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7:08:50PM on 05/03/2010
4 Comments
| | Tearing Off The Rear-View Mirror
It has been nearly seven months since my last blog, once again I blame Facebook for distracting me. I vow to do better in the future. So let's see what has happened in those seven months: I brewed more beer, I turned 31, Christmas, 2010 hit, Erin turned 31, and oh yeah, we announced that we are having our first baby!
Our little guy (name yet to be revealed) is due May 10th, but we had to bump that date up to Wednesday May 5th (which is this Wednesday!). Erin and I couldn't be more excited. It has been a long road to get to this point. Erin and I have been together for over 13 years now and I remember back in early 2006 telling her I was ready to start a family. Problem was that our lives at the time were total chaos. We were living in Dallas, I was still working crazy long hours in the video game industry, and Erin was working long hours managing a photography studio. Our schedules were so demanding that we could in no way justify raising any children in that environment. This was the key factor in deciding to move back home to St. Louis.
Erin and I quit our jobs in Texas and moved back to St. Louis. Roadblock #1: "Crazy lifestyles in-conducive to raising family", cleared. Enter Roadblock #2 "Sell a house in middle of this country's biggest housing crisis". Nothing ever seems to go as planned and if you are familiar with our story, you already know that it took 18 months to sell our house in Texas. During that time we lived with my in-laws and our lives were in complete limbo. We had no idea when our house would sell, and we couldn't bring a child into a time of such uncertainty.
Over a year went by, I changed jobs to my current position, and Erin's photography business took off. In May 2008 the house in Texas sold. We finally got past Roadblock #2. By June we had bought and moved into a new house. Everything was good to go right? Wrong. Roadblock #3: "Conception" slapped us in the face. I will not go into any personal details but we spent month after disappointing month finding out that wasn't going to be easy for us. Finally in September 2009 I got the news Id been waiting to hear for well over a year. Erin called me while I was at work and told me that she had gotten a positive test result. We were finally pregnant.
So here it is May 3rd 2010, well over four years since Erin and I decided we wanted to start a family. I am less than 48 hours from meeting my son for the first time. I spent a lot of time this weekend reflecting on the long road and many sacrifices that led us here, and I have to admit I am really glad that path is behind me. We come to a new path on Wednesday, a new life begins for us and I cant wait to greet it with open arms.
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3:56:34PM on 07/06/2009
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| | Beer Unveiling!
Over four years ago Sean and Marty bought me a starter beer making kit as a wedding gift. The kit moved down to Dallas, back to St. Louis in our temporary situation, then finally into our house last summer. It went unused until this May.
Boycotting AB because they sold out St. Louis and the rest of America caused me to look elsewhere for my beer. Luckily an alcohol mega-store, Friar Tuck, opened up close by and my options were many. Problem is it gets expensive. I started to get more and more interested in making my own, but I was always very intimidated by the process. I had the equipment, but I had no idea where to begin. Sean planned a trip to St. Louis around Memorial Day, so I decided to take advantage of the situation and finally dive into the world of homebrewing . Sean has several batches under his belt and did a great job teaching me the basics. We went to the local homebrew shop and I decided I wanted to try an Amber Ale recipe. We picked up the necessary ingredients and extra equipment and went back to my house. The whole process took about three hours and I had a lot of fun along the way. We cooked the batch and put it in the primary fermenter.
Then came the hard parts, waiting and naming. Beer, on the low end, takes about four weeks until it is ready to drink. After ten days in the primary fermenter I transferred (or racked as I have come to learn it is called) the beer from the primary fermentation bucket into the secondary fermenter. Then a week or so after that I had to rack the beer out of that fermenter into a bottling bucket which I made out of the original bucket I had gotten as a wedding present. The five gallons of beer we had made ended up making 44 bottles of beer. The bottling and labeling part of the process was definitely a labor of love. I spent several days designing the label, but I had a ton of fun doing it. Once the design was finished and printed off it took me over four hours to waterproof the labels, cut them out, and glue them on all the bottles. It was worth it though as the end result was very well received (more on that later).
