Hows my little roof?

Ever since we moved into our little home in Oakwood, Laura and I have said, we need to get a new roof on our garage. This weekend we made it happen. Holy Shit. It is expensive and ridiculously hard work. I now understand why people pay to have this done to their homes...and we just did our small garage!

Here it is in pictures:

This is why we reshingled. They were plainly in very poor shape. And a large patch was installed incorrectly as shown)

My Dad the hero with his roofing shovel/rake.

The roof shovel/rake thing was amazing, If you're ever going to peel off shingles from a house using anything that isn't this or hired work you're wasting energy and time. It has claws and a lever so it pulls up nails while tearing the shingle off the roof. We saw a couple of brands at the store and I recommend using the one that has the best leverage underneath.

Laura was the shingle redistributer/shingle maid

My Dad and I had clashing ideas on how to peel off both the top layer and the unexpected  second layer. He and Laura liked peeling them off one big chunk and layer at a time. I didn't mess around, if I had to bend over for this shit I decided it was all coming at once. The negative to my speed was I made a bigger mess.

Here is Laura fishing shingles out of our Dogwood bush.

"Laura, look like a badass with your hammer."

One fun thing when re-roofing is finding out what lies beneath. Turns out the gutter I hung a couple of years ago pulled the facia off the house a bit and a couple of main boards started to rot. Good thing I bought some extra boards just in case. This repair work slowed us down quite a bit on Saturday.

The hardest part is over! Getting 20 packs of shingles on the roof, via ladder.

I just posed for this picture, Laura and Dad did everything.

Day two Laura and I both woke up tired and sore. My Dad said his back hurt, and I was actually surprised that he showed up for a second day, he left us after day one looking just shy  of a zombie. We worked for 11 hours on Saturday and another 8 on Sunday. Laura's legs were throbbing from squatting to pick up all of the old and new shingles, and my shoulders hurt from taking so many pictures, and lifting my lemonade to my own mouth so often.

Progress! Cutting shingles around vents blows.

Before

After

So, if you need someone to help you re-shingle your house, call someone else. But! I will help you rip off old ones because that was actually kind of fun. As many of you know, I hate bending over. Squatting, crawling around on my hands and knees (unless its an obstacle course of some kind), and bending ranks right up there with listening to country music for more than 45 continuous seconds. On the bright side, the weather was great, it was sunny with temperatures in the high 50's and we actually wore sweatshirts for awhile each day.

We are both thrilled this job is behind us. Now it's time for bed. I'm exhausted.

Hows my little Jack Frost?

This week has been sort of a sad week for me. After much of March and February hanging out in record high temperature territory everything in our yard started to grow way earlier than usual. It was exciting and everything looked great! This week that all took a turn for the worse. The temps outside took a nosedive and for two nights in a row we had more seasonal temperatures of the high 20's.

This cold snap completely demolished one of my grape varieties (marquette), and at least gave a really good scare to the other variety (noiret).

The first 3 vines are Marquette. Lets hope they start pushing some new buds in the next few days!

These cute little guys are Noiret grapes, I covered them with a small towel and they were largely spared from the carnage.

This guy was the big survivor, probably due to its proximity to the house bleeding off enough heat at night to keep it alive.

These are our pathetic miss canada lilacs, every year they get some sort of fungus on the leaves and end up looking pretty much dead all summer, but they have such pretty pink blooms that Laura and I haven't had the heart to dig them up. If they don't recover we might finally have our excuse. This year we were probably just two days away from full pink blooms, that one on the right would have probably bloomed the day after the freeze :(

Notice there is like one branch that has some life on the bottom.

The cold damage was so bad it actually got our tree too. There was some good growth going happening this year and it zapped about half of our leaves. There is a really large Sycamore in town that looks awful, I hope it survives.

