I took last Friday off to go out to WilliamsWarm and collect my brewery. I hired a trailer from the BP and drove out there, very excited! They were expecting me too and promptly wheeled out the whole setup and helped me load it into the car and onto the trailer. Then it was a careful drive back home, making sure the fridge on the trailer wasn't going to slide around or anything.
Once home I unloaded most of the stuff, cleaned out the shed and got some the basic bits setup! There were lots of boxes, each with some part of the setup in it. But after lots of careful screwing and assembling the beerfridge with its taps was ready to go! Exciting! Then it was time to forget about beer for a while and clean up around the house and take a trailerload of crap to the dump. Goodbye to the rollercoaster, which the only person to have been playing with it recently was Biscuit, it was chewed to buggery.
Then I went to pickup the kids, Beth had written her bike to school with me and Theo on mine in the morning, she was a bit sad we weren't riding home. As was Theo when I picked him up too.
Saturday was the usual, swimming for Theo, then for Beth. Then I took the kids for a play at Anderson Park before coming home to make my first brew in one of the kegs. The kids helped a little bit, though it was a bit hard to get them to do much because there's lots of boiling/hot water involved, so it's hard to find jobs for them to do that aren't dangerous. Anyway we got the first brew down no worries and it's off and fermenting. It's so odd to go from having a very super basic homebrew setup to having one of the best you can get. Now I'm fermenting under pressure, which helps to stop the yeast producing a lot of bad/off flavours, it automatically carbonates the beer etc. Nuts. It's such an easy, well thought out setup too. So yup, put that down and put it the shed.
Sunday the kids and I went for a walk up Sugarloaf, which they loved. Then when we got home Theo and I rode my bike up to Taradale to get some lunch and return with it, before heading back to Anderson Park for another little bike ride/playground play.
So a busy weekend really! With my other keg I'm going to juice up a bunch of apples and make a cider, shoudl be good fun and something the kids can help a little bit with too.
Sarah's still crook, though seems to be getting a little bit better. Hopefully she'll be on the super mend soon. We all went for a walk up to the dairy last night to get an icecream, that was nice, and we played Crocett when I got home last night, watch Theo shouting and screaming about how he's going to win (he didn't)
The world, of course, is fucking crazy with WuhanFlu, which is very politically incorrect Tim and should of course be called COVID19 or Coronavirus (even though it's just one member of the Coronavirus family). Concerts cancelled everywhere, all flights in and out of NZ basically cancelled. AirNZ will go bust, shit's falling down all over the place. We were all watching TV last night and I was saying to Sarah how it's odd we're just casually eating dinner while watching news that's basically "The world as we know it, is fucked" with the kids having no idea of the seriousness/impact of what was on. Beth knows a bit around the Virus of course because of school, but yea. It's crazy.
And the other thing that's crazy is that I'm writing this update on my old Dell XPS m1330. I bought it in 2007 and I doubt I knew at the time when I said I'd have it for a long long time that I knew exactly how long. It's been out in the shed for the last couple of years and unused. It's power cord is totally munted and I had to solder it. But it still works, and it works well. It shows just how much PC progress has slowed down that a 13yo laptop is still perfectly usable in this day and age to watch YouTube, do work, have the latest and greast webbrowser on it. I think part of the reason it's lasted so long is because I modified it to keep it extra cool. Heat is the enemy of electronics.
What else? I went and did orienteering with Beth (and Theo) last week - that was fun. Poor Beth, she gets it, but she just gets SO distracted. "Oh look a flower! Oh look leaves" and she's off dancing/playing etc. No concept or care that it's a race. Still both her and Theo have fun and that's the most important thing I think, especially at their age. But as an Adult it's hard to remain calm. C'MON KIDS LET'S GET TO THE NEXT POINT!
I think that'll do, it's 6:40am and it's time to get the kids up and ready for the day. They used to be so keen to get up in the mornings, now it's like dragging boat anchors up from the bottom of the sea...
Tim
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