Heaven

Wow, it has been a whole year since I posted on this blog! Sorry for any of those who have worried about my absence, I have had a lot going on in my life and it might be awhile before I fully take this poor blog out of the moth balls and start posting more regularly.

In September I had one of the worst days of my life. I got a call that one of my closest friends had flat-lined while being rushed to the hospital. I spent the day hoping and praying she would be ok and waiting to hear something. I had just talked to Diana a few days prior, she was a bit out of it and the doctors weren't sure why but she seemed like she would be fine. I jokingly told her she wasn't allowed to die because I didn't have time to visit for a funeral (her and I had a slightly twisted sense of humor with each other) and she suddenly got kinda serious and asked me if my boss would let me go to her funeral, I told her that if something happened to her I would not be asking I would be telling and that I would definitely be going. I was totally broadsided to then hear that she had taken such a dramatic turn for the worse so soon after I had spoken to her. That night I called home and after talking to my dad for awhile he figured out that I didn't know that she had passed away earlier that day. I still can't believe she is gone, even though I drove home to attend her funeral as soon as I was safe to do so and saw her body in a casket it is hard to comprehend someone who has been a part of my life since I was a baby and was like a second mother to me no longer being there. It breaks my heart even more knowing that her son, my godson, has lost his mother at such a young age.

Today is the birthday of my dear friend WeaselMomma's daughter Claire, aka Angel Weasel. For those of you who do not know Claire's family will unfortunately be celebrating her 9th birthday at her grave, she passed away two weeks after she was born. Like Diana she brought joy and happiness into this world and left it and those who love her way too soon. I like to think that Diana is helping Claire celebrate her birthday in heaven today, a mother taken from her child too soon and a child taken from her mother too soon, holding each other until they can be reunited with their families. Happy birthday dearest Claire, please give Diana a hug for me and remind her that I love and miss her very much.

Diana and her son in 2007

A Brewmeister's Review: Melbourne Bitter

For your enjoyment, another post written by my Daddy, the Brewmeister:


The Brewmeister is devastated. An idol died, a whole nation of idols, an entire continent of idols died. They had the reputation of being the largest per capita of beer drinkers in the entire world. Says the raven, nevermore.

I was sitting in my lower level thoroughly enjoying a cold mug of Bill’s Cheapass Ale when my daughter came in with a six pack of brew. The label said “Product of Australia”, not licensed in Canada or worse yet made in Wisconsin but made in Australia. This impressed me! I read on. It said “Melbourne Bitter”. The Brewmeister was impressed and honored with a six pack of real beer from the beer consumption capital of the entire world.

I read on; the label said 375 ml. I cannot respect a beer that uses metric measure, it is anti-American liberalism. Real American beer drinkers drink ounces, pints, and quarts. I continued to read; it said 4.6%. Very weak by Brewmeister standards but the Brewmeister respects the fact that about half of the Australian beer drinkers are women. Perhaps if the alcohol content were more realistic the Australian birth rate would be much higher.

Enough about the can and the label, the real proof of a beer comes after it is poured in the mug and tasted. I poured a can of Melbourne Bitter into my favorite mug; it looked like a beautiful Pale Ale or a light Pilsner. It was beautiful. I tasted it; the romance was over. I wanted to spew it out but my daughter would have been embarrassed. I choked it down; It was worse than any supermarket swill I ever tasted, even worse than the Korean brew we drank in the army when we were almost broke.

My heart goes out to the beer drinking people of Australia. They have a colossal advanced case of Richard’s syndrome, their taste buds have atrophied to the point of being nonexistent. Low alcohol swill is their way of life. I have seen pictures of bikini bottom clad Australian women on the beach. Beautiful but they lacked beer bellies and stretch marks. A respectable brew in pint bottles would cure these problems.

Years ago the Foster’s brewing company brewed a beer fit for human consumption called Fosters. Then they gave up their self respect and franchised it to Canada and in the finally degradation franchised it to Wisconsin. Apparently they started drinking their own swill causing their decline into Richard’s syndrome and socialism. Melbourne Bitter should never be drunk by conservative Christian capitalistic persons. Possibly it can be used as a poison to kill Cane Toads.

Can Australians be educated to home brew their own beer? They are in dire need of many, many Mr Beer home brew kits. Everything needed is available on the internet. A few pints of real beer and you won’t have to worry about your boomerang not coming back. She will never leave except to fetch you another pint!!

