Staying positive this past month hasn’t been easy. Between the corona outbreak, saying goodbye to our 18-yr old cat (vet indicated it was cancer; not unusual given her age), work stresses, a couple of nagging health issues (now thankfully resolved), and my wife and now our son working from home due to the pandemic, March has been challenging to say the least.
I’ve been a WFH type for years now, but I was usually alone during the day (wife and son worked out of the house), but it’s been nice having other people around during the day. Took a lot of doing for my wife’s employer to agree to let her WFH, and my son just got approved for WFH late last week. We worried the most about him, as he’s immune-suppressed (transplant recipient), and if he were to get the corona virus, it could be catastrophic for him. Having them both home has been a big relief.
Going forward, I’ve found that doing beer-related stuff, whether brewing a batch (which I hope to do next week), kegging a batch (got 2 kegged today), has been a lifesaver for my mental health and sanity. Took the last week off from drinking (finishing up a regimen of antibiotics), and I managed to drop several pounds along the way (not sad my clothes are looser). Trying to make more time for stuff I need to get back to: grilling, catching up on reading (beats watching the news), gaming (PC; got the Bioshock series on an 80% off Steam sale a couple of weeks back), working in the garden/yard (that weed-n-feed won’t broadcast itself), and hopefully some baking (need some snacks while Netflixing).
Today is probably the first day in weeks that I feel like a storm hasn’t necessarily passed yet, but a path through is becoming clearer. Makes life a bit easier to deal with.
Northern England has the biggest heads in the UK thanks to the use of sparklers. You won’t get as much head as a wheat beer at 3.5vol but something like this is possible in Leeds, although most people would be wanting a top-up if served that, something like these is more normal :
In both cases there’s more to come, you can see the condition rising from the bottom of the glass.
Careful readers will notice that these are all from Summer Wine brewery, based in the next village along from Holmfirth where the series was filmed, who closed down at the beginning of this year.
Good to see you over here, my friend. Umm, didn’t you forget “making wings” as a way to keep your sanity? :D I do plan to make a starter this week (940) and brew this coming weekend. Also, your weather must be better than ours because I can’t do much outside… it’s been cold, gray, rainy, windy, etc. here for a week. No sun to speak of which makes the isolation worse. I would absolutely work in the yard, etc. but it’s not there yet. Also… same here: wife and youngest son (sophomore at Colorado, Boulder) are both home which is very strange because (like you) I typically work at home with no noise or other distractions. Hang in there and sorry to hear about the cat… pets are family.
Same here with TV & Movies, we’ve been all comedies. Dipped into the sorta way back machine and watching a few episodes of Cheers in the evening. There was some good comedy writing and zingers in that show.
Good to see you over here, my friend. Umm, didn’t you forget “making wings” as a way to keep your sanity? :D I do plan to make a starter this week (940) and brew this coming weekend. Also, your weather must be better than ours because I can’t do much outside… it’s been cold, gray, rainy, windy, etc. here for a week. No sun to speak of which makes the isolation worse. I would absolutely work in the yard, etc. but it’s not there yet. Also… same here: wife and youngest son (sophomore at Colorado, Boulder) are both home which is very strange because (like you) I typically work at home with no noise or other distractions. Hang in there and sorry to hear about the cat… pets are family.
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Likewise, mang. I’m grilling some BSCB (right now) as a warmup for wing making, either this week or next. With my son being home these days for lunch, I’m forced to relearn how to share, especially when it comes to wings. First world problems. ;D Weather is like yours, minus the rain. Hoping to get some yardwork done this week, along with the million other things my wife wants to accomplish. One thing that’s helped us a lot is being able to order groceries from Kroger and pick them up (we have a store within walking distance), and today, we managed to get an Amazon Fresh delivery, and they (Amazon) actually had everything we’d ordered (you wouldn’t think romaine lettuce would be that hard to get, but we’ve struck out the last 2 weeks). Also scored some wings (to supplement the wings I got at Kroger the other day), so wing pron will be posted soon.
I’m hoping to get a therapeutic/mental health brewday in next week; looking at some kind of American lager/pilsner, for when the weather (eventually) warms up. Got a fresh slurry of 34/70, from the batch I kegged yesterday, or perhaps some S-189 needs to make an appearance?