When I asked the question I was thinking more of the kits you can buy in ordinary shops here to brew your own barrel of beer or a few bottles of wine, nothing large scale. I take it that is illegal in the US?
Your replies have made me think though, you just don't hear of moonshine in the UK, it's just unecessary. Home brews are usually just for fun (or Christmas), taste awful and can be lethal (another relative's elderberry wine springs to mind).
I looked into brewing my own beer for a while, more for the creative part of it than anything else. When I realized that, even excluding trial and error, a pint of home-brew was going to cost me about 3x what I would pay a the liquor store for really good beer (i.e. Smithwicks, Bass, Harp, etc.), it would be a waste. I could spend that time getting a buzz on much more cheaply, and with substantially less equipment and smell around the house.
Snow!
We've got it accumulating on the ground, and by the look of the sky, we've still got inventory getting shipped in.
I have to say, after years of living in Chicago where the snow just couldn't take a clue on when it was time to leave, I'm kinda liking the snow thing now, knowing that it'll be gone by tomorrow or soon after.
I will take credit for the snowfall. We finally picked up our christmas tree yesterday, undoubtedly the match that lit those snowclouds up. It snows every time we pick up our tree.
Apparently in these parts, people get their tree at the grocery store or the walmart. Back in Illinois, and Denver too, now that I think upon it, we could always find some garden center or farmland or something a little more romantic than a fucking Kroger parking lot. In Chicago, we'd go to Gethsemene Gardens. In Champaign, well, I can't remember the name of the place, but it was also a garden/greenhouse center located on the edge of town and bordering one of the forest preserves; it just had the look of christmas to it. And it was always snowing. Out here, though, we only got the Kroger who sells it. On the other hand, we got a proud seven-foot tall Frazier Fir, aromatic as all hell, for thirty bucks; in Chicago, we're paying at least twice that amount for the same tree. So there's that...
Damn it's a beautiful tree. And with the snow coming down, I'm one stone cottage away from a Thomas Kincaide painting.
Yay! we've got snow too! And, since it's minus something-or-other, it's hanging around. To top it all, I cooked an early Christmas meal last night as the rest of the family is going abroad for the holiday proper. I feel like I'm getting two Christmases this year, and even if it rains on the 24th (when I'm cooking again), I would have had at least one snowy celebration. A real treat in England!
More snow!
It's already almost melted from sight, but that's two mornings in a row I was greeted with a view from my landing of a fresh blanket of the good stuff.
Being that autumn is my favorite season, it's not difficult to understand why the bare trees of winter don't do a lot for me. However, in my current home, no leaves means a much improved view from the second floor window of my writing room. I can see the steeple of the cool church on Main Street (in the oldest city in Kentucky) and many of the second floors of the storefronts lining the street. I can even see the building where I work.
My world has seriously shrunk. Not only did we move from Chicago to Tiny-Dot-on-the-Map, Kentucky, but my and my wife's jobs are across the street from one another and we live within sight of our home. There's something so over the top extreme about how small our world has shrunk that paradoxically makes it feel less imposing and stifling.
And now I'm ready for more snow.
@ jonahpwll
Your situation sound ideal to me. I've had years of a 2hr each way commute to work and only last year started working from home as much as possible. Whilst its good not to have to travel, it can be too distracting and dull to be at home. I wish my office would move, I certainly don't want to. My house is on top of a steep hill and if I look beyond my monitor, I have a view of an entire valley, snow covered and twinkling in the moolight.
Ahh, I've come over all mushy now, a Christmas cheer top up is in order I think!
My house is on top of a steep hill and if I look beyond my monitor, I have a view of an entire valley, snow covered and twinkling in the moolight.
I'm ready to trade.
Unless, of course, 'moolight' isn't a typo and your house is surrounded by radioactive cows. In that case, I'll be content to remain where I'm at.
[In Champaign, well, I can't remember the name of the place, but it was also a garden/greenhouse center located on the edge of town and bordering one of the forest preserves;]
Prairie Gardens, I think, out on West Springfield Avenue? I loved that place--lived about 2 miles from there during part of my high school years.
