With 11″ of snow on the ground, we set off on Saturday with a couple of sleds (thanks, Gerstle!) and had some snow-nannigans. Pictures were taken and now appear in the 2008.03.08 – Sledding! gallery.

Opening day at the new and beautiful Jim Patterson field. More photos in the gallery.
Admission is free to all regular season games. Learn more.

Last weekend I cooked up my 3rd-ever homebrewed beer. This time I chose a tasty selection from the annals of The Joy of Home Brewing, Vagabond Gingered Ale. A “deliciously dark, full-bodied ale, with the gentle essence of fresh ginger…uniquely satisfying for the vagabond brewers who journey to places that have no boundaries” (The Joy of Home Brewing, p 214).

I did pretty well with this batch – kept my temps in the right place and tried a couple of new/better steps in the process, including:

• Used full-leaf dried hops
• Strained the hot wort (the concoction in the pot on the stove is wort, not beer yet!) into a strainer, which quickly filled with hops, making a much more effective strain (less bits in your fermenting beer means clearer beer, less “odd” tastes
• Chilled the wort by dropping a few good handfuls of ice into my sparging bucket. Chilling the wort from a boil down to under 78 degrees as fast as possible is CRITICAL to make sure you don’t get contaminated beer! Thanks be to Alton Brown’s Good Brew on that one…

But… there is a possibility I messed this one up a little! I accidentally added the wrong kind of beer yeast to the fermenter the first time – and it might have been too old as well! After a day and no activity in the fermenter, I went and got the right kind of yeast (American Ale yeast, not Weizen yeast) and pitched it in the fermenter. Here we are almost 5 days later and it is bubblin’ along in my bathtub. I’m not sure what will happen with two different strains of yeast in there, but if the first one was dead, we should be OK, right? Relax…

As I mentioned, I got my recipe from The Joy of Home Brewing a book considered by many to be the “Bible of Homebrewing”. Written by homebrew legend Charlie Papazian, it does for brewing beer what Alton Brown does for food in his Good Eats program on the Food Network. A good amount of theory, a good amount of wisdom and a heaping helping of quirky humor that makes it a joy to read. Not just a list of ingredients and temperatures. I’ve only homebrewed 3 times now, but my Joy Of Home Brewing is already dog-eared. Charlie’s mantra throughout the book is “Relax, don’t worry, have a homebrew!”

I took some photos of the process (edited for time) and you can view them in the 2008.02.17 – Vagabond Gingered Ale gallery. If you are interested in homebrewing, I suggest you take a look at HowToBrew.com, an excellent resource. It’s separated into four sections, the first three being beer-making at three different difficulty levels. The last two beers I’ve done were “intermediate”, or “Section 2 – Brewing Your First Extract and Specialty Grain Beer”.

Kelly, being the weirdo that she is, wanted to go to the Bodies exhibit at The Cincinnati Museum. She’s got a thing for anatomy and generally the gross side of medicine. Cut to scene where I tell here in no uncertain terms will I watch a show about a man with a rare skin disease while eating a quesadilla I had just made. Whereas most girls were excited to be taken to dinner or to receive chocolates or flowers, Kelly wanted to go see artfully-styled corpses. Who am I to argue?

Saturday, we took off up to Cinci (stopping at the GAP Clearance Center in nearby Florence (Y’all!). Using our futurephones and the surprisingly-good Windows Live Directions service we made a U-turn or two and then ran smack into a long, long line of cars just outside the Museum. Hmm… could this be for the Bodies Exhibit? 1 hour later, as the lad in the parking booth told me (in order) there would be a 2-3 hour wait just to get tickets (it was 2:30 PM, they close at 5 on Saturdays) and that they only take cash. Cocking my head to the side and saying “Hmmm” (loudly) didn’t help – he apparently had seen such a tactic before. I said “Well… I don’t think I can back up,” to which he replied that I could park in the temporary lot and get some money from the ATM. Not that it mattered though. He let me through the gate and I immediately found a parking spot – not that we could use it on account of us not having the time to see the exhibit, but it felt good to stick it to those bastards! (Editor: They aren’t bastards, really. He was quite nice considering the near-riot conditions). The exhibit runs through June or July or some such, so we resolved to come back and make a day of it and a Reds game sometime after the baseball season starts. Kelly, being the wonderfully easy-to-please lady she is didn’t mind – in fact, we have a term for a failed mission: “adventures”.

We bopped around town for a little bit, got lost, looked for some store in some mall and decided to hit two food stores that we don’t have in Louisville – Trader Joe’s and Jungle Jim’s. I had heard-tell of both of these from a number of people (and from listening to WOXY – a great independent radio station in Cinci) – essentially a Whole Foods sort-of thing, but funkier. Trader Joe’s was certainly Whole Foods, but smaller, and funkier – and I’d like to have one in Louisville, but the real cake-taker here is Jungle Jim’s International Market.

