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I kind of wish that the cyberware and bioware in Shadowrun really existed. It would be awesome. I'd get a sleep regulator, a metabolism enhancer, and some of that titanium bone lacing.

The only part that would suck would be having to shadowrun to get that kind of gear.

I'm all moved in now.

At the moment, I'm brewing a batch of doburoku sake that should be done by next weekend. That just happens to be Otakon weekend. In honor of this, I'm naming the batch "weeabrew." One thing I love about brewing is watching the airlock go NUTS from the yeast fermenting the sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide.

Go, yeasties, go!

Sometimes I wonder if my brain is broken. Last night, I came up with a title for a short story I've been planning to write. It's called "NO BLOOD FOR VESPENE GAS!" It's for my kind of Gonzo take on military science fiction that I've been working on. I wonder if the story can hold up under a title that's really just a Starcraft joke.

Of course, I'm not really writing this to get it published, I'm just writing it to write it.

Check mead for vinegar smell
Wash dishes
Write Cthulhutech adventure
Go to bed early

So I'm a liar. My camera phone is atrocious.

And, my mead is on vinegar watch. It turns out exposing it to too much air won't turn your mead into acid, it'll turn it into vinegar. So far so good, but we've got months to go here.

Work was atrocious, too. I'm going to have some wine, maybe a cigar and go the fuck to bed.

Kat and I racked the mead yesterday. For those not into brewing, that's when you move the mead from the primary fermentation vessel (in this case, a big-ass bucket) to the secondary fermentation vessel (a big plastic jug). We did two things wrong. We dipped the autosiphon into the sediment on the bottom, and we aerated the mead by letting it splash around above the surface of the liquid. Oops. Apparently these are rookie mistakes, and I don't think (at least I hope) that this won't turn the mead into a bitter, nastic (edit: this should be nasty, but I'm keeping it because nastic is such a cool word) acid that will instantly melt away the lips of any who would drink it. I think all it means is that in a few months I might have to rack back into the bucket.

When I popped the fermentation lock out of the bucket, I was hit with the scent of pure, golden deliciousness. It was this heavenly, sweet smell with the yeast adding some pungent element to it. That was a big payoff for me. I spent the week wondering if I did it right. If that smell is any indication, then I did it right in spite of my nervous hand AND it came out really well. I should have tasted some of it, but I chose not to. Kat and I tried a little bit of the leftovers from the bucket, and she liked it. I think I got all of the sediment because it tasted like liquid bread.

The mead right now is a beautiful golden orange color. I'll have pictures of it tonight. Probably with pictures of the rest of the house.

Everyone else, who do you prefer? Joel or Mike?

I just read Mouse Guard: Fall 1152.

I got curious about it when Tom showed me his copy of the Mouse Guard RPG. I'm glad I read it. It was pretty freaking awesome. I'm not going to lie, I'm a softy for adorable little fuzzy creatures. The fact that it appeals to my love of adventure stories and my love of adorable little rodents is pretty amazing.

Oh, and Saxon is awesome.

Raaargh! Ants around the fermenting bucket! I hope they're not getting in. I'm going to have to clean off the bucket and check tonight.

Yeast is fucking fascinating. Now hurry up, you fucking yeast, and metabolize that sugar.

First, a moment of silence for David Carradine.

Okay, so I've got the house, and I've been working on it like crazy. My weekends have been busy but not from working on the house. Last saturday was my cousin's graduation party and this saturday is a trip to Washington, D.C. Tonight. I need to get a lot of shit done, and I don't have a lot of time to do things in.

Here's my to-do list for tonight:

- Clean kitchen up from the mead experiment
- Laundry
- Straighten up the house
- Pitch yeast into the mead

So last night at about 7:30, my brewing gear came in. After refreshing my memory about brewing procedure, I set out to make the mead. First, I sanitized everything. I filled the bucket, put the sanitizer in, stirred it around, and damn, that sanitizer is no joke. Then I got to pour the water out... and lose my grip and pour it all over me. I'm lucky I didn't get it in my eye. I'm just glad I was standing IN the bath tub.