The vineyard was not spared from the cold either. Every year we always worry about frost damage but our cold snap actually didn't produce a hard frost, almost none at all. It was cold enough to pretty much freeze our new growth. The freeze killed off nearly all of the new shoots, as long as we don't get another one in a few weeks the vines should hopefully recover just fine just with a smaller crop. Regardless, the bright green nice looking vineyard is now pretty sad looking.

In exciting news I just planted around 100 onions! They should start sprouting in a few days, Yay!

Hows my little quitter?

Last week marked the beginning of an interesting challenge for me. In preparation for my upcoming half marathon and Tough Mudder I've decided to give up drinking alcoholic beverages.

At least that's how the idea started initially. Then after some thought on the subject I decided that was a bit extreme, after all why on earth would I give up something I enjoy so much? (spoken like a true addict!) So I revised it to one drink per week, which is much more reasonable. Kinda.

To a lot of people this wouldn't be a challenge at all, but I bet most of them are either under 21, scarred by alcohol abuse, pregnant, or really enjoy drinking pop or some other sugary beverage. I am none of those people.

Several years ago I pretty much stopped drinking caffeine, you might remember this post, and my heart has thanked me since then. Then more recently I solidified my distaste for soda when I began my vendetta against corn. You might be surprised to find out that after giving up soda for a long time it starts to taste pretty gross. This is coming from a former Mountain(MTN?) Dew fiend. Oh, if I drink too much pop my stomach becomes very difficult to be attached to, so that's a big deal too.

Part of my logic for temporarily giving up booze was to help me drop a few pounds before either event. That is a decent amount a daily calories I would be shedding from a typical week. But if last week is any indicator, it just means I'm replacing my drinks with juice, which probably has more calories per drink (not confirmed). Not to mention drinking too much juice (more than on big glass) lands me a quick unpleasant date with our toilet.

Milk is definitely out of the question.

So I'm not left with many choices, I guzzle water all day at work and as you can expect it gets pretty boring to consume. I don't hate it but, well I'm sure everyone can relate. Which brings me to why I enjoy alcoholic beverages in the first place. I spend all day drinking water and really nothing else, so coming home and cracking open a beer or a bottle of wine with Laura is a great way to kick off an evening. Somedays I switch to a glass of whiskey, or make cocktails or just stick with another beer, on occasion I don't imbibe anything all day. Usually I have 1 - 2 drinks at home, just like the doctors tell people. Trying new drinks is something of a hobby I've developed, in fact I love talking about it with people who share the same interest.

By now I'm sure most of you have started to wonder, wait a second. Doesn't this guy work at a winery? I do! So I have made a couple of exceptions, my second most important rule (after my one drink per week rule), I'm not giving my my essential work drinking. I will be giving up my nonessential work drinking though. Making wine does have it's perks from time to time. The last exception is I will be attending a bachelor party during my alcohol abstinence, this is my time to enjoy as many as I see responsibly fit.

So I'm a week into it...hows it going? It's a surprising challenge. Ever since high school I've always had some sort of beverage that altered my state of being in hand while hanging out socially. For a long time it was Mountain Dew, then in early college I jumped to nearly every energy drink that exists, and sometime after I turned 21 it was wine, then beer, and now its just about anything but tequila. I've been reading that us Gen Y'ers (or millennials) prefer to try new things rather than stick to one brand. This statement defines me, I love seeking out new interesting beverages, and talking about them with my friends and family is something else I enjoy. I've now interacted with friends and family socially on three separate occasions and already I cheated my own rule and had two drinks in one evening, we grabbed takeout from a place that had all sorts of good beers on tap and I couldn't just sit there and wait for the food, while my friend had a beer, then back at his place later I had another. But, I did good on easter, although the riesling would have gone much better with dinner than the lemonade. The hardest part so far is I've got some nice looking Homebrews from BockFest chilling and teasing me in the fridge, as well as a whole slew of Rye Whiskeys that I am itching to line up in a tasting.

