Hows my little Bee?

I'm sorry about the lack of posting lately, I know my legions of loyal fans are really perturbed about it so hopefully this new onslaught of photos will catch you up on the last month-ish of my life without much worry. I would like to let everyone know that I have a pepper to be sprouting on one of my plants in the grow room and about 8 more sprouts which are all ready for transplanting in about...2 months? I don't know. The following post is going to have some girth, you've been warned.

First off! I would like to thank The Staab-man for his lovely visit to us. Laura and I were convinced none of our friends would make it down here to see our lovely abode. Jason proved these skeptics wrong. I took this photo to prove that he was in fact in our house.

While he was here (for a glorious four days mind you) we did a whole bunch. One thing was stopping by Lincoln's tomb. Did you know last week he celebrated his 200th birthday? Another fun fact, not too many people approved of Lincoln during his presidency it wasn't until he was martyred that people started to think maybe he really was an excellent president. That said we also visited his Museum in Springfield Il. which is a really crappy and ugly city which unfortunately holds some historic value.

As you can see it would be a very pretty place to visit in the summertime, we plan on going again so you should be down here when me make our way there!

Me with Lincoln's Family.

It took me a while to convince Jason that this photo NEEDED to be taken. Note the Name and its correct spelling. This is in a cemetery if you can't guess from the photo.

We also completed a puzzle. Its hard to be exciting when you have to get up early for work.

Laura and I saw Trampled By Turtles a few weeks ago at the winery that is about a mile down the road from us. We are starting to get to know the owners down there which is excellent. They should hopefully be an excellent resource for grape growing knowledge, and very friendly people as well.

Last weekend we headed up to Milwaukee to visit our pals Matt & Ashley. It was excellent.

I haven't consumed that large of a quantity of beer in many moons and it was really excellent. We hit up two brewery tours which were pretty cool. We did the Miller Brewing Company's tour as well as a small one (as they put it: Miller will spill the amount of beer they ship annually on Monday) called Lakefront brewing. They were really different tours and I found the Lakefront one more informative since I am a fledgling homebrewer, that and we got more beer. The Miller tour was more of a promotional event which was stupid because obviously if I am there, touring, I know of miller and their beer. But none the less it was interesting to wander around the brewing campus and watch some of their dated videos and gawk at the sheer volume of beer they can produce in a single day.

This is the worlds largest Miller billboard, effin huge is one way to describe it.

These are their brewkettles. See them going all the way in back there too? This is only one of three miller breweries.
Did you know that High Life was miller's first beer? Did you know that it tastes pretty much exactly like Miller Lite?

Natually after completing two beer tastings on a stomach filled with nearly nothing you can guess how the crew was feeling, at 2pm. Matt and I thought it would be an excellent idea to see how long that can go for in a single day (late into the night we discovered) good times.


Changing gears. Jinx took a hiatus from playing fetch with us after the move down to Indiana, and then to Illinois. So after I complained to her that I miss playing fetch with her she decided a few weeks later that she too missed it and has been playing with us almost on a nightly basis with Laura and I. So here is another video of our cat playing fetch. Right now she is actually doing something new and weird and laying in a sunbeam sleeping rather than under the covers of our bed!

Laura and I have been busy breaking in our house too!
She managed to make our oven look like a murder scene by dropping a pizza face down (of course) onto the door when pulling it out. I was busy consoling her to remember to nab a photo of the initial carnage but this one is the oven door.

Despite what you might think, I too am not perfect and while making a candle the container I was heating the wax in exploded all over our kitchen and I had wax & glass EVERYWHERE. I can't decide which was worse, the fire I couldn't put out (please note the note to self) or the waxy mess that took me over two hours to clean up. Note to self: Get a new legit wax melting container before attempting this again.

On Friday I had my wine making knowledge turned upside down by a couple of Laura's Co-Workers, the things that they told me were the equivalent of telling a 25 year old they've been putting their pants on the wrong way for their life. It's still sinking in.

Last night I cooked up a great Valentine's dinner, and hooked Laura up with some excellent wine and cheese for a Birthentines present.

All is well it oakwood!