics below the beautiful color and the fineness of the bubbles.

CLICK THE PICS TO ENLARGE

Christmas treats!

Thank you Crystal Morhardt, wife of the Enforcer, for the delicious Christmas treats!!!

Chris vs. Blizzard...round 1

I headed outdoors this a.m. for the first of what will likely be a few rounds of shoveling snow as the blizzard continues.

I was greeted by deep snow, I estimate 8 inches but 2 foot drifts in places. LOADS of fun. Here are a few before and after pics of me and my trusty shovel :-)

Another jib jab!

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Watch the storm

...via various Omaha cameras....

STORM CAM!

Jib Jab!

One of my coworkers made this...funny!

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Where are you Santa?

Lil children around the world want to know when Santee Claus will be sliding down their chimney!

CLICK HERE TO TRACK SANTA CLAUS!

Wonderful Christmas week forecast!

Once again Omaha delivers the goods weather-wise! There is NOTHING I cherish more than some good ol' freezing rain!



Today: Freezing rain and sleet. High near 33. Northeast wind between 11 and 14 mph, with gusts as high as 20 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime ice accumulation of 0.1 to 0.3 of an inch possible. Total daytime sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Tonight: Freezing rain and sleet, becoming all freezing rain after midnight. Low around 28. Blustery, with a north northeast wind between 11 and 18 mph, with gusts as high as 26 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Little or no ice accumulation expected. New sleet accumulation of less than a half inch possible.

Thursday: Snow and areas of blowing snow. Temperature falling to around 21 by 5pm. Windy, with a north northwest wind between 18 and 25 mph, with gusts as high as 34 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 5 inches possible.

Thursday Night: Snow and areas of blowing snow. Low around 14. Windy, with a north northwest wind between 26 and 29 mph, with gusts as high as 38 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. New snow accumulation of 3 to 7 inches possible.

Christmas Day: Snow and areas of blowing snow. High near 20. Windy, with a northwest wind between 20 and 26 mph, with gusts as high as 36 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.

Friday Night: A 50 percent chance of snow. Cloudy and blustery, with a low around 9. New snow accumulation of 1 to 2 inches possible.

2 pigs full o' ale

As mentioned in my previous post, MM Mike "The Enforcer" Morhardt and I transferred our Simcoe Hop Ale from the secondary fermentation carboy to two 2.25 gallon "party pigs". Here the ale will condition, gain further clarity and gain carbonation.

We first had to transfer the ale from the carboy to a 5 gallon bottling bucket. From there we filled the pigs with the precious elixir. After that we drop a "pressure pouch" into each big and then seal the pig with it's screw on "snout" (tap).

Then we used a hand pump stuck into the snout to build up pressure in the pig, which causes chemicals in the sealed pouches to mix, eliciting a chemical reaction which causes the pouch to expand slowly, keeping the pig pressurized and keeping airspace from filling the pig as the ale is dispense over time.

In a few weeks we will be tipping a few pints. Below you will find some pics of the process and one lil video. Enjoy my friends, enjoy.

From secondary to the pigs!

Today "MM" Mike the Enforcer Morhardt and I will be transferring the Simcoe Hop Ale from secondary fermentation, where it has been for pert near two weeks, to "bottling", in this case using two 2.25 gallon Party Pigs.

Conditioning in the pigs will prolly take a couple weeks and then we can tip back a pint or 4.

Run run Rudolph!

A #1dinner :)

I made an Italian dinner last night for myself and a friend and it all actually turned out quite well.

The homemade pasta sauce was really good and my handmade pasta turned out great. As an appetizer we had bruschetta (thanks to my sis Mara for turning me onto the Bread Oven...awesome baguettes)which we topped with soft mozzarella cheese, oven roasted garlic, homemade basil pesto and a mix of tomato/basil/garlic/balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Mmmmm, it was tasty! Add a little cabernet sauvignon and great company and it made for a very nice evening:)

Another keen unpacking memory

Unpacking some more stuff this a.m. I happened across this neat caricature drawing of my friends Dave, Bob, Paul and I at the old Chicago Bar near Mutual of Omaha. This was back when we drank Stroh's and only Strohs. If they didn't have Strohs we either drank a Coke or left and found a place that had it! We even called the Stroh's distributor and got a list of places that carried it and patronized those places.

I am guessing this was probably the mid 1980's. Back then I often wore a flattop style haircut and had a bushy mustache(like in the pic below taken in Arizona while visiting Dave and family years ago). Haha, what a look!

I still talk to and visit Dave on occasion, but have lost touch with Paul and Bob, though I have tried to locate them. I gotta keep trying.

Pasta test

Since I have not made pasta in a long while, I decided to make a 1/4 size batch just to make sure I remembered how and to make sure the pasta machine was properly seasoned for a "real" batch.

It took a little bit of kneading and lot of remembering how but it worked out just fine. I decided to run it through the fettuccine cutting head and it worked pretty well :=)

Mmm hmm clean Suzook

Since it was sorta nice n warm here today, well above freezing, I decided to get all the salt, slush, snow, dirt and crap off my Suzuki SX4 at a car wash. Since it was squeaky clean I took a coupla pics b4 it got all filthy again. Peachy keen!

Pasketti sauce

Today I made some sauce for pasta. Haven't done that for a while as I normally don't do a lot of cooking for myself. Not sure why I guess it did not seem worth the effort.

I tasted the sauce and it tastes good. Started with some finely diced onions and garlic cloves sauteed in some olive oil. After a while added about 1/2 of a finely chopped carrot to the mix. Then some chopped basil and marjoram. Let that all meld together.

Then a couple cans of whole tomatoes and their juices, which I crushed by hand. Bring it to a boil, then back it off to a simmer for about an hour. I added a little sugar to balance out the acidity from the tomatoes. Tastes good.

Tomorrow I make homemade pasta and then the two will become one!

Kid Guzzi rides again!

While this Nebraska winter weather is certainly not conducive to motorcycle riding, sometimes you just GOTTA get out when the opportunity presents itself.

Today was a clear day, mostly sunny and around 32 degrees. The streets are wet from melting snow and ice and there is sand and some slush here and there, but if careful one can still enjoy a little ride.

So I fired up the Guzzi Stelvio for the first time in two weeks and hit the road for about 45 minutes. Yeehaw! Man that dang bike is so much fun!