Funny how this time of the year makes you think back, I have this idealistic vision of my home when I was a kid, all snow and forest, skiing and ice skating. I've been tempted to revisit the place but never have. Think I'll stick to the memories.
As for living on a hilltop (with or without radioactive Jerseys), all I can say is that my snow driving ability is improving rapidly - I actually made it into my drive in one go today, seriously, that is no mean feat.
Prairie Gardens, I think, out on West Springfield Avenue? I loved that place--lived about 2 miles from there during part of my high school years.
Yes! That's it!
I remember when we went out there to get our tree. I was taking time off to write my current book and was in an all-nighter mode (which I've always been in), but just before I was ready to switch from yawning to snoring around five in the morning, the sun started coming up. I lived on Park Ave, right before it dead ended at Wells Park (near Huber's bar). If you're familiar with that street, you'll know it's brick lined with globe streetlamps and old victorian style homes and trees that stretch out in all directions and just so pretty and so unlike the neighborhoods that comprised my Chicago home, well, when the dawn revealed the street to me (which I had a great view of; my writing room was the sun room), it was profoundly breathtaking.
So, the sky is beginning to lighten, and suddenly I was infused with a rush of adrenaline that carried me through the next several hours of furious writing. Around nine a.m., I knew I couldn't write anymore, but I was too giddy from the creative momentum and the daylight and the sleep deprivation, that I woke my wife up and asked if she wanted to go get our Christmas tree. She said yes, and we went immediately over to Prairie Gardens. And, of course, as soon as we got out of the car, it began to snow. We got our tree, as well as some veggie dip mixes that they had free samples of and which I ate like a hearty breakfast.
It snowed pretty much all day. I got the tree set up and an ornament or two on the branches before passing out cold while my wife continued to decorate the tree. She didn't have to work or school that day, and though I didn't know it at the time, I wasn't going to begin writing again until four a.m. (I totally flipped my writing schedule on its head), and we had a peaceful winter day together with our new tree and the snow piling up outside.
Man, I miss Champaign. I had no idea I was gonna fall in love with that town. Totally outta the blue.
by the by, jonah - about 2 weeks ago the chicago blues and bluegrass festival was held at the congress theatre on milwaukee. it was packed for bela flek...after his performance a good 2/3 of the audience left. leaving an intimate setting for the final act, dr. dog.
some will ask: Blues? bluegrass? that's an odd pairing - what's the common thread?
well, the answer is brown's chicken, of course...they were pumping the smell of fried chicken thru the entire heating system!!!
we spent a good portion of the bela flek show in the "sky box" section...proving any creep can ascend to whatever creepish heights he aspires to creep.
More panic about snow down here. OMG! We're gonna get slammed! seems to be the party line in these parts. Two to five inches and they're storming the Kroger to stockpile food and supplies. Good god.
It did actually snow a couple inches, but it's nothing lifechanging. In Chicago, all this snowfall would indicate is that I'd actually have to shovel snow off the walk rather than just push the thing over the sidewalk to make a path.
I feel like it ripped me off, actually. It snowed overnight when I was asleep and couldn't have seen it anyways because, well, it's so damn dark at night out here in the middle of nowhere. I want some pretty Kincadian daytime snow, like that would fall over stone cottages with warm lights shining through their windows in a Swiss mountain village. That's what I want, dammit. What a rip.
It was pretty to wake up to, though.
Thursday night, me and the wife grabbed dinner out after work. It's an independent joint, but it's indistinguishable from an Applebee's to give you an image to hold onto. But they serve beer and alcohol, have some decent sandwiches, and, this may sound strange, I think I mostly wanted to go there because they have a whole bunch of neon beer signs hanging from their walls (and various other light-up bar novelites), and something about neon and christmas lights in a bar, whether an Applebee's clone or some neighborhood dive always gets me cheery inside, a sense of belonging in the spot I'm occupying on Earth at that moment. It worked.
