I'm still alive - and we're still planning to do the "CD A Week" project. I've just been taking a little break from the "ZOMG MASSIVE INPUT/INFO COMING AT ME 24/7" world of Twitter and Facebook for a little while. Sometimes it gets to be a bit much and you have to pull back a little and look at what's important. I'll probably never go back to being plugged into Twitter 24/7; it's a little much, really.

We started our first batch of beer yesterday. We were focused on the project though and I have zero photos of the process. Pretty straightforward process. Fill a bag with a few pounds of a grain mix, steep it in 2 gallons of water at 150°F for 30 minutes, then take it out. Put in liquid and dry malt extracts and some hops, bring to a boil - boil for an hour, adding other hops at 15, 30, 45, 50, and 55 minutes. Strain that into 3 more gallons of water into the Ale Pail. Use the immersion chiller to drop it to about 70°F - that took about 10-15 minutes. Then transfer that into the 6 gallon glass carboy and add the yeast. Cap that off with a stopper and fermentation lock. Throw it in the bedroom closet (coolest spot in the house) and let 'er go for several days.

This morning, the beer-to-be had a huge head of foam on it, and the airlock showed very active bubbling - confirmation I did most everything right and the beer is "alive." Woot!

As far as gaming goes, well, I just haven't had a lot of time to do it, so I've turned off all my subscription games. I play a little STO now and then, as I have a lifetime sub. I'm in the beta for another MMO that is action-oriented - not my thing but it's actually still kind of fun. Other than that, no gaming to speak of. Still have Fallout: New Vegas to play through, but again with time.

Our theme lately has been "determine what is truly important to us, and focus most of our energy on those things, and prune out what is truly 'chaff'." Some of that has meant we've caught up on sleep. We'd been running on an average of 4-6 hours of sleep per night for quite a while, tending more towards the lower end of that. Some nights as low as 3. That isn't healthy, and as you age, it's worse. So, we've been focusing on getting proper amounts of sleep and it's paid off in feeling better. :)

I'm still planning to maybe re-enter R/C flight this Spring, and this Winter I may be learning to bow (and possibly shotgun) hunt. I have a great opportunity to learn with a very experienced hunter who has an amazing amount of land to hunt on - which is nice because hunting on public land, at least here in Indiana, is (from what I've heard) extremely frustrating.

Anyway. Just a quick update to let folks know I haven't abandoned the blog, and I'm still around.