I had to boil a bunch of water, but I didn't have a pot big enough. I decided to do it in shifts. I have a pot that holds two gallons, so I boiled in in three batches. Poured in the honey, stirred the thing for a good two hours (not kidding) to make sure it was all dissolved, and added the yeast nutrient and acid blend. I wasn't sure whether or not to add tanin, but I don't think I need it. It's currently sitting, covered in my kitchen and cooling off so that I can pitch the yeast into it. I'm going to add Cote de Blanc yeast, which should leave the mead pretty sweet. I like sweet wine, but I did think about using champagne yeast to make a dry wine. I'm going to save the champagne yeast for when I make cinnamon wine.

I have set out to do the thing which I have long planned to do.

It is Wednesday. I will take that as a blessing from Odin.

It's storming. I will take that as a blessing from Thor.

I spilled seven gallons of water on myself. I will take that as a blessing from Loki.

The gods have smiled on me. In time I will have mead to offer them.

On a related note, I wonder if coca cola can ferment...

After about nine months of work, penny pinching, careful planning, and a lot of waiting, I bought a house. The house belonged to my grandmother before she died. After her death, nobody in the family could bare to see the house go to a stranger. We found a local community bank willing to work with me, and they gave me a great rate on a 30 year fixed rate conventional loan. I also received a grant from the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta. Yesterday was my settlement, and now I begin the process of moving in. It all seems so surreal.

I've moved my bed over, and tonight will bring over more clothes. This weekend I'll work on books (which accounts for about 80% of what I own), my computer, and my various other belongings.

Also, I need to bring over some incense or something tonight, because the place smells like she's still living there. It's not that I want to erase all traces of her from the house, but it's a bit unnerving to walk in the door and get a big whif of Nana's favorite potpurri. The house is dark and dingy, much like you'd expect when inheriting a house from a dead relative. As wrapped up as I get in that kind of macabre mystique, I'm not Gomez Adams so I'll have to shake out the cobwebs and lighten the place up.

Here are three samples from the papers I have collected from my three students on the subject of the Corpus Hermetica as it relates to them.

( I'm so proud of these children )

Yesterday, in addition to being my birthday, was also the first time my Mage: The Ascension group was able to meet in about a month or so. I really enjoy my character, because he's at the same time Not A Nice Person without actually managing to be a complete jerkface to everyone he meets. He just has incredibly high standards and is pretty arrogant about it. Yay, Order of Hermes! Let me tell you, I enjoy playing this character so much that after a while I went a little bit crazy and started looking for neighborhood kids who were playing Harry Potter out in the field near my house. I introduced myself as Professor Alan Gibson, Magus Adeptus of the Order of Hermes and Servant of Gula. I then put them to work and made them hand in research papers on the Corpus Hermetica. They've recently handed in their papers, which I will grade. I'll post them here tonight as I'm grading them.

I think you'll find their work to be incredibly enlightening. If these children are our future, we will have a very bright one indeed.

I'm going to be 25 in about 25 minutes.

Jesus christ.

I'm reading Generation Kill now, in an effort to branch out. And considering the last three books I read were by John Scalzi, Robert Heinlein and Joe Haldeman, it's not so much branching out as reading the same stuff, except it takes place six years ago and it's all true.

Oh, tangent. A large part of The Forever War by Joe Haldeman takes place in Columbia, MD! Color me amused! There's even a part where the main character goes to Hyatsville to buy a gun and does so without any red tape at all. How quaint! I love when books I read take place in Maryland. Did you know that Sam Fisher from the Splinter Cell games lives in Towson? That's what the Splinter Cell book says!

Anyway, Generation Kill fucking humbles me. All of these characters remind me of people that I know, and hang out with. I haven't seen the HBO mini-series yet, but I'm going to now. I keep reading it, thinking about how the characters seem so real and taking notes on how I can write like this. And then I see the pictures included, and I'm reminded that these people are real and while I was leading a generally self-centered life in America, these men were fighting for their lives. It's humbling. That's the only way I can really put it. It's definitely a great read so far.