Sick sick sick

This week nothing has gotten done, because I have had a cold, or something like that, which knocked me on my ass for a few days of coughing sneezing puking misery. It probably wouldn't have lasted so long, but you know what's a great thing to do when you're sick? Go camping! Go camping somewhere even colder than your own uninsulated drafty house. That'll do it.

Anyway, home now and finally feeling a bit better. No, I haven't had a flu shot. I've never had a flu shot - I don't really believe in getting vaccinated against things that wouldn't permanently maim or kill me (so I might feel differently about the flu shot when I am old or otherwise compromised). As far as I can tell, I get the flu about as often as people I know who get the shots religiously. A reminder to take a few days off isn't such a bad thing, except for the house going to hell in a handbasket while I'm lying around with the cats. At least someone took care of the chickens for me, and we have so many eggs that I'm wishing I could sell a couple dozen.

New Beer

After a long discussion about how we shouldn't start any new projects until we've closed up all the house's open wounds, and how finishing things is good, and blah blah blah, I hear a funny noise while I'm cleaning up in the garage and whoops! My lovely husband has started ripping out old plaster and lath. Oh well - that rotten plaster was pissing me off too. You should probably know that taking off a door (that has no porch or overhang) and replacing it with only a badly installed security screen, will cause your plaster and doorframe to rot. Consider yourselves warned.

Previous owners of our home were not too bright about this sort of thing. We're taking this serendipitous opportunity to fix some really bad wiring too.

If you're not into home improvement, hey look a bunny!

He's got some ears on him, that one.

The main event last week was to execute the next step of turning this:

into some form of drinkable hooch. I was all afraid that it had gotten screwed up when the gasket blew and the airlock fell off, but when I opened it up it smelled good. I have to keep reminding myself of something my SCA brewing mentor used to say (and probably still does - hi Henry!) - peasants brewed every day...and they somehow managed it without food grade plastic buckets and degrees in biochemistry.

The next important step in any brewing process is to pour yourself some of whatever you brewed last time. It's a good reminder that this crazy stuff actually works, and gives you something to do while you stand around siphoning proto-booze.

Usually I like to use a tourniquet to tie the siphon to the bucket handle, so that it doesn't dip too low into the muck at the bottom (as a medical professional, I have that sort of thing lying around. Afterwards I checked its blood type) but this time I forgot to get the siphon, so I had to just stand around drinking beer while holding the racking tube. Worse ways to spend an hour, I'm sure.

The last step in brewing is to wash up all your gear to avoid incurring the wrath of others in the household. In the past I would have thought that no one could get angry at a person who makes alcohol appear, but I was wrong...plus, that muck at the bottom of your primary fermenter gets really hard to scrub off after a while. Next week, bottling!

Next Year

I told all the chickens last week that if they didn't start laying again, I was gonna eat them, and that I was already shopping for their replacements online. It worked! Four eggs already in the last couple of days...which is good, because I don't think I'll have the mental cycles to raise a new group of hens this year.

New Year's Resolutions that I intend to keep:
Stay up to date with all my schoolwork. I'm not paying good money to waste time. Go for a walk at least twice a week. Drink at least as much water as I drink coffee. Visit my grandma more. Make more homebrew beer and mead.

Resolutions that would be nice, but seem pretty damn unlikely:
Learn to read katakana and hiragana (phonetic japanese). Do yoga (more than one sun salutation a month. Eat the vegetables in the fridge, rather than letting them get old and giving them to the chickens. Write posts here more regularly.

Rabbit Rex

Exciting events this week: I ate the first pomegranate off our tree, and I got a new rabbit, who will be replacing the Californian as the big rabbit around town. This one is a black otter standard rex, and he is the softest thing I have ever touched. I haven't managed to get any good pictures of him yet, but he looks a lot like this one:

I really wanted to like the Californian and New Zealand rabbits, but I just don't like those pink eyes. Marta (the flemish/NZ cross doe) wouldn't have anything to do with him either. Can't say I blame her, those red eyes would creep me out too. He's up for sale now, and I hope he finds a better home.

So far the rabbit project has had it's ups and downs - on the upside, they are damn cute little things, and the garden has been loving the fertilizer. On the down side, all efforts to breed have been a fail. Marta wouldn't accept any advances from the rabbit who was supposed to breed her, but when Mochi squeezed through a gap and came to visit, of course that worked. Unfortunately, she had that unplanned litter on one of the coldest nights of the year, and I hadn't known to get her a nest box. None of them made it, and I felt so horrible when I found them in the morning. Mochi is a sweet little thing, but he'd better stay in his own part of the hutch from now on.

In a couple of months I'll likely be adding another rex doe to the herd, and then we'll see what happens from there. I hadn't really planned to have more than one male and two females as permanent residents, so bringing Mochi home kinda threw a wrench in there. I can't get rid of him, though - even the husband sneaks out to pet him!

Fugue

I've been in a bit of a funk lately about the house. I love the place, don't get me wrong, but sometimes it seems like things are going wrong faster than I can fix them, and I'm tired. School and clinical work is a huge time commitment, the husband is working insane hours, and when I'm not doing prenatals, homework, or at a birth I'm just so damned tired that all I want to do is read some fluff and pet the cats. Right before we left for Japan, I discovered that the front bathroom shower is leaking massively under the house (all the other showers leaked, so I don't know why this surprised me) and one of our circuit breakers went off and won't reset, so most of our living room has no light or power. However, I did get a tree and some LED lights up in the corner with the only working outlet, and stockings are attached to the mantle with traditional holiday C-clamps. One way or another, we will carry on...and these house doldrums will be over soon. It is not financially an option to pay others to do work for us right now, so I'll have to put my big girl pants on and do it myself if I don't want to be sitting in a cave in the dark come New Year's.

And we're back

Merry Christmas from Japan! I made it back on Sunday morning, sick and miserable with a cold, and proceeded to sleep through most of the next 24 hours. I'm feeling better now, but still slow-moving and not so excited to go back to work tomorrow. Less jet-laggy than usual, more of a culture-lag.

Socks for the road

After way too much dithering and magazine searching, ravelry browsing, and even yarn buying (even though I wasn't supposed to...oops) I decided to make some socks. Really boring thick wool socks, because I found myself about to buy some at a store the other day and thought, F-this. I'm making socks.

I have never made a pair of socks before, but I made this, which is like a giant sock, and I've made lots of other much scarier things, so I am confidant that I can make a sock. Two might be asking a lot.

Of course, that means I had to pack enough yarn for four.