I'm excited I'm staving off my imbibing for awhile, it thus far has been an interesting mental challenge I don't often get to put myself through. But I'm sure this is nothing permeant, I can't wait for those post-race brews after the Tough Mudder. Just 47 days to go...

Hows my little GoatFest?

BockFest 2012 has come and gone and it was a giant success by anyone's standards.

This year I was on top of things and spent a good amount of time working on my logo, I'm excited to say that this goat will be the face of BockFest for the conceivable future. I was very flattered when Chaz asked me to put it on a shirt, and then so many people bought shirts!

Little Jayda Mailey the cute rockstar, she is as big as my Stein.

We mixed it up and held the event at Sleepy Creek Vineyards. I think it was a good thing too, I think we had close to 40 people attend. Jon got the event started off with a bang, literally. One of his bottles exploded in the middle of the night before the event and shot beer and glass everywhere.

We kicked it off with a tasting of our NINE beers, that's right nine. I didn't have much to eat the whole day and I was certainly feeling it after all of those small tasting cups. As a whole we had a  great batch of beer, but the Winner was Zack and Michelle Frazier's RyeBock. Hopefully before BockFest 2013 I will have a nice stand with names made for the travelling Stein trophy.

The DoppleWeizen Laura and I made was inky black, boozy, and bitter. I learned a valuable lesson with this beer which was a little bit of dark roasted grain goes a long way. I used a pound and a half of dark roasted wheat, and should have used maybe a half of a pound.

Now seems to be a good time to mention that although I did carry my camera around with me I didn't snap too many pictures of the event.
My favorite part of BockFest is the obstacle course and this year we threw in a new twist. Having it at Sleepy Creek I felt I should embrace the location and we ran the course between two rows of vines. The course started with hatchet throwing and turned to a balancing act where we scrounged up some old railroad timbers over which we balanced, jumped, some fell, and laughed our way through the course. The champions this year were "Beej's & Cream 2" Brian Johnson and Jason Staab, which was shocking because they came in last place the year before.

Stick a hatchet, pour your beer in the cup, miss it and drink!

This is not live action, Jon managed to stick one this way, and yes it counted.

We can't forget the food, oh goodness the food...There was so much! Last year nearly everyone brought dessert, which was great, but by the end of the night no one wanted anything to do with sweets. This year Laura made some great brownies and cookies and everyone else made food that filled. There was Chili, Brats, Cabbage, Pretzel Bites, Rueben dip, different yummy breads, deviled eggs (with a green olive on top!), and more! For whatever strange reason I didn't feel like eating much of anything so I didn't stuff my face but everything I ate I loved!

The Penis stick made a triumphant return for caramelizing the beers at the fire pit and Zack's dopplebock cigars were a big hit.

Abby and Matt can stick hatchets in the dark, without seeing the target.

Everyone had a great time and I am looking forward to next year's BockFest (if the world dosen't end first). I want to thank all of our fantastic brewers for making a beer to essentially give away, all of the cooks of the delightful foods, Sleepy Creek for letting us overrun the place into the night, my friends who drove a long way, and my lovely wife for putting up with me constantly talking about the event and putting up with me in general.

Hows my little thrower?

This past Christmas Laura and I went to my Dad's annual office christmas party and I spent the majority of the time throwing hatchets and throwing knives in the basement. Of course this was while enjoying several whiskey and cokes, a fantastic combination...right? Sharp things flying through the air fueled by booze? Perfect.

So of course after I sort of got the hang of it I couldn't shake the idea that I needed to do this at home. Just in time for BockFest 2012 I decided it was high time I build myself a throwing target!

Armed with some sturdy strap hinges and 4x4's I got my construction underway. We have a small house and not much storage so having it fold up was as important as it being sturdy.

