Just checking in. I’ve been a bit depressed about the election, and haven’t had much to say — I haven’t done much since then either, so there isn’t much to say — but but it’s time to start putting things back to normal in my life, our lives, so here goes…
Thanksgiving was awesome, if a bit overwhelming. Thursday was a bit quiet, just a small meal with Anne and me, and Ben who was up from Philly for the week (though we did stop at John & Donna’s place for a late dessert), because Friday was our day to get together with Anne’s family, at her mom’s place in Jim Thorpe. Us, and Ben, and all five of Anne’s siblings and their spouses, plus a good chunk of the grandchildren (Ben’s generation) and their spouses, and even a bunch of great-grandchildren running about. We ate, hung out and BS’ed, watched said kids run about… Fun, but a very tiring day.
We brewed on Saturday, making an oatmeal stout with the help of Peter C, another one of the “Quaker kids” who grew up with Emmi and Ben, who’d brewed before but only with malt extracts, and wanted to see how it was done using grain. (A Cornell grad and budding farmer, Peter’s unconventional but very sharp, and surprisingly pleasant to be around — but then he did let me mansplain the brewing process.) We also tapped our rye IPA that we’d made a few weeks before (verdict: delicious), and Anne also did some baking, something that had become pretty much a constant the entire past week, what with Ben home, and Thanksgiving treats to make, and us all being homebodies while the beer brewed… I had no complaints!
Bicycling: Not much going on there, but I did ride Sals with Doug on Sunday. Not much to say except that the both of us were pretty well matched in terms of being out of shape, and we did a few of the less used trails — we visited the old YCC pavilion, which had burned down years ago, but apparently had been rebuilt long enough ago to have sustained damage from a falling tree — and spent a lot of time catching up.
So that was last weekend. Other recent events included a recent trip to Bonn Place, seeing that movie Moonlight at SteelStacks, helping Josh B bottle about 42 cases of beer at Two Rivers last Tuesday, and seeing our friends Ed and Ann last night. We may stop in at Two Rivers tonight, since it’s Bacon Night — I have only a vague notion what that might mean — and some of the home-brew crowd might be there. Life goes on.
