Here's the deal. You PM me with your address and the recipe for the cookies you'll be baking by this Friday. On Monday, December 8th, I will shuffle the addresses and PM you back with the handle and address of the person you should ship your cookies to.

Ship your cookies by December 19th. On the 25th, I'll post all the recipes.

Any questions?

Update [2008-12-2 9:58:49 by ObviousTroll]: You should plan on shipping about 3 dozen cookies.

Families are fun!

So, I'm lying in bed an hour ago, Welsh Girl snoring beside me. I've been alternately staring at the ceiling and fighting with one of the cats for bed space for 30 minutes. Knowing that I plan to get up at 6AM, I think to myself "If it's 5:30, I'll be alright. I hope to god it's not 3:30 in the morning." I checked the clock. It was 2:30AM. And that's why I'm up.

three days ago ni and i boiled malt, hops, spices and pumpkin together in his gigantic steel stock pot. we had decided, based on my unreasonably large horde of pumpkins to make some pumpkin beer. it had been fermenting in a large plastic bucket, and it was now time to decant the liquid off of the layer of yeast into a glass jug to let it ferment further. when we got to the bottom of the bucket there was a really thick firm layer of yeast sludge.

and so it began.

So I bottled my first batch of wine. After filling the four bottles I had, I still had about 500ml left in the secondary fermentation vessel. It didn't taste like great wine. But it did taste like wine, very reminiscent of the table wine one can buy in the states for about ten bucks for a four liter jug. I suspect that it will improve with time. I may have bottled it too soon. It was a bit bubbly. I hope the bottles don't blow their corks. Now we wait for months and, or years to see  how it turns out.

I also started a batch of mead. Looks easy. And boy does champagne yeast like honey. I started getting bubbles in less than an hour. It took the apple juice four to five hours to start bubbling. The grape juice took twice that.

Mostly unrelated blather follows.

Reading: "A History of Warfare". Watching: "Waltz with Bashir". Web.

Another entry in the diary of a modest man living an average American lifestyle.

I graduated in 2006, moved to Portland for two years, and now I'm on my way to Bolivia.

Been a long time, been a long time, been a long lonely lonely lonely long long time.

I fully expect our overlords in the UK to enjoy some turkey as well.