What didn't work was that it turns out that Thursday night is karaoke night. We had a later dinner (both of us worked late that night, 'til about 8pm), and so as we were getting served our meal, the music began. Me, I can't stand karaoke. Every now and then, I see a performance that'll crack me up, but it's never worth the steep price of listening to all the other performances that accompany it.
In the end, it wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. We didn't have to sit through much of it, and the whole event was strangely subdued. Maybe it would've started rocking the house later in the evening, but I didn't get the sense that the word 'wild' was gonna be used to describe the event the next day. My experience with karaoke both in Chicago and Louisville has people getting hammered lickety split and then the serious drinking begins.
My wife loves karaoke. And she's good at it. She used to sing in a punk rock band during college, and now that we've moved back down close to Louisville, she's picked it back up. Right now as I type this, she's likely at or about to go to band practice with one of her old bandmates and a couple friends, playing some new songs and some covers and recording in the attic/studio on an eight-track (or something like that). She can sing.
Me, I hate it. I can't sing, in case you were wondering, but I never liked it anyways. Something about it just gets under my skin, and that was before I worked two miserable months at a karaoke bar in Chicago just to pick up some extra cash over the summer. Misery!
That's it.
It better start snowing again soon.
Got about 3 inches here, enough to cover all the winter ugliness. The snow on the pines and holly trees is lovely. We haven't shoveled out to the mailbox (across the street), so it is still pretty. The sun peeks out now and then to light up the diamonds in the snow.
I stayed up late to watch the snow coming down into the porch light. If it hadn't been so danged cold, I would have bundled up and gone out for a short walk. I love to walk through the falling snow, then come home to a cup of hot chocolate. The neighbor whose driveway is next to our bedrooms was out at 6:30 shoveling and making lots of scraping noises, so I got up and watched the falling snow. It had stopped falling by maybe 8:00 or 8:30 this morning.
I don't go bonkers when it snows. I keep a decent backup of stuff on hand, just because. I don't like to have to run out every time I turn around for supplies. And I don't like to mingle with the ugly, grabbing hordes when it snows. Yes, a Kincaid snowfall would be right nice. Especially now that I don't have to get out in it every morning to outmaneuver the crazy drivers.
So much for my fears of not getting a proper winter in Kentucky. It snows here plenty, doesn't stick around too long, and the sun does its stand-up routine pretty frequently. And there's rarely any cold winds. Yesterday we had one in the morning, which reminded me how long it'd been since the last and how rare they occur when compared to my Chicago winters. Good riddance.
Jonah, don't count too much on this being a proper winter. Back mid 70s, then again in the early 90s, we had a couple of winters back to back that were truly winter. We may be in that same cycle again. Normal highs are in the 40s and lows in the low 20s, and the last few years saw very little snow. Lots of gray days and some rain, but little snow. So don't get your hopes up.
I'm still in Denver -- been here since the 10th, and I have seen several snows that were gone by the end of the day or early next day. My car was covered with snow a couple of nights ago, but it was gone by mid-morning. It has been nice here. I can see all the snow I want on the mountains. I have been helping daughter with new baby and we celebrated the 4-year-old's birthday yesterday, so I have done only a few tourist things. Haven't gotten into the mountains, and since I'm heading back to Kentucky today, I've done about all the sightseeing I can pack in. I like Denver. Daughter lives in the Cherry Creek area, and I've ventured out into other areas on my own. Having lived in Louisville for most of my life, I find Denver more convenient in terms of travel time around the city. It's certainly different here than in small town Kentucky, and there's a different atmosphere than in "big" city Kentucky.
I lived in Denver for about seven years. Got to Cherry Creek now and then, but mostly stayed near where I lived: Capitol Hill, Five Points, and downtown.
Jonah, this one's for you. Yes, I laughed out loud.
Seen on Facebook, five different people. Original post from female who lives in Lexington (my friend). I don't know the location of those who commented on her post.
___ (female) found out that there is hardly anyone at WalMart at 6 a.m. The people working there are VERY friendly too, asking if I need help, did I find everything, etc. I'll definitely do this again!
