Brewing

It has been entirely too long since I brewed beer. I'm thinking that because of my lack of going to work on Fridays, I might spend Thursday night this week brewing a batch. Not entirely sure what kind of recipe I want to make, but I'll list out the ingredients I have on hand here so I can access the list at work tomorrow when I'm bored:

Malts:
34lbs Belgian 2-row
1lb Crystal 120L
5lbs Mild Malt
1lb Munich 9L
1lb Flaked Oats
1lb Roasted Barley
1lb Toasted Malt
1lb Vienna Malt
3lbs Wheat Malt

Hops: (all are pellets unless otherwise noted)
4oz Fuggles 4%AA
4oz East Kent Goldings 5.5%AA
2oz Hallertau (leaf) 4.8%AA
1oz Northern Brewer 6.7%AA
3oz Czech Saaz 4%AA
1oz Willamette 5.8%AA

Yeast: (all Wyeast liquid packs)
1056 American Ale
3724 Belgian Saison
1098 British Ale
1084 Irish Ale
1068 London ESB

I really need to get brewing again considering the chest freezer makes my tap system almost complete. Man, I need to keep kicking myself in the ass this week to make sure I maintain the motivation I have right now.

SNOOOOOWWWW!

The past two mornings I have awoken to at least a couple of new inches of snow on the ground. This delights me quite a bit. The "winter" we had last year was pathetic as far as the winters in my lifetime have been, so I'm hoping for a really nice one this year. As long as that jet stream can keep itself south of us, we should be in for some awesome winter weather. I swear, if it gets up into the 60s in January this year, I'm going to break someone. Here's hoping the snow stays on the ground until mid-April, though there's no way that'll happen.

Huh? Wow.

The Cubs signed Ryan Dempster to a 4-year $54M contract today. All I have to say is wow. He had a decent year with the Marlins in 2001, and his 2008 season was actually pretty good. If you look past those years, though, he isn't anything special, and even those years were really just above average. This is going to look like a joke next year when he can't maintain his performance. He's never pitched two really good seasons consecutively, and before this year he had been mired in mediocrity. I doubt he comes close to this year's performance next year, and this contract is going to help inflate the contracts of the other free agent pitchers like Burnett. Hell, the Yankees are looking at possibly offering Burnett a 5-year, $80M contract! Hah! Hello Carl Pavano all over again.

Baseball offseason

It's been a few days since teams became free to talk with free agents from other teams. The Yankees are already showing that their recent, but short-lived, doctrine of building a team through draft picks and smart trades was only going to work as long as Steinbrenner was allowing Cashman to have more power in the personnel decision-making process. Apparently, The Boss' sons that are now in control of the Yankees believe that the old 'let's buy a championship' mentality is actually smart. They've offered CC Sabathia a 6-year $140M deal, while also stating that they will be making offers to A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe within the coming days. Ugh.

To give some perspective on this, the Yankees went into this season with high hopes that a rotation of Chen-Ming Wang, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettite, and the two minor league prospects that were called up (Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes) would combine with their potent offense to propel them into the World Series. To be fair, they couldn't foresee Wang getting hurt for most of the year, but they also definitely put too much expectation on Kennedy and Hughes. Yes, they are very good pitching prospects, but given that this is NY these prospects are always rushed into the majors, and when they don't immediately live up to the hype they are given up on. I'm just glad the Mets didn't get rid of Mike Pelfrey when he struggled after being rushed up.

Now, I agree that Sabathia, Burnett, and Lowe are all very good pitchers on the free agent market, but it irritates me that the market for pitchers gets crazy like this. For people's information, here's the story on Sabathia. CC Sabathia is a tall (6-7) large (290lbs) left handed pitcher. He was with the Cleveland Indians from 2001 until he was traded to the Brewers this season. Sabathia has been dominant for a while and usually never pitches fewer than 200 innings per season, so he's a serious workhorse. When he was traded to the Brewers before the trading deadline, he went on to put together one of the best pitching stretches I think most people have ever seen. He made 17 starts for the Brewers, going 11-2 with SEVEN complete games!! He walked 25 and struck out 128 during that period with a 1.65 ERA. He also finished the season with three straight starts on three days rest, and the final one of those games was a complete game victory over the Cubs to clinch the Wild Card spot in the NL. The real problem comes with how much he's overworked by the time the playoffs come around. He has compiled almost 500 innings in the regular season these past two years, and he has struggled greatly in the postseason both years. He really looks like he's gassed at the end of these seasons. If the team signing him doesn't realize this, they're going to be regretting the 6 year contract they give him when he starts falling apart a few year into it.