Reflections on a Perfect Brew

For your enjoyment, and because I've been too busy to write a post of my own, another post written by my Daddy, aka the Brewmeister:


One day the Brewmeister was contemplating his latest masterful creation affectionately called Bill's Kickass Hard Lemonade. He was enjoying the praise coming from his pie eyed youngest when the phone rang. It was his oldest; it was a complaint about his favorite ale*, Bill's Kickass Ale. The Brewmeister was devastated; his prize product was not being loved and appreciated. It was too flavorful, too strong. At first the Brewmeister attributed it to Richard's Syndrome, named after a victim named Richard who drank too much MGD, a form of supermarket swill. His atrophied taste buds regenerated after drinking copious supplies of Bill's Kickass Ale allowing him to rejoin the human race.

The Brewmeister was devastated by this negativity! But rather than sulk in blatant self pity he reacted in a positive manner befitting a Brewmeister. This blatant negativity interacted with his natural creativity stimulated the Brewmeister to create a brand new brew, a reduced flavor brew (The Brewmeister does not acknowledge the legitimacy of so called lite or low carb beer. These are lame attempts to merchandise swill to brainwashed consumers who waste too much time watching television and actually believe their misleading and boring commercials.) After some experimentation, a new product was born, Bill's Cheapass Ale!! It has all the positive attributes of Bill's Kickass Ale but will not overpower the sensitive taste buds of the ladies. Men can enjoy it too**!