10 hours ago
___ (male) Walmart at 6 a.m. ...Is that like breakfast at Tiffany's ?
9 hours ago
___ (male) And it smells much nicer at that time as well.
3 hours ago
___ (female) There's nothing like WalMart in Nicholasville first thing in the morning. The locals consider it perfectly normal to shop in their pajamas and house shoes!
2 hours ago
___ (male) At least they are wearing their shoes....
56 minutes ago
Only thing good about Nicolasville is that it's got a Big Boy (Frisch's, I think), but even that's barely a bonus since I'm of the opinion that Big Boy's on long roads of strip malls barely counts. Gotta be in the middle of nowhere surrounded by farm country.
Kentucky has given me an elevated detestation of Walmart. Though Champaign's came close.
The Champaign Walmart and Meirs were across the road from one another. They were both 24 hours. At 1am, eveyone at Meiers looked like Old Navy models with a minimum of a bachelors degree. They would go to their car, quickly gather what they needed, head back and gone. 1am at Walmart, it was party city. Cars in the parking lot huddled around one another, Faygo bottles passed between shirtless burnouts, young and old, slouching against car hoods. Those that went into the store did so loudly, wandering aimlessly, window shopping out of retarded boredom than any sense of consumerism.
It's a social experiment just waiting for a U of I dissertation.
Speaking of shirtless... How did I know that Autumn was nearly upon us? Did I hear the call of the geese headed South? Was it the gentle chill before sunrise becoming less gentle? Turning a page on our Farmers Insurance Bureau Farmer Almanac calendar? Nope. The town stopped going shirtless.
Comments
Your replies have made me think though, you just don't hear of moonshine in the UK, it's just unecessary. Home brews are usually just for fun (or Christmas), taste awful and can be lethal (another relative's elderberry wine springs to mind).
We've got it accumulating on the ground, and by the look of the sky, we've still got inventory getting shipped in.
I have to say, after years of living in Chicago where the snow just couldn't take a clue on when it was time to leave, I'm kinda liking the snow thing now, knowing that it'll be gone by tomorrow or soon after.
I will take credit for the snowfall. We finally picked up our christmas tree yesterday, undoubtedly the match that lit those snowclouds up. It snows every time we pick up our tree.
Apparently in these parts, people get their tree at the grocery store or the walmart. Back in Illinois, and Denver too, now that I think upon it, we could always find some garden center or farmland or something a little more romantic than a fucking Kroger parking lot. In Chicago, we'd go to Gethsemene Gardens. In Champaign, well, I can't remember the name of the place, but it was also a garden/greenhouse center located on the edge of town and bordering one of the forest preserves; it just had the look of christmas to it. And it was always snowing. Out here, though, we only got the Kroger who sells it. On the other hand, we got a proud seven-foot tall Frazier Fir, aromatic as all hell, for thirty bucks; in Chicago, we're paying at least twice that amount for the same tree. So there's that...
Damn it's a beautiful tree. And with the snow coming down, I'm one stone cottage away from a Thomas Kincaide painting.
Craig
Is 11am too early for a celebratory toast?
It's already almost melted from sight, but that's two mornings in a row I was greeted with a view from my landing of a fresh blanket of the good stuff.
Being that autumn is my favorite season, it's not difficult to understand why the bare trees of winter don't do a lot for me. However, in my current home, no leaves means a much improved view from the second floor window of my writing room. I can see the steeple of the cool church on Main Street (in the oldest city in Kentucky) and many of the second floors of the storefronts lining the street. I can even see the building where I work.
My world has seriously shrunk. Not only did we move from Chicago to Tiny-Dot-on-the-Map, Kentucky, but my and my wife's jobs are across the street from one another and we live within sight of our home. There's something so over the top extreme about how small our world has shrunk that paradoxically makes it feel less imposing and stifling.
And now I'm ready for more snow.
Your situation sound ideal to me. I've had years of a 2hr each way commute to work and only last year started working from home as much as possible. Whilst its good not to have to travel, it can be too distracting and dull to be at home. I wish my office would move, I certainly don't want to. My house is on top of a steep hill and if I look beyond my monitor, I have a view of an entire valley, snow covered and twinkling in the moolight.
