Ernest Hemingway - The Sun Also Rises

In a nutshell this is how Hemingway wrote, "She was built with curves like the hull of a racing yacht, and you missed none of it with that wool jersey." and "The cab stopped in front of the hotel and we all got out and went in. It was a nice hotel, and the people at the desk were very cheerful, and we each had a good small room."

Haven't read Hemingway in ages.  I look at Hemingway as a fine wine.  It sits on my shelf for ages and when I need something different I turn to him.  Something about Hemingway's writing as always stuck with me.  First book I ever read that shocked the hell out of me was "A Farewell to Arms"  Important read in High School and I even did a paper on the "Hemingway Hero"  Nothing like scanning a college library stacks to find something to try and write a high school paper.

At one point I even wrote a Hemingway like story...see below.  In the end though, "Brett laments that she and Jake could have had a wonderful time together.  Jake responds, 'Yes, isn't it pretty to think so?'"


The clouds crept over the mountains and moved slowly into the valley.  The earth opened her arms to the coming rain.  The man with the black hat stood under the trees watching the scene unfold.  His journey had just begun and he felt refreshed.  The rain would feel good.  He just hoped it wouldn't rain all night.  He hated being cold in the morning.  His horse did too.  Aspen hated the cold and his muscles were always stiff.  He was a good horse and a good companion.  The rain began to fall and the hand with the black hat started moving into the rocks hoping for an overhand and a little dryness.  All around the rain fell sounding like mother's natures music.  He was to meet someone in this valley.  He hoped the rain wasn't an ominous sign.  The man soon found a place and unloaded his horse.  Aspen whinnied and was happy.  The man made fire and soon felt warm and tired.  He trapped some grub out of his sack and after some water he fell asleep.

Haiku Wednesday

Wind

Invisible force
Trees shudder, the windows groan
With coat, you still bite!

Haiku Beer#3

Haiku #3 was a recipe from beertools.com for a stout.  My desire was to brew something for the Holidays.  Called Oaty Malty Madness (5.9% ABV, not verified) it was made with the following ingredients (didn't follow the recipe exactly):

1) 1.75 lbs Maris Otter
2) 0.13 lbs Crystal 60L
3) 0.04 lbs Black Roasted Barley
4) 0.04 lbs English Chocolate (change)
5) 0.04 lbs Torrified Wheat
6) 0.13 lbs Oaks Flaked

7) 0.3 oz Cascade (5.5%AA)

8) White Labs WLP028 Edinburgh Scottish (Liquid) [change]
9) 2 tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice (change)

Used StarSan sanitizer.

The Mash

Heated 2.5 quarts (10 cups) of water (refrigerator water which is carbon filtered) to 154-160 deg F.  Add grain and mixed.  Cooked for 90 minutes at 144-160 deg F and stirred fairly frequently.  Once heated, heat can be removed and then added again around 30 - 40 minutes. 

The Sparge

Heated additional 4 quarts of water (refrigerator water) to boiling then transferred to gallon fermentation jug.  Set up the strainer over the second pot and added the hot grain mash.  Then poured the heated water from the jug over the grains and into the second pot.  Once done recirculated the wort back through the grain once more into the original pot.

The Boil

Heated the wort until it began to boil at approximately 210 deg F.  This was done with just the middle heat on the inside burner on my stove.  Boil lasted 90 minutes with 0.3 oz of Cascade Hops at the start of the boil then added 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Spice and then with 10 minutes to go added final 1 tsp of Pumpkin Pie Spice.  Tasted the wort and it was very sweet.

The Fermentation

Placed the brew pot into the sink with ice allowing the temperature to decrease to 70 deg F.  Allowed the mix to settle this time.  When pouring into the fermentor it was strained into a larger pot then transferred to the fermentor.  After the fermentor is full, the yeast was added and throughly mixed to aerate the liquid.  Note:  Liquid yeast is designed for 5 gallon batches.  This time did not shake the yeast but opened slowly and mixed with a tooth pick.  Still difficult to determine exact amount of yeast was added.

The yeast began fermentation and a fairly consistent burp began.  Primary fermentation lasted for about 36 hours.  Transferred beer to the basement and put in the airlock.  Allowed to sit for 2 weeks.