Only the Brewmeister can improve what the Brewmeister has created.

~~~~~Copy LiteralDan Section~~~~~

*He is referring to WeaselMomma's review of his Bill's Kickass Ale, click the link in the post to view the video she made of her trying it.

**The new recipe he developed, Bill's Cheapass Ale, is pretty much all he makes now and so he DOES enjoy it, quite regularly, lol!

Three Cheers for July 30th

While I try to live my life so that every day is special, today is a very special day for me, for three reasons. And since today is extra special I've decided to take the time to share why with all of you =)

Reason 1: It is Daddy's birthday! About a million or so years ago my father was born. He was raised on a farm in Indiana, and a member of the 4H club. Lucky for me Grandma gave me some old pictures of him growing up, isn't he adorable with his baby cow?:


Fast forward somewhere around 50 years and you have the picture Niecey took of him after snatching my camera (I may have given her permission to play with it) over Christmas:


Happy birthday Daddy, you have always been there for me and are a wonderful father to my siblings and myself as well as Niecey. You are the best daddy a girl could ask for and I love you very much!

Reason 2: It is Niecey's birthday! Six years ago today I had a very very very sore arm from being Middle Sis's leg holder. It was highly traumatic seeing my sister give birth, I NEVER want to view a baby being born again, including my potential future offspring! Even though I am scarred for life over seeing my sister shoving an 8lb 2oz baby out of her nether regions it was all worth it. I was blessed with the most adorable little niece after enduring all that and watching that tiny little baby grow into this little girl has been amazing:


And who doesn't like morning snuggles? Whenever I visit and Niecey wakes up before me she will quietly play by the room I sleep in and check periodically until she sees my eyes open. Often she will try to get me to get up and play with her but usually she'll humor me and give me some morning snuggles before "making" me get out of bed, one of the great perks of visiting the homeland!


Happy birthday Niecey! I hate that I've spent the last 4 years of your life so far away but know that I am doing it in part to be able to give you a better future and even though there are 350 miles between us I am always here for you. Thank you for making me an Auntie, I love you with all of my heart and am so very proud of you!

Reason 3: One year ago today I decided to stop being just an observer of the blogging community but to join it. I started this humble little blog for several reasons but one of the main ones was that I followed so many wonderful people and felt close to them even though they had no idea I even existed for the most part. I wanted to see if perhaps some of these great people would find me amusing and let me join the fun. In that year I have made friends with so many amazing people and am so proud to be a part of such an awesome community. We laugh together, we cry together, and when someone needs help people in the blogging community step up and do what they can to support whomever is down, whether it be with a sweet comment or by donating money/supplies or in my case a fellow blogger opened up his home and let me stay the night when I got stuck in traffic and was going to have to try and find a hotel in a city I had never been to (I have not forgotten you and your wife's kindness and what a great time we all had Kevin, thanks again and I will get around to writing a post about it one of these days!). I think the world would be a much better place if real society followed the example of the bloggers. Thank you all for reading my blog, for the great comments you leave and for befriending a nerdy grad student, I love you guys!

So two birthdays and a blogoversary all in one day, definitely reason to celebrate! What better way to celebrate than with a yummy chocolate cake:

The 6 yellow candles are for Niecey's birthday (yellow is her favorite), the green one is for Daddy and the blue one is for my blog.

Thanks Daddy...

Tonight I was harassing talking to my baby sister on the phone when my dear father person started laughing hysterically. Worried that he might have drank too much of his home brew, or was getting sudden onset senility or something we inquired what he found so funny. Turns out he somehow discovered what he has dubbed my theme song on youtube. It is a blast from the past, he thinks it came out when he was in high school or maybe jr. high, so back when the dinosaurs roamed the earth. And what had my father cackling and risking brain damage due to laughing too hard to breathe? Well my dearest readers it was a song about people who are altitude-challenged like me and he learned how to send links on skype just so he could share it with me, behold my alleged theme song:

Now the question is would he have dared link me that song if he was aware of how kick ass I've become due to my water aerobics classes? I mean would YOU mess with this:





I think not! Watch out Daddy, I know where you live and sleep!

Tipsy Tuesday

Ever since I got my dad the Mr. Beer brew kit he has been hooked on brewing his own beer. I remember him attempting to make his own when I was a kid but it did not last too long between it not being very successful and my mother very much was against this hobby (it does create an odor that may not appeal to all). When I was an undergrad I took a microbiology course that included a lab component, in this lab we made a batch of beer and in doing so I became aware of what Daddy had been doing wrong. When you bottle beer while home brewing you need to add a bit of sugar, aka priming sugar, the yeast metabolize this sugar and convert it mainly into carbon dioxide, which creates the fizz that is associated with beer.

Daddy had been trying to add the priming sugar to the bottles individually and it was messy, difficult and often did not produce the right amount of carbonation. Too little carbonation and you have a flat beer, not very appealing I imagine. If you have too much carbonation you will have to get a ladder and lick the beer off the ceiling if you want any, which WeaselMomma probably would have done if this happened to her Coors Light the day after Lent. In micro we added the priming sugar to the bucket and then bottled it, worked every time. The Mr. Beer kit's instructions agreed with my lab protocol and Daddy adopted it and low and behold it works! And so without that challenge he has had time to experiment with other aspects of making fermented beverage. Like when I managed to get him a sample of super yeast, he is still playing with it since the first batch.

One of his recent challenges is making hard lemonade, one of Baby Sibling's alcoholic beverages of choice. They have very different versions of how this came about, Sibling says Daddy just offered to make it because he was interested in the challenge, this account is Daddy's version:


The continuing adventures of the BrewMeister……

Following my great success with Bill's Kickass Ale, I have continued to develop my excellent, high quality low cost Brew. I found a hops source which charges less than $2.00 per ounce for high quality leaf hops in pound quantity, which drops the price of 5 gallons by up to $5.00. The first batch was a bit weak but drinkable; Richard loved it and with his revitalized taste buds that is saying something. The latest batch is the best of all. I used the new Hops (Glacier alpha of 5.9) and boiled it for an hour.