Ahh, I've come over all mushy now, a Christmas cheer top up is in order I think!
I'm ready to trade.
Unless, of course, 'moolight' isn't a typo and your house is surrounded by radioactive cows. In that case, I'll be content to remain where I'm at.
Forget LOL, my much more 'with-it' daughter informs me the correct response should have been : ROFLMAO!
(rolls on floor laughing arse off)
Prairie Gardens, I think, out on West Springfield Avenue? I loved that place--lived about 2 miles from there during part of my high school years.
As for living on a hilltop (with or without radioactive Jerseys), all I can say is that my snow driving ability is improving rapidly - I actually made it into my drive in one go today, seriously, that is no mean feat.
Yes! That's it!
I remember when we went out there to get our tree. I was taking time off to write my current book and was in an all-nighter mode (which I've always been in), but just before I was ready to switch from yawning to snoring around five in the morning, the sun started coming up. I lived on Park Ave, right before it dead ended at Wells Park (near Huber's bar). If you're familiar with that street, you'll know it's brick lined with globe streetlamps and old victorian style homes and trees that stretch out in all directions and just so pretty and so unlike the neighborhoods that comprised my Chicago home, well, when the dawn revealed the street to me (which I had a great view of; my writing room was the sun room), it was profoundly breathtaking.
So, the sky is beginning to lighten, and suddenly I was infused with a rush of adrenaline that carried me through the next several hours of furious writing. Around nine a.m., I knew I couldn't write anymore, but I was too giddy from the creative momentum and the daylight and the sleep deprivation, that I woke my wife up and asked if she wanted to go get our Christmas tree. She said yes, and we went immediately over to Prairie Gardens. And, of course, as soon as we got out of the car, it began to snow. We got our tree, as well as some veggie dip mixes that they had free samples of and which I ate like a hearty breakfast.
It snowed pretty much all day. I got the tree set up and an ornament or two on the branches before passing out cold while my wife continued to decorate the tree. She didn't have to work or school that day, and though I didn't know it at the time, I wasn't going to begin writing again until four a.m. (I totally flipped my writing schedule on its head), and we had a peaceful winter day together with our new tree and the snow piling up outside.
Man, I miss Champaign. I had no idea I was gonna fall in love with that town. Totally outta the blue.
: )
some will ask: Blues? bluegrass? that's an odd pairing - what's the common thread?
well, the answer is brown's chicken, of course...they were pumping the smell of fried chicken thru the entire heating system!!!
we spent a good portion of the bela flek show in the "sky box" section...proving any creep can ascend to whatever creepish heights he aspires to creep.
I am going to have to spend some time thinking about that one
It did actually snow a couple inches, but it's nothing lifechanging. In Chicago, all this snowfall would indicate is that I'd actually have to shovel snow off the walk rather than just push the thing over the sidewalk to make a path.
I feel like it ripped me off, actually. It snowed overnight when I was asleep and couldn't have seen it anyways because, well, it's so damn dark at night out here in the middle of nowhere. I want some pretty Kincadian daytime snow, like that would fall over stone cottages with warm lights shining through their windows in a Swiss mountain village. That's what I want, dammit. What a rip.
It was pretty to wake up to, though.
Thursday night, me and the wife grabbed dinner out after work. It's an independent joint, but it's indistinguishable from an Applebee's to give you an image to hold onto. But they serve beer and alcohol, have some decent sandwiches, and, this may sound strange, I think I mostly wanted to go there because they have a whole bunch of neon beer signs hanging from their walls (and various other light-up bar novelites), and something about neon and christmas lights in a bar, whether an Applebee's clone or some neighborhood dive always gets me cheery inside, a sense of belonging in the spot I'm occupying on Earth at that moment. It worked.
What didn't work was that it turns out that Thursday night is karaoke night. We had a later dinner (both of us worked late that night, 'til about 8pm), and so as we were getting served our meal, the music began. Me, I can't stand karaoke. Every now and then, I see a performance that'll crack me up, but it's never worth the steep price of listening to all the other performances that accompany it.