Here are some different shots of the construction. I used some burly 6" hex screws to fasten everything together. The main posts are 5' long and its around 24" wide. After the initial construction I realized I needed a center support beam to hold up smaller sized stumps. I think (and hope!) the 4x4's will hold up to abuse but I've already stuck a hatchet into one of the 2x4 arms holding up the stump and now I'm not sure how long those will last. Perhaps I will add some metal on the ends for protection? 

This project taught me about the wonder of a carriage bolt, turns when you countersink one you should use a square hole (still not sure how to make one of those) not a round one or you'll have the hell of a time I did trying to get your lock nut even remotely tight.

Laura and I are starting to get the hang of hatchet throwing and I'm having a great time trying to get them to stick from various distances. This weekend a guy told me that anything that sticks from over 50 feet away is sheer luck, so I'm out to eventually prove him wrong. Throwing from around 40 feet away is really hard because controlling how many rotations is tricky not to mention I feel like I'm aiming about six feet above the target just to get a hit.

 Right now I'm still working on consistency at 15ish feet but I'm getting there!

After just a few takes, this is an un-photoshopped view from the target!

There is something incredibly satisfying about throwing something into a big hunk of wood and having it stick. I would say it makes me feel pretty manly but Laura seems to enjoy it too, and I'm not sure manly is what she feels. I think it will be a fun way to burn some time (while being active!) as well as another way to have fun with friends when they come over.

Thanks for getting me hooked Al! I got my target idea from this site!

Hows my little free hat?

So here is a long shot of hope to my friends of the world. About a month ago I won a free hat! During our adventures in Boston my favorite Miz. Fuller took us to a Goorin Brothers hat store and we found ourselves +2 hats on our way out. Later I liked them on the Facebook and noticed they gave away a hat every Friday (as if Friday's weren't already great enough).

This particular Friday they challenged their faithful fans to write about an adventure with their Goorin hat. Since thus far my adventures have been quite limited as my hat was quite new. So I embellished some past adventures I've had at work and beyond for this story:

My first Goorin adventure was in Cambridge, MA. It came after a stop at Harpoon Brewery where we bought a growler of their delicious beer. We then carried the growler all over the city sight seeing and our last stop was Goorin Brothers for my first Goorin purchase. But the adventure won't end there. My Next adventure with the seaworthy hat is big. With my seaworthy hat I am going to wear it proudly at work where people will exclaim, "Gee Tony where did you get that sharp hat." I will tell them proudly as we are talking about the wines I have crafted, Goorin Brothers! and I will tell them of the many adventures I have had wearing this hat. Such as, I hand-picked 3 tons of grapes on the hottest day of the century wearing this hat, This hat protected my dignity when I was caught skinny dipping in the pond, This hat fell into a vat when I lost my footing on a ladder and nearly added my own musk to this wine, This hat protected me when the press exploded and shot skins and seeds at everyone, no one was hospitalized, This hat earned me 15% more tips, This hat stayed on my head as we willed a funnel cloud to pass over our heads, This hat has contributed to at least one thousand 'private moments', This hat saved me from showing my early receding hairline...early, This hat was there when I stumbled down the slippery slope when I was collecting Maple Sap, I didn't spill a drop, This hat was the only thing about me that looked good after I survived a trip to Las Vegas, This hat was there for me when I needed a darker place to nap after all of these adventures and the untold adventures as well. My friends will love my wine, my hat, and my adventures, they will return to hear more, see my hat, and they will be wearing their Goorin telling their stories long after my time has passed.

Sure enough out of 70+ stories they chose mine! I thought for sure I would loose to the one about the dogs but I didn't! 

So to my new friends at Goorin Brothers, thank you for giving me a free hat, armed with my bit of knowledge about how social marketing works I will make sure this $100 hatgift will broadcast a personal marketing scheme money can never buy. In fact It's already begun, my faithful few blogging friends will read this, not to mention the automatic upload to facebook. I meant it when I said I will proudly tell my customers at the winery where I got this hat. I'm no longer a fan of Goorin Brothers but an ambassador to the brand.

Thank you, and you're welcome.