I finally got to brew my beer. I got paid on Friday, so on Saturday morning I took a trip to the beer store to buy my supplies.

I arrived home at 1 pm and by 2 pm I was setting up my brewing station. I finally opened the turkey fryer kit (a gas burner and large pot) that Mary bought me for Christmas. That took 30 minutes at least.

By 3 pm I was laying out all my ingredients, filling my pot with water, and lighting up the kettle. It was such a great setup. Next time I’m going to invite some friends over to play music, hang out and make some beer. That would be a fun brew session.

I had my kettle set up, a little table with all my supplies on it, a lounge chair, my guitar, and a pop up tent to protect me from any threatening weather. Perfect.

And it was perfect. I was so relaxed and in my element. And the beer came out just as it was supposed to. My measurements and timing was perfect and I ended up with a beautiful dark dry stout that is happily fermenting in my mini fridge in the Harry Potter closet.

Oh yes. It was a fine brew day.

The final recipe for my dry stout

This past weekend was a full one. On Friday, Mary and I got to dress up all fancy like and head into Honolulu to see the opera Aïda. The music was beautiful and the voices were amazing. It’s the first time in years I’ve been able to do that and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

I know, I know

Saturday was Burns night. The annual celebration of the Scottish poet Robert Burns, as put on by the Caledonian Society of Hawaii. It’s a night I always look forward to. I get to dress up in my kilt, adorned with a furry sporran, hose, kilt pin, sgian dubh, and a wide leather belt clasped with my bright shiny belt buckle. This I top off with a nice white dress shirt and dress jacket.

The amazing Celtic Pipes and Drums of Hawaii

There are so many good things about Burns night. One of the first is that I get to perform with the RSCDS group doing both Scottish country dancing and highland dancing. It is so much fun. We practice hard and then perform, smiling and dancing and looking like we all know what we are doing. Even when, at times, we don’t. It always works out in the end. The idea is just to have fun.

The Haggis

The Haggis 5 seconds later

Besides the dancing, burns night has so many awesome things, including haggis (oh yeah), Cockaliki soup (although this year it was replaced by beef-barley soup), a beef dinner (unless you are the fish-loving type), bagpipes (not for eating), poetry, and scotch. This year, the scotch was provided by our own RSCDS teacher Bruce. For his 60th birthday, he bought a barrel of scotch from the Isle of Islay in Scottland. It was a beautiful bottle aged 10 years, had a wonderful taste and a little extra kick.

Bruce’s Scotch

It was a fine evening. I enjoyed getting out and socializing and dressing up and dancing and eating and drinking and just having a good time. I think I’ll do it again next year.

My motorcycle has been wonderful. I’ve beeb able to zip around town and to work and back, and save lots of gas doing it. As a reward, I replaced the gross dirty spark plugs with pretty shiny new ones. The bike reacted so well to the new spark plugs, that I decided it was worthy to receive a new title.

 
“Falcon: Millennium Edition“

The job has been going really well. My co-workers have accepted me and we joke and laugh at all the faculty who don’t know how to keep their printers plugged in. My ride to work in the mornings is a little slow because I live across from a school. My ride home is even slower. It’s a 3 mile drive. It takes me 15 minutes to get to work, and 25 to get home. But at least it’s a beautiful view as I wait in traffic.

I can’t take pictures while I ride, but here is a view as I leave. It’s pretty much the same the whole way, only without the condos in the way.

A girl cam in to the office the other day exclaiming that her external hard drive had stopped working. It was a back up of her old laptop that had stopped working. She paid UH $100 to back up the laptop after it died, and now her backup has died. Bummer. She asked me if there was anything I could do. Turns out I couldn’t. It was  dead. But I told her that if her original laptop was dead (not the hard drive), she could just remove the hard drive, buy a cheap $15 enclosure for it, and keep using it as an external hard drive. Her face lit up, she was so happy. Then she was so mad at UH for charging her $100 to back it up. Then she was happy again and offered me these gorgeous avocados for my troubles. 🙂

All I have to do now is wait. With any luck (it would be about time too, right?), I’ll get the full-time position and be a slave to “the system”. 🙂 If it results in receiving more free avocados, I can live with that.

The boys have been back home for two weeks now. I miss having them around. With Gavin having his new iPod though, it’s made it a little easier. We can text each other and send pictures to each other, and when we really want, can do video chat with FaceTime. It’s kind of wonderful. He sends me pictures of lego ships that they built or videos of them playing with the cats. It’s nice to be able to see them when their not here.

To fill the time between texts and FaceTime and iChat, I’ve been working and trying to keep busy. I’m back to the RSCDS dancing, which has been fun. Burn’s Night is coming up soon and we’ve been practicing for that. There’s nothing quite like kilts, bagpipes, scotch, haggis, dancing and socializing.

