I left about 3.5 hours later with dirty hands, steel dust on my face, and a new two-tiered mashing stand for the homebrewing setup.

I have a propane burner coming in to go under the top keg, and the bottom one is sized to fit a 5 gallon bucket under it so i can drain the wort into that. (Wort is the sugar-water you get after soaking the grains).

I need to get some casters, a wire wheel for my grinder (it’s got some rust on some parts), and some paint to finish it off, but it’s definitely usable as is.

Sounds like this sunday has just been slated for a brewing day. Now I just gotta figure out what to make. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

I was back on the dummy yesterday morning, and although the cold air hit me pretty hard, I felt at least 84.2% back to normal (just an estimate. . . ).

You may be asking yourself, “Well then, you slack-ass, what the hell DID you do all weekend since you weren’t riding your bicycles as you should have been?”

Unfortunately, the big one involved a sander, a can of stain, and about 200 linear feet of baseboard which I cut, sanded, stained, and installed (actually just finished tonight). How’s that for exciting?

I also saw the new Bond Flick, Quantum of Solace, which IMHO was totally bad-ass. Daniel Craig isn’t the suave Bond that Connery or Brosnan were, but he did an excellent job of painting bond as more of an action hero who can take his share of hits. Even though the opening car chase camera sequences were a bit nauseating, the movie overall gets my thumbs up.

The other big project this weekend was some work on my new brewing setup. Not so much in the mechanical sense as much as the electrical sense. I’ve decided that I have an old laptop lying around which I’m going to interface with some custom built electronics to monitor a bunch of the temperatures at all the different necessary stages of the process. I wired up an Arduino microcontroller to some thermistors to it, and started hacking away on the software.

The ultimate goal is to get a nice little real-time display on the laptop of all the temperatures, and eventually use that to set off some alarms or even control some valves to help control and monitor the brewing process.

Evidently, I’ve once again jumped off the deep end with my ambition and sheer geekiness of project selection. I know, you don’t have to tell me.

In somewhat more bike related news, the Tucson Bike swap went down this last weekend, and yet again, I missed it. The initial plan was just to stay in phoenix last weekend and ride out the weekend through the bike swap, but due to extenuating circumstances, I missed that boat yet again.

If anyone got any incredible deals that I should have been there for but missed due to my being layed up and all, I really don’t want to hear about it.

Apparently I also missed Chad selling out of all of his AZES T-shirts at the swap.

I would have liked to get one, but the only other problem is that I really don’t ride that much in tucson. I mean I love the AES, but the front needs a little change to more accurately reflect my more normal riding habits.

Maybe we need something more flagstaff. . . . Like this?

And with that little graphical musing that I just pulled out of my rear end, I’m headed for bed. I’ll catch ya’ll on the flip side.

They always have a clear objective, and a very set amount of time to achieve that objective. Get in, accomplish mission, get out.

This most recent trip had two objectives: listen to aspiring young engineers tell me why they need a job, and rock out with Mr. Mancandy.

I arrived wednesday night to a nightmare of traffic and was instantly reminded of why I love my bike and it’s ability to avoid situations such as that. I begrudgingly sat in traffic and finally made my way to ASU for the info session that night. After an hour of singing and dancing about how wonderful my job is, I hightailed it to Ben’s current place of residence (which Precious simply refers to as “The Parthenon”. I’m still not sure why.).

We hit up some sushi and watched some music vidoes at The Tanked Fish. They had some sort of music video on demand service and we got the waitress to put on some Peter Gabriel and Whitesnake. It was ridiculous.

After a day of interviewing on thursday, we hit up Boulders on Broadway for some delicious beer and pizza. I’m sure many of you out there frequent that bar, and I don’t have to tell you how awesome it is. But nevertheless, I’ll just say that they had DogfishHead 90-minute IPA and Giddy Up up tap, and we were chastised for not riding our bikes down there and parking them in the front room of the place.

My kind of place.

I was also told that next time I’m coming down there, I should ride the Big Dummy down from flagstaff, laden with local beers. For some reason, there is some sort of strange appeal of this suggestion. It’s only about 150 miles. Hmmmm. . . . .

Unfortunately, though all of these events I’ve had a bit of a head cold. It meant a lot of sniffling and Purell dispensing. I’m not sure who gave it to me, but they will pay dearly for their transgressions.

Friday morning we went for a shred at south mountain and then I busted back up the hill. I was hoping the ride would cook whatever bug is in me, but apparently it simply became angered as the pressure in my head this morning has reached a critical level.

Ugh, I hate being sick.

So, with that in mind, we shall see how much riding I get in this weekend. Stupid head cold.

Here’s the first one again, with the side-by-side front and back. Click through for a larger version. (also, I know the reds are a little off from the front to the back, that will be fixed if this is the final).

And, without further adieu, my latest creation.

Lemmie know what you think in the comments. I want to hear what you like, what you don’t, and what I should change.

Really, don’t hold back.

The roads were a sheet of ice through the neighborhoods this morning, so I took the urban trail most of the way into work, only about 2 miles out of 6 on the road. I wished I had studded tires a couple times, but other than that, it was a beautiful morning.

Thanks to Michael Bussman for introducing us to that delicious treat. Put about an inch of OJ in the bottom of a pint glass, and pour a full can of PBR on top of it. You’ll thank me later.

I was introduced to this concoction at the Love Me Nots concert saturday night at the Monte V. I promptly had several of them, and then got my face rocked off by some awesome “garage rock”. Mmmmm. . .

In other news, sedona riding season has started here in flag. It’s snowing outside right now. Even with a warm ground, it snowed for a good couple hours, and there’s a couple inches on my car. If it melts this week, the riding will be sick up here (no more dust!). If it stays cold and/or snows more, ski season won’t be far off.

Either way, it’s a win-win situation.