Jake and I entered the 2008 Pacific Cost Brew off with a batch of American Brown Ale we had made about a month ago. The contest was held today, and while we didn't win anything it was a great time. Not to mention we got free t-shirts, tasting glasses, and the opportunity to try a variety of good beers. We are definitely at the low end of the brewers with our very lax production schedule, bottling instead of kegging, and doing partial mash instead of all grain. A couple of brewers had 7+ entries in kegs which was pretty impressive. Everyone was essentially an enthusiast and were all very supportive and encouraging of each others efforts.

The contest was held in Potrero Hill, with tables for the brewers, a couple of tents, a DJ, and surprisingly cooperative weather. We drove over around 12:30 to set up our booth and taste the other entries before the general public started in on them. Molly had made cookies as palate cleansers / bribes and Jake had made a nice label for our bottles so our table area looked pretty good, almost professional one might say. Poured beer till we ran out around 4:30 and the results were announced at 5. Definitely a good experience and hopefully one that we will repeat in the future.

A good day for all. We started letting the cats explore the deck with supervision and Chufi finally found the catnip plant. He was extremely, EXTREMELY, interested. Rachel and I had a nice dinner sitting out on our deck watching the sky change color and get more and more dramatic. Can't beat good food, company, a glass of wine, and an amazing sunset. The pictures speak for themselves I think.

A number of you have been wondering what our place looks like, so at long last I have pictures of a more or less clean apartment. The summary is we are on the bottom floor of a duplex built out over a canyon. It is an 800sf 1 bedroom, with a walk in closet and nice deck that is about 50 feet off the ground. Right in the trees for us!

I recently tried this Pinot Noir from Germany. I now know why the Germans are not renowned for their red wine. The bottle was the best part, with the raised glass painted monkey, a real classic. Sadly the wine tasted kind of like the monkey, which is a tasting note I don't particularly care for in my wine. Alas.

Grilled up a little of the mighty Mike Spencer catfish special. Super easy to do and tastes great. Get yerself some meat rub from whole foods, such as the Blackened Cajun or Jamaican BBQ (in the meat section, not the spice section) or if you aren't into shopping at Whole Paycheck, grab similar products off amazon (Cajun Jamaican.) Get some catfish fillets, which are great because they are cheap, environmentally friendly, and taste great. Lightly butter the fillets then totally cover in seasoning and grill on full heat 3 minutes a side. Very tasty. I tried to use tongs to get flip the fish which was a bad idea, you really want a spatula or more specialty fish grilling equipment. Thanks again to Mike Spencer!

I recently read The Kite Runnerafter hearing it was a good read from my friend Molly. Definitely not disappointed. It is pretty easy reading and I cruised through it in a couple of days, the characters were great, with good pacing and plot. I have no basis for deciding weather any of the portrayals of Afghanistan were accurate or not, but I did enjoy reading them as I know very little about that part of the world and even the fictionalized version is probably a step in the right direction for me. Anyway, a good read, recommended.

Last Thursday Rachel mentioned she was itchy from various bites. I too had noticed I had been bitten a few times. I thought it was fleas given the kind of bites I had. Having just moved to the 'country' in Sausalito it didn't seem too improbable that the cats had gotten fleas, even though they are indoor cats. A quick combing revealed that they hadn't a flea on them. However I did get a tiny little bug about the size of a spec of dust off Wooderson. Looking around on the internet we found there are a variety of mites that bite humans, most notablely rat mites and bird mites. Our cat Wooderson has taken to sitting near the bathroom staring at various spots on the walls and we have heard some scrabbling noises in the past, so we assume we have rats or mice in the walls. Thus we must have rat mites. Gross! While trying to press my ear up against the wall to listen for rodents I found another mite on the wall. Needless to say we stayed up way too late looking up stuff about mites on the internet.

Friday Rachel took our captured and frozen mites to work with her for hopeful identification by the entimologists she works with. However, none of them are mite specialists and there are something like 45,000 known mite species so it is a bit hard to pin down. They did however image the mites for her, so as you can see in the gallery we have a lovely picture of them. All the evidence did point to rat mites though, and a specialist I emailed the pictures to definitely thought it was a rat or bird mite (they are quite similar) after a quick glance at the photos. Great, we have biting mites in the house.

My upstairs neighbor Kevin and I went poking around under the house Saturday to see if we could find any holes the rats could get in. Given we are built out over a canyon this is actually quite an undertaking as you end up on scaffeling 10-30 feet up in the air. I went out and found a variety of animal crap on the scaffeling (cat or racoon) and a good sized hole under our tub with various chew marks on it. I took a bunch of pictures (including jamming the camera up the hole) which indicated there was at least one rat living there, possibly under our tub. We put a rat trap by the garbage thinking that was were they were getting food, but no luck. Unfortunately I managed to get myself and my clothes covered in mites and didn't figure that out for several hours so got super bit up and got lots of mites in the apartment. I sprayed with RAID but Rachel and I slept in the livingroom anyway that night.