I haven’t brewed a batch of beer for quite a while. I believe it’s been about 2 months now. Ouch. My next major batch of beer will be brewed the week of February 3rd. I’ve got it all planned out. I’m going to make a Dry Stout and it will be delicious. I’ll finally get to use the gas burner and pot setup that Mary gave me for Christmas. In the mean time, I found out that Mary has been keeping a Mr. Beer kit in her closet for months now. I made her pull it out so we could  dusted it off and brew us some beer. Unfortunately the mix that came in the kit had an expiration date of March, 2009. Considering that they are good for two years after purchase, we decided that it was no good. Luckily we were able to find a replacement mix at Sears of all places. Having a non-expired ingredient kit, we spent some time on Sunday brewing us up a little keg of Mr. Beer. Next week we bottle.

I still haven’t found out if I’ve got a full time job or not. My interview was 2 weeks ago. I’m enjoying working at WCC and am optimistic about getting the job, but I still worry. I’m hoping to find out soon. Until then, I’m kind of on the edge of my seat. Not getting this job would put me right back where I was in November – jobless with no money.

Speaking of work, I’ve been able to ride my own motorcycle to work everyday. It came on the barge a few days after I got back from dropping the boys off on Maui earlier this month. It barely fit in the crate, but all went perfectly smooth. I’m very happy to have it back. Plus, it makes parking at a community college so much easier.

I had the boys here for winter break. It was pretty awesome. The arrived on Gavin’s birthday and left two days after New Years.

For Gavin’s birthday, we took him over to Dave & Busters. We were joined there by his Aunt Beth and two cousins, Chris & Teddy. The night was a total success. The kids loved every minute of it. We piled the booth with presents and cake. After some hours of unleashing the kids on the games, we forced the kids back to the table so we could open presents, light candles, and eat cake. I think we’ll have to do that again in the future.

Gavin received an iPod. Talks very loudly now.

Leif was loving having a real bath. At home, he only has a shower. If he was playing outside and got some dirt on him, he would ask for a bath. Even if it was only 11 am. Only on real busy days where he was too worn out to keep his eyes open did he miss his bath.

Being graceless on ice skates and doing Michael Jackson impressions look similar.

I decided (after Gavin heavily planted the idea in my head) that it would be really fun to take the two kids to the Ice Palace skating rink. I worked extra long on a Wednesday, and planned on taking them out Thursday. We packed extra clothes, jackets, hats, cameras, gloves, and slippers and headed out. Leif had never been ice skating and was excited about the whole ordeal. He thought the skates were the coolest thing ever. Until he walked out on the ice and had to learn to walk all over again. He was very unsure of the whole thing, but caught on very quickly to how fun slipping around and falling could be. Gavin followed us around and had to learn to skate again. We went around and around and around and around. Then we watched the zamboni clean the ice. Then we had hot cocoa and a churro. Then we went around and around and around and around. By dinner time, I had to force Leif off the ice to head for home. He just wanted to skate and skate. He was so exhausted though. He didn’t last 5 minutes in the car before passing out. Even Gavin took a nap on the way home. It was really fun.

Leif takes his first steps on ice skates.

Christmas eve was a good one. With a beautiful meat roast on the table set next to broccoli casserole and yorkshire pudding. We sat around our table, topped with holiday goodness and had a wonderful feast.

Christmas was of course a hit. There were elves and reindeer and a fat Santa. He drank all our scotch and left lots of goodies. Gavin woke up around 5 am to run down stairs. He turned the tree on and oogled all the presents and stockings and gifts brought by Santa. We followed not too long after. Leif was a little tired, but the sight of a yellow bulldozer woke him up.

Classic Christmas morning picture.

The day was wonderful. We opened our gifts and made a giant mess. The grown ups drank coffee and tea and sat with grins on their faces as the kids played with toys. The evening feast left nothing to be desired. Mostly made up of meat pie, it was a sight to be seen.

Leif is exhausted and just realized he can’t go to bed until he eats dinner.

And the figgy pudding. How can you have Christmas without the figgy pudding. We set it ablaze with some Bruddah Kimos. Laughing and excited, we blew out the cake, sliced it up, topped it with whipped cream, and ate until there was only one slice left.

After the big day was over, we had to have more fun, so we went to the zoo. Mary treated us. It’s quite a beautiful zoo. It’s right down at the end of Waikiki. We first walked all through the various bird cages and sanctuaries, which I thought were beautiful. But Leif was looking at the signs that pointed out the direction of the elephants and monkeys and lions and giraffes. If we stood looking at a bird too long, he would tug my shirt and say, “Next page dad”. We moved on.

There’s nothing more magical than blowing bubbles.

We didn’t get too far though. While Mary and I were trying to figure out where the tiger was, Leif was trying to figure out how to get us to let him play on the adjacent playground. He won. We let the kids tromp around while we waited. We were expecting Beth and the boys to meet us there any minute. They did. The kids all were excited and ran around the playground a little more. Then we continued on.

We saw lions, tigers, giraffes, turtles, monkeys (oh how Leif loved the monkeys), hippos, meerkats, lizards, birds, zebras, flamingos, rhinos, peacocks, porcupines, and all kinds of other animals. Leifs favorite by far were the monkeys. When we got in the car to head home, he swung in by the handle and let it be known he was a monkey.

When time was up, the kids had to go back home. Our tickets were all booked and I flew them to Maui. I spent the weekend there with them and then had to kiss them goodbye.