A note: If you don’t want to see men and women in speedos swim do not watch the above video.
I’ve been swimming with the Davis Aquatic Masters now for over a year. I’ve enjoyed the program, and the people in it. So much so that I now serve on the Board of Directors.
The above video is just one of the many things DAM is doing (besides putting on an open water swim every year, raising funds to fight cancer, and annual food drives) for its members and the community. Seeing your stroke is vital to improving it. Thankfully, according to the coach, mine isn’t too bad.
I’m the first person you see swim across there, D is the fourth, and then I’m the seventh. Once it switches to a heads-on view I’m again the first. I have a tendency to bring my arms to far over on my stroke extension. if you draw a line going from your shoulder straight out in front of you they’re not supposed to cross over. Mine occasionally do. I also have a tendency to ignore my kicking, defaulting to a single 1/1 stroke/kick ratio. The ideal is 4/6
We’ve had our composter now for a year-and-half or two years I think. It is definitely its second winter. Unlike last winter though things aren’t going as well. Instead of things breaking down and turning into a nice mulch I can spread into the garden. They’re turning into a stinky sewage. I’d like to blame this on the cold and rain but I don’t think they are completely at fault.
Our household has recently (the past six months) started composting everything possible. This means a lot of “green” is going into the composter. According to what I’ve been able to find out about composting all this “green” needs to be balanced out with “brown,” if you want the ideal environment for composting to occur. I’ve been neglecting the brown and throwing in a lot of “green” recently and things have gone sour.
That is okay though because I’m getting a little help from the United States Government:
The 1040EZ also known as "brown"
The Post Office had stacks and stacks of these packets sitting there waiting for John Q. Citizen to pick them up if they needed some tax assistance. I grabbed 20 or so figuring that’d help. I cut off the glue binding to the packets and shredded them:
A stack of about half of the paper I shredded
After the paper was shredded into the bin it went:
In two weeks this better look like compost...
Composting hasn’t turned out to be the simple formula I thought it was: scraps in, soil out. It takes a lot more tweaking and guesswork. I’m still getting the hang of it. If adding paper doesn’t do the trick I might have to get some straw or move the composter so that it gets more sun.
I never thought I’d be experimenting with the “art” of composting.
This has been doing the rounds at atheism focused blogs. DiMortuiSunt, despite the title, is not really about atheism, though that is how I identify myself when people ask.
The nice thing about this video is that it shows that atheists aren’t the bogeymen religious leaders want you to think they are. They’re your neighbors and friends and they want the same thing out of life everyone wants: happiness.
last night marked two weeks since I bottled my ale; which meant that they were fair game for consumption. I opened the chilled bottle with some trepidation, my wife was convinced that my sanitization regimen was lacking and that the beer would be tainted. The beer passed the sniff test and so I moved on to the next step pouring the beer. With the exception of some sediment the beer appeared fine, it had good carbonation and a nice foamy head.
Well, there it was nothing left today but taste the fruits of my labor. The beer turned out pretty good! Darker than an amber ale but lighter than a stout. The beer had a subtle floral smell, much like the hint of green apples, and nice roasted malty taste to it.
I was sure when I started this process the beer was going to be terrible but I have to say, I’ve paid money for worse tasting beer. I have a few bottles and if local friends want to give it a try and let me know what they think they’re welcome to come by and give it a taste.
Things I learned from this whole experience:
Beer is not that difficult to make
Gravity and physics are crappy things to count on when bottling. Next time I use an auto-siphon.
Make sure your bottles are not screw-top!
Have a place you can go to ask questions of more experience users. I was lucky enough to have the fine folks at Talking Time to answer my questions.
Get something to filter out sediment. It doesn’t seem to hurt anything but is kinda gross
Get a second big metal pot for the sparge.
I’m happy enough with my results to try this again. I’m not ready enough to start making my own recipes yet, so I’ll still be buying mixes, maybe a nice gingerbread ale or tripel?
Yeah, I don't have a name for my beer...Apple Crisp ale in my Odd-tober Fest 2009 pint glass*glug* *glug*