CC has been recorded as saying he had a great time in Milwaukee and loved playing with those teammates, but the Brewers are offering him 5 years at $100M, which is nowhere close to where the Yankees' offer sits. Considering how great a person Sabathia is, I really hope that he decides the discount to stay with Milwaukee is worth it. I really don't want him in the same league with the Mets, but I like Sabathia and think he's a great person, so I want to see him go to a situation that'll work really well for him. Also, fuck the Yankees. You assholes just never learn that you can't buy a championship. Your championship teams of the 90's were mostly homegrown, and all the expensive teams you've had since haven't done jack shit. Just go away.

Hockey

A friend at work recruited me for a recreational adult floor hockey league he plays in. He and a bunch of other guys back in their Kodak days played in a league that was setup in the gyms at building 69 (I think it was 69, might have been building 1, I don't remember) about 10 years ago. They got their team back together in a small league that plays out west of the city. We play Wednesday nights.

I haven't played floor hockey since Junior year at RPI, when I was Delta Phi's goalie. The captain of this team is the goalie, so I have to play forward. That's been interesting. I still can't really shoot for shit, but I'm pretty mobile and have managed to setup some good shot opportunities. It was also quite the shock to my body. Waking up the day after it was rough, considering the gym was a lot bigger than I'm used to and I don't really have that much endurance for running.

Life

Wow, I haven't been this out of it since I lost the last bit interest I had in grad school. I've been without any serious interest in anything for months now, and it's really starting to bug me. My hobbies are currently boring and uninteresting or too much effort for me to care about. I haven't brewed beer since sometime in February or March, I haven't picked up my guitar since June, I haven't read much in the past month, and even going to the gym has become a sporadic event that I'm finding increasingly easy to justify not doing. It's the same story at work, too. I haven't actually cared about what I'm doing at work in a while to the point where it's a burden to sit at my desk and get things done. Now, I admit that this was a job I took simply because I was desperate and they were the first positive response with a good salary, but I was actually interested for quite a while. Who knows what happened. Is this what it means to be an adult in the working world? I find that hard to believe. I've been looking around in my area for other work that looks interesting, but the more I look the more discouraged I get. I really don't know what I would find interesting to do.

Whatever, I guess this post was mostly supposed to be cathartic, but it even failed at that. Even if I'm bored with everything I'm still paying down my debt really quickly, and that's what really matters... I guess.

Meh.

Movies

Saw a couple new (for me) movies recently, which in itself is quite the rarity. I also went to the theater last night to see one of those movies, which is an enormous rarity, just ask Dave. The movie last night was Rocknrolla, the new Guy Richie movie. That was fantastic. It made two hours disappear without me noticing at all and that's extremely uncommon for most movies. As always with his movies, the cast of characters was incredible and varied quite substantially. The humor, action, and dialog were all really well done, as one would expect. I don't typically care that much about most movies, but I'd highly recommend this one.

The other movie I saw was earlier this evening when I popped in Iron Man. Yes, this was the first time I'd ever seen it. I enjoyed it just as much as everyone else says they did, so I guess there's not really much more to say than that. The one comment that I have is that it's weird to see The Dude as a villain; very disconcerting.

Now I have to wait until next month to see The Dark Knight. Can't wait for that one.

Election Day

I voted today. Bah. I feel like a tool voting in a system like this. Also, I am still registered in Ithaca, so I actually had to drive two hours to vote. That makes me feel like a bigger tool. Honestly, to me both of the major parties are fairly similar (anyone who actually thinks Obama will pull us out of Iraq like they want is nuts). The Republicans love war and reducing taxes while not reducing spending (now that one is a recipe for disaster). The Democrats want to turn us into a complete socialist state, which is pretty much what they did by cutting all the deals they needed to in order to get the bailout passed. They actually are thinking about proposing legislation to socialize our 401(k)s. It's too late in the night for me to find the article where I read that so I'll post it tomorrow if I can find the motivation, but apparently some senior Congressional Democrats want to make a Social Security-like fund for our 401(k) contributions to go into. Ugh, if I have to explain why that sounds like the worst idea ever, just go away.

Whatever. As always I will say the following: I didn't vote for Obama, but he's going to be my President and I hope he does a good job.