Jungle Jim’s is actually in Hamilton (hometown to Hollow-Earth theorist Capt. John Symmes) out on Dixie Highway, a ways away from the city and a loooong way from your average grocery store. Pulling up to the store, you immediately notice the monorail tram jutting from the side of the store, which my Googling skills tell me was King’s Island’s old tram! But… but… why?!? Parking in the lot and walking up to the entrance, I quickly decided to stop asking. I assumed there was food on the inside, but you really couldn’t tell from the outside, which looked like a mini-golf course crossed with a zoo and a waterpark. Even the entranceway felt like I was going to Mister Toad’s Wild Ride.

Through the modest set of doors and the ceiling of the place opens into a vast – and a bit overwhelming – paradise of food. A paradise of food with an animatronic soup can on a swing over the grocery area. And an animatronic Lucky Charms band sitting on a 40-foot shrimp boat next to the half-dozen live seafood tanks. Did I mention animatronic lion Elvis in the produce area? But ya can’t take photos – that’s posted clearly on the entranceway. Luckily, they give out photo passes to some lucky photographers, like this guy: Tim Gets a Jungle Jim’s Photo Pass.

Aside from the “attractions”, the food selection is mind-blowing. The Asian section (not to be confused with the Sushi bar) has some half-dozen or more sub-sections for China, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, Hong Kong, Vietname, and a few others. Over near the Mexican section are the two 20-foot wide, 6-foot tall walls of hot sauces (with the “Adult Themed Sauces” in a shaded case. My personal favorite? Nuclear Nipples. Imagine the label. Nearby, the roots of a giant Robin Hood-themed tree form the ceiling of the rather large English food selection. Teas? Oh yeah.

Live lobsters. Live rainbow trout. Live catfish. Live bluegill. Spanish foods. Greek foods. French foods. Fruits I’ve never seen before. A relatively modest (in comparison to the rest of the store) but varied beer selection. A huge wine selection. An amazing selection of micro-brew colas, ginger ales and root beer.

And while I initially grasped Kelly’s arm in mock fear when I first entered the store, I found myself wandering off constantly, being beckoned by whatever new and fascinating foodstuff I saw. I would later ask Kelly if we could live there. We’ll be back for sure – after all, there is only one Jungle Jim’s.

Our final cart:

1 bottle Gale’s Root Beer
4 boxes Pulparindo Mexican Tamarind Candy
1 six-pack Bison Chocolate Stout
1 bottle Arcadia Ale Coco Loco Chocolate Stout
1 bottle Flying Dog Collaborator Doppelbock Open Source Beer
1 bottle Breckenridge Vanilla Porter
1 bottle Dave’s Ultimate Insanity Hot Sauce
2 cans Mexican soda, one “Champagne”, the other “Coconut”
1 tub of hummus
1 container Mediterranean salad thing

Listen: NPR on Jungle Jim’s International Market, Oct 4 2003

Our first good snow of the season, and it’s 4 inches deep. I took advantage of the great light and beautiful muted sounds and shot some stills – which you can find in the 2008.02.11 – A Winter’s Eve gallery. I might be able to make it to work tomorrow…

Flipping through the photos after I got back in from the storm, I realized that I had completely forgotten about our little Rock Band get-together last month. It was a ton of fun and made for some great rock-photos.

Check ‘em out in the 2008.01.12 – Rock Band gallery.

Update: More from the weird world of baseball: NY Mets ace Pedro Martinez is a cockfighter. With video! Vs. Hall-of-Famer Juan Marichal, no less! In the Dominican Republic, cockfighting isn’t as maligned as it is here, though…

RotoNation has a great nugget from their archive today, wherein one major-league pitcher plunks (hits a batter with a pitch) another player because he’s on a streak and benefitting someone else in the pitcher’s fantasy league. Read it here: Jeff Kent Beaned to Help Tom Candiotti’s Fantasy Baseball Team.

And from the “Aw-shucks-aint-that-cute-in-a-legal-sorta-way” department comes this gem from Baseball Musings: I’m In Trouble. You see, the lowly Tampa Bay Devil Rays (yep, Tampa Bay has a team!) changed their name at the end of the year last season to the Tampa Bay Rays, adopting sunbeams as part of their logo treatment and getting rid of the fish-like creature. People in the Rays organization who use the term “Devil Rays” are obliged to submit $1 to a “swear-jar” sorta thing – and it would appear they are attempting (in a cute way) to enforce the same thing on the public-at-large. But rather than sending Cease and Desist orders they are sending C&D’s of another sort – Cease and Donate!