As mentioned above another hard part of making the beer is naming it. I stewed over this for days trying to come up with something unique, relevant and fun. Then one day at work not only a name, but an entire theme of beers came to me. Growing up I had a ton of pets. Everything from dogs to rabbits to iguanas. To some people on our street we were known as the Chinnici Zoo. So I thought "what better way to memorialize all my beloved pets then to name my various brews after them"? After I came up with that concept, ideas for my current beer and several to follow just started pouring out. I decided to name the first after one of my family's favorite dogs, Reggie. For some reason or another I decided to use his more formal name Reginald, and thus Old Reginald Red was born.
I also had to name the brewery. That came easy to me. Sometime in high school Marty decided to try brewing in his basement closet. His most famous creation was Evil Coach Ale (well it is famous in our small triangle anyway). He was the first of us to start brewing. Sean then picked it up in college/grad school and has done several batches and continues to brew. The two of them knew of my interest to start and bought me the kit for my wedding. When we would bum around in highschool we came to call ourselves the "Three Schifosos" which I was told roughly translates from Italian into "Rat Bastards". And thus the name "Three Rat Bastards Brewery" was born. The logo honors the influence my friends had on me and also incorporates my Italian heritage with the green, white and red rats.
In July Erin and I threw a "Brew and Que" party at the house. I was to debut Old Reginald to my friends and family. It seemed to go over really well. Since then this hobby has become an obsession. I have spent many hours researching and learning everything I can about beer, brewing beer and using more advanced techniques. I currently have fifteen gallons of beer fermenting in the basement (Apfelwein, Chocolate Stout, and a second batch of Old Reginald). This weekend I am going to make my fifth batch, which will also be my first partial mash which involves going beyond just using a kit. I set the bar pretty high with my first beer and am excited to see how my current and future ones turn out. Stay tuned to see what they are called and how the labels turn out. I'm really excited about the label for the stout!
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3:48:49PM on 05/12/2009
1 Comments
| | Back To Blogging
I have been wanting to update this blog for a long time, and it has needed it badly! The problem is that I felt like we were so far behind on posts that I had to catch everyone up with the details of what is going on in our lives. So I am going to write this brief post to very quickly summarize what has gone on since the last post. There were some notable birthdays, happy birthday Mom, Stephen (21!), Sam (8), Denise, Alex (6), Kellie, and Mike. Then of course there were the two big ones...Erin and I both turned the big 3-0!
Happy belated Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years to everyone. On January 15th Erin and I celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary. On January 20th our country swore in its 44th president Barack Hussein Obama and our national deficit has quadrupled since. The economy continues to spiral downward and the best solution to solve debt is to create more of it! As predicted in a previous post, defense spending is on the chopping block. Here's to hoping I stay employed. Also in January our good friends from Texas, Ryan and Angela Conlon, decided to venture into Cardinal nation. Ryan got a job with my team at Boeing and the two of them moved up in February/March-ish. Welcome to St. Louis Ryan and Angela!
In March I went to the annual Game Developer's Conference in San Fransisco. This time Erin got to come with me. We got to spend the evenings together and enjoy some of the San Fransisco sights. Mid-week Erin went to Modesto to stay with her cousins and I joined them Friday. We stayed there through the weekend and some great memories were created!
April saw the start of softball season, Cardinal baseball, and wedding season for Erin. Marty and Erika Kennedy also welcomed their first-born, Patrick, in April. Congrats to both of them.
May is here now and the weather is finally cooperating. We have had a lot of rain, but a lot of really nice days too. It has been a great feeling going out and mowing my own lawn again, and I am still very grateful that Erin and I are done with our crazy house situation in Texas.
Okay I think that roughly covers all the bases. Now that I have this post out of the way it will be easier for me to comment on current events. When the thought crosses my mind to write a blog about something that I have experienced, observed, or read about that thought will no longer be set in the queue of forgotten blogs to rot. My apologies for missing any event or birthday. Hopefully Erin will respond with anything I have failed to mention.
Godspeed
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