But alas my euphoria of creating the perfect brew was short lived; my bubble was burst. My ego deflated. My youngest daughter asked a very degrading question: Can I make Hard lemonade? The BrewMeister was degraded! Humiliated! Why would the BrewMeister want to make disgusting swill like lemonade? Nonetheless, if a true BrewMeister can make peanut butter out of shit (sorry Texas) hard lemonade cannot be that difficult.

A Google search for hard lemonade gave several ghastly recipes involving killing the yeasties and artificial carbonization. Peasants!! A true BrewMeister does not kill yeasties and artificially carbonate. They deserve to drink supermarket swill! My first batch will be bottled in a few days and my bet is that between Richard and my daughter it won’t last long.

Now, about that Peanut butter challenge…


Microblogologist again, I have no idea what this weird peanut butter reference is, perhaps NukeDad can enlighten me as he is from Texas. There is a chance Daddy was testing his experiments when he wrote his post, I wouldn't be surprised one way or the other with him, lol. According to the Sibling this nasty concoction was delish, as I have in the past I question her taste... Of course the fact that I am not a fan of lemonade and any form of lemon with the one exception of lemon bars might make me a bit biased about something lemon flavored (do NOT get me started on one of the most vile drugs in the world, carbonated lemon flavored magnesium citrate, and what I believe should happen to the idiot who came up with this absolutely wretched drink!). I hope you all enjoyed this post, feel free to leave some ego inflating comments for Daddy, mayhap we'll convince him to start his own blog, though that might not be a good idea since I won't get these lovely guest posts from him then! Quit laughing Uncle Richard, you might not get enough oxygen to your brain if you keep it up!

Mother Meme

OK I find this amusing, in all my months of blogging no one has ever tagged me for a meme. This does not upset me so don't be all, "OMG Microblogologist is such an unpopular whiner!" And I don't need to get flooded with meme tags, remember I will enact swift and total revenge on anyone who over-tags me by over-tagging them back with my access to multitudes of inane myspace bulletins! That aside my mother sent me an e-mail meme (what are they called in e-mail language, on myspace they are usually called surveys...). Breaking my normal rule of not posting someone's name without their permission here is my mom's meme with her answers (she doesn't have a blog I can link... yet, my commentary in parenthesis):

1. Six names you go by:

1. Susan
2. Sue
3. Susanita
4. Suzy
5. Mom
6. Grah
(interesting, I guess "Mom" and "Grah" aren't the cool names, not good enough for #1&2 eh Mommy?)

2. Three things you are wearing right now:

1. black denim pants
2. black sweatshirt
3. camouflage t-shirt
(I thought you swore off black after Grandpa said it made you look like a bowling ball, yes my grandpa can be a jackass dear readers, I wrote him a bitchy e-mail after hearing that one! Oh and Mom does not resemble a bowling ball dressed in any color, I'd post pics to prove it but she knows where I live and I'd like to be able to see my family again...)

3. Three things you want very badly right now:

1. for more hours at work

2. for it to be warmer
3. for my foot to be totally normal
(Thank all that is holy that sex is not on this list! I would've been so traumatized! My mother is a virgin damnit, Daddy said the storks came and dropped us off and I believe him! That said #1 is just pathetic, totally get 2 and 3.)

4. Three people who will fill this out:

1. Mel
2. Karen
3. Richard
(I am 2 not 1, sad, and rather presumptive aren't we...)

5. Two things you did last night:

1. read with [Niecey] for 90 minutes

2. watched American Idol
(I don't refer to the kiddo by name on the blog Mom, nor our hometown, don't want to end up on the news the bad way.)

6. Two things you ate today:

1. lasagna made by a co-worker

2. Alphabet cereal in skim milk

(Skim milk is gross, you should drink real milk, oh and a study showed a little milk fat is good for you.)

7. People you last talked to on the phone:

1. AT&T about my cell phone
2. Richard
(The red button turns it on AND off)

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:

1. work
2. see Twilight with Cheryl at the Tivoli
(Hahaha, Cheryl had no idea you had plans! Funny that you are going to watch the movie of the only vampire romance book you have not read.)

9. Your favorite beverages:

1. cold water

2. decaf tea (iced or hot)

(Can't think of anything snarky to say here, I must be losing it!)

And now to answer these burning questions myself:

1. Six names you go by:

1. Karen
2. Auntie Kee
3. Microblogologist
4. Microbiologist (this one amuses me)
5. Micro
6. Real Karen (there will be a post on this)

2. Three things you are wearing right now:
1. Jeans, leggings, and fuzzy pants.
2. Two shirts, a fuzzy shirt and a hoodie.
3. Boots, regular socks and fuzzy socks.

3. Three things you want very badly right now:

1. To stop refluxing/having GI issues.

2. For it to be 80°F during the day and 65°F at night all the time.
3. Niecey cuddles.

4. Three people who will fill this out:
Whomever wants to may play along, I am not officially tagging anyone.

5. Two things you did last night:

1. Wrote a blog post.

2. Listened to the Dreidel song (seriously the Jews' song is way better than most of the Christmas songs and it makes me giggle to see it listed as a "Christmas song"!)

6. Two things you ate today:

1. French toast

2. Chicken noodle soup
*cough and chocolate cough*

7. People you last talked to on the phone:

1. Niecey, she has discovered that hitting the redial button on the phone calls me, which will work until someone in my anti-social family calls someone other than me on that phone, this could get interesting.
2. Auntie D

8. Two things you are going to do tomorrow:

1. Spend a few hours in the lab inoculating and pouring plates and such.
2. Water Aerobics (it's back!!!!!!!!!!)

9. Your favorite beverages:

1. AE 2% Chocolate Milk

2. 2% Milk

Welcome to my blog Mom, while this is the official my linking you I totally know that you accidentally linked yourself and so may or may not have "snooped", I don't care if you have (I could have stopped you had I wanted to). I planned to link you eventually *cough after editing some posts cough*, I was introducing you to the concept with my vague blog references. Oh and don't freak out about stuff I write, if something is serious I'll probably let you know, or tell Cheryl because she is on skype so ask her, though she has the attention span of a gnat so probably will forget... You may comment if you like, I prefer you click name/url, you can write your name (Mom or Grah/Graw/Gra, not Susan like you keep signing your e-mails... I'm still your daughter...) and leave the URL blank. Oh and this so counts as communicating so my being a neglectful e-mailer is negated now by this (plus it is not like I have much to say in response to you talking about work, you so need to get a life or a more interesting job!). Love you! (I bee-lieve my not posting your Halloween costume is my mother's day present to you this year, the horrible pun would bee your bonus gift, though this parenthetical will likely get the attention of my regulars and have them taunt you into saying I can post it, I am so evil!)

And a little extra for all of you:
Public Service Announcement from Niecey: Fiber makes you poop like you never pooped before! (thanks Auntie Cheryl for teaching Niecey about fiber and Niecey for making me laugh my butt off when she called me to let me know this while I was working and to tell me to put it on my blog.)