Starting the day by taking Bela for her walkies we spotted this….

It was only maybe an inch long, but still. I had no idea that there were lizards in Ohio. Let alone this late in the year. It is a nice day. About 67 out right now. Jacki got her giant quilt basted on the deck today. It looked like a major pain in the ass.

Here is the other reptile….

It’s a foam snake! Ok so it’s starsan (a sanitizer) foam coming out of the keg as the beer goes in. It just amused me that it followed the tubing up to the top of the carboy. Oh and that is a Rye Pale Ale going into keg there :)

I actually did some brewing for the first time about a week ago. It’s been a really long time. Went pretty well considering how long it’s been. I ran two batches. A Rye Pale Ale and a Chocolate Cherry Stout. I’m going to oak the RPA and I still have to rack the stout onto cherrys, but so far so good. They are both hanging out in the fermenting freezer right now. It was really nice to do some brewing. I’ve also got to chase down a leak in my CO2 system for the keggerator. Oh ya and I bottled up 5 gallons of mead yesterday. That wasn’t much fun, but needed done. Mead seems ok. I’ll crack a bottle open in a couple years and see how it is then.

Brewday in progress…

We are also going to see They Might Be Giants tonight in Cleavland. That will hopefully be fun.

I finally created a Twitter account. Maybe I’ll be better about using that than this blog.? Blog posts just always seem to take me a long time.

In other new vacation was good and stuff. Check out the flickrs if you care for pictures. I think we took about 60gig worth of digital pics. So we’ll probably be putting up pictures for a while :)

I made a solar system for the camper. I started this really not knowing what I was doing. I got it all done and still probably don’t know much :) It’s kinda ugly, but works great. Ran the first big test yesterday and came no where near killing the battery. We ran stuff on it all day and the battery only dropped to 12.5 volts (dead is 10.5). Stuff we ran all day: stereo, mp3 player, RF transmitter, and LED christmas lights. For part of the day it was charging my phone and then I put on a table lamp with a CFL in it. I’ll post the full test at the bottom of the post. The battery is an Optima D34 deep cycle battery. That damn thing cost as much as the rest of the system put together, but it looks like it was worth it. The only thing Amongst the things that we wont be able to run are the electric space heaters, toaster oven and electric skillet. They just draw too much juice. Most of them use from 1000 to 1500 watts and I don’t have an inverter large enough to handle it. Anyway on the the pictures….

This is the battery, charge controller, inverter, and LED lights from before I installed it in the camper.

If your still interested more after the jump….
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MOON that spells kayak! Jacki seems to be having fun as I try to blag blog.

We went on our 4th trip in the kayak today. It’s an Advanced Elements AdvancedFrame Convertible Inflatable Kayak. iz fun

There is us in the kayak. Picture taken by my Dad.

Check under the fold for more kayak stuff….
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Update: I just thought I would give ya’ll a google earth view of some of the walking we have done over the past couple days. Some of it is Metro, but most of it’s walking. This is the GPS track from our new little GPS logger toy for geotagging photos. :) If you look close you can see that some of the track is paddleboat :0

Just hanging out at the hotel tonight. We’ve been here for a few days and have a couple days left. Fun vacation, but we are so sore we can’t move anymore. I can’t remember what it’s like for my feet not to throb. We have taken about 3 billion pictures. Too busy to mess with uploading right now. So here are the few we I have uploaded….

Random Bavarian (?) man was walking across the street and we were trying to get his picture when his son (or at least someone with him) told us to stand with him and he’d take our picture. So here you go….

Jacki and I by the FDR Memorial. That is the Tidal Basin behind us and then the Jefferson Memorial.

Just finishing things up with some creepy. At the FDR Memorial is a wall covered in this kind of stuff. I have no idea why. It’s defiantly creepy tho.

I’m sure Jacki will post a good accounting of our activities at some point….

I saw this basic idea a while ago on a homebrew site or forum or something. I can’t remember where. Anyway we have had this stuck up in the attic for a while. I think we used to grow plants in it. It’s not the prettiest job of cutting the holes, but it works great. Check it out….

I cut three holes in the side and that seems to be enough airflow.

Cute video of Ellie from a few days ago. Not sure why she likes this ball so much, but she plays with it a lot.

Jacki and I were outside playing with some cameras and I was all like OMG my hops are coming up. Ok so maybe it wasn’t quite that valley girl, but it was close. Anyway here they are….

That is the big Fuggles plant that I have.

Jacki has been doing a ton of film developing in the last couple days so keep on eye on her blog and flickr for lots of fun pictures.
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How does that not make the news? Check it out on Bangornews (Maine newspaper) and from Wikileaks. This guys wife did us all a favor and put a bullet in the fucking nut job. She’ll probably go to jail for it instead of getting the metal she deserves.

Image by What What.