The Bottling

Used bottling sugar and dissolved this in 1/4 cup of water, I siphoned the beer into a pot and then bottled into 6 x 500 mL bottles.  Allowed to sit for another 3 weeks.

The Tasting

Opened and tried on 12/21/11. Slight carbonation.  See photo.  Good basic flavor.  Two of the bottles once again did not have secondary carbonation which causes this beer to taste awful.  Two of the bottles were really good and one just didn't taste right (too spicy).  Probably need to use a bottle cap type system.

A dark Christmas Ale

Hint  of pumpkin spice, maybe

Warming, fire place beer

Neil Gaiman - Fragile Things

Nice collection of short stuff from Gaiman.  Reading through some blog posts and came across someone saying that Gaiman was England's Stephen King...hmmm have to think about that one.  Funny thing is the connection makes sense for me.  I have read bits and pieces of King and mostly his work doesn't do a whole lot for me but some stories do stick with me like The Stand and The Girl Who Love Tom Gordon but there is a bunch of other stuff I can't even remember.

Gaiman is a a lot like that to me.  Loved American Gods (one of my Top 10) but some of the other stuff not so much which also showed up in this collection.  Loved the Sherlock Holmes homage and the Shadow story and the Day the Saucers Came poem but that is about it. 

Interesting...

11/11/11

It's binary day!
Last one for a Century...
Will I live that long?

...I'll be 129 on 1/1/00 (Year 2100)

Rox Talk

My month long hiatus is over.  Time to get back to the blog.  My official endpoint for the season is when the Rocky Mountain SABR has had their end of the year banquet.  SABR is a fantastic baseball group bringing together a lot of different baseball takes.  Last night was the 14th annual version of the end of the year gathering.  This year's guest speakers were Rob Neyer, SBNation, and John Thorn, MLB Historian.

Rob Neyer talked about his meandering journey to becoming a baseball writer.  From a diehard Royal fan, to discovering SABR, and then finally interning with Bill James.  This then launched his career into book writing and a stint at ESPN.com and finally the National Baseball Editor for SBNation.  A fascinating point that Rob made that I had forgotten before the age of internet was when teams played late night games on the West Coast the morning papers normally didn't have box scores for that game and you had to wait for the night edition of the town's competing paper.  Wow how times have changed with instantaneous box scores!  We are spoiled by the information at our fingertips...of course this could be a curse too...

The evening's final speaker was John Thorn who was appointed the MLB official game historian.  Plugging his new book, Baseball in the Garden Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, Thorn gave a nice presentation on the misleading origin of baseball from the early 20th Century Mill Commission to the recent Commission put together by Selig this year.  Fascinating talk and he even had some early Denver baseball stories recalling that the probable first profession game in Denver was in October 1888 when the Spalding All Star team arrived in town and played at the old Riverfront Park.  The All Stars won 16-12 with Cap Anson having two triples.  Couple of good quotes by Thorn and I paraphrase (I'm not that fast of a writer), "Cooperstown is the wrong place but a swell place" and a general quote on why baseball is the American Pastime because it "connects boys and girls with their parents"  Also Thorn used the word sagacity (or acuteness of mental discernment and soundness of judgement)!  As aside, to me baseball is in our DNA.  It isn't the most popular or talked about sport but it flows along quietly as the unseen current in the river that is American History!

A nice night by all and now that 2011 is officially closed what can we learn from 2,429 games that were played?

1.  First and foremost...if you can stay within striking distance by September you can still get to the Playoffs...Tampa and St Louis proved this.
2.  If you can get into the playoffs the second season starts and all bets are off.  Your 162 game record means nothing!
3.  You can lose you second best pitcher and still win the World Series (no excuses Rox...)
4.  Baseball is confounding!  Numbers in short series really don't matter...thanks for playing Phillies, your three headed pitching monster meant nothing.
5.  Good managers can make teams better (LaRussa and Gibson)

And now what can I say about our team?  I have remarked about this once or twice before but this has to be the most disappointing team in Rox history.  For a team that was marked to win its first division title it got nowhere.  Some thoughts:

1.  Rox were unlucky!  Looking at their pythagorean W-L record it suggested that they were a 77-85  team...not a whole lot better but something...
2.  Rox were 38-43 at home!  In their history they have averaged 44-45 wins at home.  Last two seasons they won 51 and 52 respectively.  This season they outscored their opponents at home 439-427.  Thus they were 4 wins short of what they were expected to win.  Still accounting for this they were still 2-3 wins off their average.
3.  Rox played well on the road winning 35 games which was their 4th highest in history and three games better than their average
4.  May was just brutal.  Looking at the pythagorean W-L they were pretty unlucky.  September was also cruel as Rox have always had a good end of the year performance

Rox Historical vs 2011 Winning Percentage

5.  Rox starting pitching took 68 losses which is about 9 losses more than historical average.  Bullpen was 20-21.  Historical average is about 24-24.  Guess this just meant Rox starters were behind early and didn't have a lot of comebacks.  Only had 5 walk off wins and 41 comeback wins.

6.  Gave up 176 home runs with 101 of those coming at home.  

7.  Rox scored the least amount of runs in their history at 735.  The inability to score runs and the lack of offense was an eye opener especially with a team of Tulo and CarGo.  Kind of shows you that to win requires 9 guys!  Simple graph but always good to see...you score more runs than your opponents and you tend to make the playoffs...duh

Runs Scored vs Runs Agains (2000-2011).  Playoff teams in Red and Rox historical in Purple (excluding 94-95 seasons)

8.  No excuses but injuries did hurt the Rox this year.  Inconsistent lineups and players finding their roles not to mention no production at second and third bases.

9.  Great year by Helton, Iannetta, Tulo, CarGo, and Giambi.  Average years by Smith, Wiggington, and Ellis.  Not so good by Fowler, Stewart, and Spilly.  Rox really need some more raw power at the plate.  Need to find their home mojo...teams aren't afraid of Coors and Rox really seem hesitant at home.

10.  Starting pitching was just a struggle especially with U-Ball starting slow and de la Rosa injury.  Chacin and Hammel showed that they are consistently inconsistent.  Cook farewell tour was painful.  Rogers isn't a starter.   Nicasio looks to be something if he can come back.  Bullpen was adequate.

11.  Role and bench players are not good.  Seems like the Rox have a lot of AAAA players especially in the minors and they just can't reach the conclusion that they aren't going to be everyday MLB players...

Overall Rox have something to build on.  Granted they were bad but I don't think as bad as the final record showed.  Of course bottom line they didn't take the next step.  Next year they will have a lot of new faces and some leadership has to step up to suggest that losing 89 games isn't acceptable.  Big mountain to climb is where are they going to find 17 wins next year?

Natasha Paremski - Dvorak

 

This is show number four (although now I have seen her five total times) for me.  First seen here, then here, and then here.  Tremendous performance as always.  Thankfully she must enjoy Denver because she keeps coming back.

This year she was sort of promoting her new CD.  After her piece she signed.  When it was my time for her to sign I asked her about her red shoes.  She smiled and said not this time around.  This goes back to the first time I saw her and she wore these eye grabbing shoes.

This time she wore a beautiful dress.  Very striking.  She played Dvorak this time around (Piano Concerto in G minor, Op. 33).  As always she plays a wonderful show.  Simply crazy the way she can play.  I would love to see her play a piece a know.  Maybe next year!

Haiku Wednesday

November

Its winter's door mat
Earth hibernates, sun checks out
Thanks to the harvest

Jennifer Egan - A Visit From the Goon Squad

A female D. Coupland?  Perhaps, I mean who would write a chapter using power point?  Nice book, bit convoluted as the characters are thrown around a lot in different time and space.  One of those books that probably would get more out of it if you have the time to read it twice.

Found this nice website of discussion points.  Website quotes Egan when she indicated that the book  "wanted to structure the book like a record album, with an "A" side and a "B" side."  Later on the website discusses how the book is about redemption and how everyone has an "A" side followed by a pause and then the "B" side.  That is kind of cool and when I think about the book you definitely see it in the characters.  

Gee what is my A and B side?  Good thoughtful book.

Murakami's New Book

Just a couple of links...can't wait....

NY Times Magazine

NY Times Book Review