In the end, it wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. We didn't have to sit through much of it, and the whole event was strangely subdued. Maybe it would've started rocking the house later in the evening, but I didn't get the sense that the word 'wild' was gonna be used to describe the event the next day. My experience with karaoke both in Chicago and Louisville has people getting hammered lickety split and then the serious drinking begins.
My wife loves karaoke. And she's good at it. She used to sing in a punk rock band during college, and now that we've moved back down close to Louisville, she's picked it back up. Right now as I type this, she's likely at or about to go to band practice with one of her old bandmates and a couple friends, playing some new songs and some covers and recording in the attic/studio on an eight-track (or something like that). She can sing.
Me, I hate it. I can't sing, in case you were wondering, but I never liked it anyways. Something about it just gets under my skin, and that was before I worked two miserable months at a karaoke bar in Chicago just to pick up some extra cash over the summer. Misery!
That's it.
It better start snowing again soon.
I stayed up late to watch the snow coming down into the porch light. If it hadn't been so danged cold, I would have bundled up and gone out for a short walk. I love to walk through the falling snow, then come home to a cup of hot chocolate. The neighbor whose driveway is next to our bedrooms was out at 6:30 shoveling and making lots of scraping noises, so I got up and watched the falling snow. It had stopped falling by maybe 8:00 or 8:30 this morning.
I don't go bonkers when it snows. I keep a decent backup of stuff on hand, just because. I don't like to have to run out every time I turn around for supplies. And I don't like to mingle with the ugly, grabbing hordes when it snows. Yes, a Kincaid snowfall would be right nice.
I'm still in Denver -- been here since the 10th, and I have seen several snows that were gone by the end of the day or early next day. My car was covered with snow a couple of nights ago, but it was gone by mid-morning. It has been nice here. I can see all the snow I want on the mountains. I have been helping daughter with new baby and we celebrated the 4-year-old's birthday yesterday, so I have done only a few tourist things. Haven't gotten into the mountains, and since I'm heading back to Kentucky today, I've done about all the sightseeing I can pack in. I like Denver. Daughter lives in the Cherry Creek area, and I've ventured out into other areas on my own. Having lived in Louisville for most of my life, I find Denver more convenient in terms of travel time around the city. It's certainly different here than in small town Kentucky, and there's a different atmosphere than in "big" city Kentucky.
Seen on Facebook, five different people. Original post from female who lives in Lexington (my friend). I don't know the location of those who commented on her post.
___ (female) found out that there is hardly anyone at WalMart at 6 a.m. The people working there are VERY friendly too, asking if I need help, did I find everything, etc. I'll definitely do this again!
10 hours ago
___ (male) Walmart at 6 a.m. ...Is that like breakfast at Tiffany's ?
9 hours ago
___ (male) And it smells much nicer at that time as well.
3 hours ago
___ (female) There's nothing like WalMart in Nicholasville first thing in the morning. The locals consider it perfectly normal to shop in their pajamas and house shoes!
2 hours ago
___ (male) At least they are wearing their shoes....
56 minutes ago
Kentucky has given me an elevated detestation of Walmart. Though Champaign's came close.
The Champaign Walmart and Meirs were across the road from one another. They were both 24 hours. At 1am, eveyone at Meiers looked like Old Navy models with a minimum of a bachelors degree. They would go to their car, quickly gather what they needed, head back and gone. 1am at Walmart, it was party city. Cars in the parking lot huddled around one another, Faygo bottles passed between shirtless burnouts, young and old, slouching against car hoods. Those that went into the store did so loudly, wandering aimlessly, window shopping out of retarded boredom than any sense of consumerism.
It's a social experiment just waiting for a U of I dissertation.
Speaking of shirtless... How did I know that Autumn was nearly upon us? Did I hear the call of the geese headed South? Was it the gentle chill before sunrise becoming less gentle? Turning a page on our Farmers Insurance Bureau Farmer Almanac calendar? Nope. The town stopped going shirtless.