Yes, it’s true, I’m one of those people who play fantasy baseball. Don’t know what the hell that is? Let the Wikipedia’s Fantasy Baseball entry enlighten you. I’ve been playing with the same group of guys (from my Dairy Queen days) for nearly 10 years and the second year I think I won it – and it’s been all down hill since then. Since 2002, my record has been: 13-8, 10-12, 11-15, 10-13, 7-17, 4-20. This year, having read Moneyball and Fantasyland (two excellent baseball books), I’ve embarked on learning as much as I can and keeping better care of my team – which is named the Dangville Mercykillers (I lost the rights to the “Blue Jays” when I lost a bet).

While desperately searching for some Fantasy Baseball advice this evening, I stumbled upon a magnificent thing: The Library of Congress’ News from the 1910s photoset at Flickr.

Of particular interest were the large number of baseball-related photos from that set.

You see, I’m currently reading Eight Men Out – one of those must-read baseball books that I’ve never-read. It details the fixing of the 1919 World Series (“Say it ain’t so, Joe! Say it ain’t so!”), and baseball of that protean period is truly fascinating. Played in parks that Single-A ballclubs would snub today and attended by men in suits and snappy bowler-hats. Rough and tumble men with weathered faces and hard hands who played for peanuts. One of my favorite photos is seen below: People choking the streets in NYC to see a telegraph-fed “play-o-graph” of the 1911 World Series. That was the sports bar of the day!

In many ways, though, baseball hasn’t changed much since then. It is a uniquely American game, and thus captures our attention like few other things. Iconic, beautiful.

The early days of baseball were played in lots that would make most high-school coaches grumble. Glorified sandlots with fences. But it had reached most Americans by this time, even if on an average American would only see a game once every 30 years. There was nothing else like it. It was raw, crude by today’s measure, but in those sandlots and in that violently slow game, American found it’s pastime.

Can you tell it’s almost time for Spring Training to begin?

Link found over at BaseballMusings.com.

I don’t know when Kelly and I decided to start baking bread, but I think it was while watching the splendid Stranger than Fiction in which Maggie Gyllenhall plays a baker to Will Ferrell’s IRS agent. We discussed it later, and figured that, you know – it’s just water and flour and some yeast. How hard could it be? It’s not, really. Chatting with Mom during her annual New Year’s Day Black-Eyed-Pea Party, she told me that she used to bake all the bread we ate as kids, so I hit her up for some bread recipes, which I promptly left at her house…

Later: Kelly made some delicious, if dense, whole wheat bread that we ate with a red sauce I made from scratch (thanks, Mario Batali) with onions and carrots as a base and healthy dose of thyme. Later, while Kelly was off doing god knows what, I cooked up an Indian-inspired dish of shrimp and chicken in a simmering sauce (bought at Target… shut up, it was delicious). I also took advantage of the wonderful Southeast Asian cookbook I was gifted by my Malay boss (and fellow food nerd) in that I made some naan (Indian leavened flatbread). It was delightful. Also delightful – having the time during these long hard days of winter to spend the time to make your own food!

Last night, Kelly and I did another little dinner tango – she made Butternut Squash and Apple soup and I went to town on some Rosemary bread. They both turned out great!

Bread is a simple thing, and perhaps that’s why I’ve enjoyed it so much – it’s a little like making your own beer. There is a bit of simple cooking, a bit of waiting and then a couple hours later (or weeks, in the case of beer) you might have screwed the whole thing up. But, like homebrewed beer, the first loaf will be the best you’ve ever made.

The Rosemary bread I made turned out to be pretty delicious – though there are a few things I’d like to do better. I need to slice the top of it to make sure it doesn’t “mushroom” in the oven, and I’d like to find a way to get a thicker crust. Cracking that oven open to see the golden, brown and delicious (GBD) loaf is worth it all! Also, bread is just pretty sometimes:

Let’s go mobile! Part of thelocust.org redesign included implementing WordPress – a very easy-to-use, flexible blog system that allows me to do things like this!

Taken at the Macy’s at Oxmoor, while waiting on Kelly to do some lady thing.

Greetings, and welcome to 2008, and with this new year comes a new look for this website, thelocust.org. Thus begins the 9th year this website will detail my trials and tribulations. It’s been an adventure, it’s been a learning experience, it’s been me.

As far as years go, 2007 was a pretty good one – and a fairly active one for me. I trained for and ran my first-ever mini-Marathon, my first triathlon (even though it was a small one), and Kelly decided that she would do the 2008 Ironman Qualifier here in Louisville. I coached the Power Creative softball team and we won 3 games – which are 3 more than in the previous two seasons, combined. I renewed my interest in biking and I also learned to swim for distance, and not just to not drown.

Kelly and I also visited Barçelona, Spain in our first-ever trip outside the lower 48 states. Which reminds me that I will be writing up our Barçelona travelogues very shortly, as a bit of a New Years’ Delight for you all.

Tonight, Kelly and I spent our New Years Eve at home, me with a head cold and it rainy and windy outside. It’s uncharacteristic for us to not be at a party with our friends, but I am rather enjoying this time for reflection.

This time, last year: Chris Gerstle’s lament.