Sunday Kevin took the fight to them, we went back under the house with a gallon of spray and lots of mesh wire. He got up on the scaffeling this time and sprayed all over the place, up in the holes, the piles of animal dung (and swept said dung off the scaffeling) and then went and stapled metal mesh over all the holes. I was there for moral support, suggestions, and to call 911 if he fell off the scaffeling. ;) Quite an undertaking! Afterwards I went and sprayed some more in the bathroom in a hole by the toilet and under the baseboard by the tub which also has a hole behind it. I've only squished 4 or 5 mites since then, so hopefully we managed to wipe most of them out. They can't live without their host rodent for more than a couple of weeks so if we keep killing them and the rodents can't get in we should be good. If not, well, I think the landlord will have to call in the professionals.

Quite the weekend.

I'm happy to announced that Rachel and I are engaged to be married. I proposed Saturday in the Marin Headlands and Rachel said yes and we are wonderfully happy about the whole thing.

The longer version is that Rachel had to work Saturday morning, after she got home we had some lunch and she passed out on the couch. I packed a backpack with some snacks and drinks while she slept. I woke her up, and we took Chufi on his first exploratory walk in his harness out on our deck. (Quite the successfully trip out for him.) Despite it getting on in the afternoon and Rachel being super tired I talked her into going out to the Headlands (which is really just a few minutes away from our place in sausalito.) We tried to go to the lighthouse, but it turns out to only be open a total of 9 hours a week. We drove along to Rodeo beach, parked, and walked up and down the beach in the intensely bright sun. We moved the car down to the far lot where the surfers all park (and the restrooms are located) and despite some grumblings started hiking along the coastal trail there. We made it away and set out our picnic blanket and sat our selves down with the Pacific in front of us and coastal scrub and grass and little flowers all around.

We enjoyed our snacks and chatted and admired nature. Which was all well and good - but I was having a hard time getting Rachel to look away from me long enough to get the ring out and get to one knee. I tried getting her to roll down the grassy hill we were on since it would be a funny kind of thing we would do. That almost worked, she just scooted up the hill a little bit and rolled once and no opportunity presented itself. I was pushing for a bigger roll, but apparently there were spittle bugs all around our little grassy spot on the hill. Sensing an opportunity I tried to get our favorite entomologist to find one. She did get up started up the hill away from me, so I pull the ring box out of my pocket and just managed to get it open before she started turning around. Not being quite ready or at one knee and hoping she would quickly get back to the bug hung I stuck the ring behind my back and asked about the spittle bugs. No additional spittle bugs had been found but she started in on what was behind my back, and my clever reply of 'nothing' wasn't believed. However I took charge and pointed out some birds off behind her and in the time it took her to turn and look for the birds and say something to the effect of 'what are you talking about, there aren't any birds over there' I had managed to open the ring box and drop to one knee and when she turned around I proposed. She said yes, and thus we start the adventure!

For you ring afficanados, the engagement ring is a platinum band with channel cut diamonds and a bezel set piece of black Australian opal from Lightning Ridge, lots of color in the stone. It took quite a while to work out the ring as my basic restrictions from years of being together were: No big diamond, no gold, and no idea what the ringsize is. I worked out the kind of opal Rachel likes, but picking out the opal was still hard, they all look different, and I have a hard enough time buying things when I have total knowledge of a product. Eventually after a might search I found one that was great. Working out the ring size of someone who doesn't wear rings on a regular basis was pretty tricky too, I ended up a tiny bit big, but easy enough to get it sized down.

I think the best reaction award goes to my Mom who did a happy freakout, than ran off and in a flash had grabbed a sealed card that was addressed to us. We opened it to discover it was a congraluations on getting engaged card - dated 2005 - that she had been saving for us since then. Classic.

I've been trying to get glass doors for two bookcases from Ikea that we recently got for the new apartment. I didn't think it could be that hard, yet somehow it is. Emeryville didn't have them in stock when we got the bookcases, and they wouldn't have fit in the car if they were in stock, so I've been trying to get them for the last couple of weeks. Buying them online isn't an option because the shipping costs more than the items. ($200+ dollars to ship to flat pack doors? That's just crazy talk!) The online site does allow you to check stock for each store, which is nice, and I've been doing that. Until recently the doors were always out of stock when I had the time to drive over there. But today they were in stock in East Palo Alto so I thought I'd take a long lunch and drive down there and pick them up, and grab some sweedish food while I was at it. I didn't want to have there be any stocking problems so I called the store to double check and was redirected to the toll free order by phone number. Unfortunately they wouldn't let me buy them over the phone and then go pick them up, but was assured they were in stock. I drove down there (which took ages due to google screwing up the directions, doh!) and eventually found an employee who looked up the doors and told me there were 6 left and where I could find them in the self serve section. I hussled over there and sure enough there was the bin with the label for the doors I wanted - but no doors. I found another employee and asked them why they computer said there were six doors but non actually existed. They said it was strange but maybe they were still on a palate up in the high towering shelves and I should really talk to someone else. I found the person I was supposed to talk to, and they went and checked the bin to confirm I wasn't just a retarded customer and sure enough there were still no doors to be found. The palate of doors up in the shelves idea was dismissed because a palate of doors would be more than six. The conclusion was that the inventory system was just wrong and what can you do? Totally unconcerened about several hundred dollars of inventory missing. Maybe Ikea shoots the messenger, because when I eventually got back to work they were still listed as available on the website. Highly dissapointing given Ikea's usual good experience.