Karl is on TV!

Karl has been playing with Beth Bombara in St. Louis for a while now.  They recently had a little clip on a television station in St. Louis. The banjo sounds pretty good.

http://fox2now.com/2012/07/24/beth-bombara-band/

Baby pictures

We were recently at the doctor's office for the big ultrasound.  Everything was fine - and the tech informed us that we are having a girl.  Still working on the name...  But she did manage to get some (cute?) pictures.

Let the Nesting Begin

                So the word has gotten out to some of you via grapevines, etc... but we realized this morning that we hadn't put out a mass broadcast.

 

                Baby.

 

                November.

 

                Boy or girl? No clue.

 

                Paint got finished yesterday (the new Behr premium paint + primer in one kinda rules). Furniture got assembled yesterday and today.

 

                All the necessities covered. Place to sleep, place to clean up, place to store stuff, place to sit, speakers. Done and done.

Cake!

Erika and I took a 4 week introductory course in cake decorating down a Jo-Ann fabrics, sponsored by Wilton. It finished up a week ago and our final assignment pulled from all the skills we learned. Devil's food with home made chocolate icing using penzey's cocoa, and the white beading and roses.

A step forward in an old hobby

I've had the stuff to build these for a few months. I finally got off my butt and built them this weekend. Solid hickory is not necessarily the best material for speaker cabinets, but at this size, power and application, cabinet resonances aren't so much of a concern. Small, full range desktop or maybe alarm clock speaker for a portable music device.

Glued, sanded and smoothed out with 320 grit then just some tung oil.

Oh, pretty...

We finally were able to frame and hang a small quilting project Pauline made for us. As you can see it is very colorful with the shades of Tucson sunsets. It looks awesome in our kitchen/den. :)

The Last Bastion of Caffienation

David here.

 

So I got to drinking coffee at a very young age, and as any family or friend will tell you... it's kind of what I think water should actually taste like (I kid, I kid).

 

Anyway, my morning brew is kind of a ritual for me these days and since I don't drink anywhere near the amount of coffee I used to, I want what I do drink to be pretty tasty.

 

I'd been reading about roasting coffee for years and hadn't paid too much of a mind to it, but recently I figured what the heck.

 

You don't need all that much, really.

 

1 hot air vortex popcorn popper

1 bag of green coffee beans (sourced from the internet)

1 metal colander

1 pair of oven mits

1 glass mason jar for the final product

 

 

First up, turn on the popper and pour in about 1/5 lb of beans.

 

This is about 90 seconds into the roasting process (aka "First Crack" in roasting parlance). The beans will begin to pop (much like popcorn), and start to shed their hulls.

 

 

After a while, the hulls will come off the beans, they'll lose water, expand, and begin to darken. This is the window where various roasts can be achieved. The bean I'm roasting here for Erika is from Rwanda and is said to do well at "Full City" roasts, which are in the darker range.

 

After about 4 more minutes we hit "Second Crack", which is much more quiet. This is when you begin to enter the range of "Full City" roasts. I let Second Crack go for about another minute and turned off the popper. I immediately dumped the beans into the colander and shook for a couple of minutes to cool them.

 

In the end, this is what they look like.

 

And here they are in their jar, awaiting tomorrow morning. The lid is on very loosely because the beans will give off gas over night as they cool and recover from the roasting process. By the morning they'll be good to go.

 

A bit later I did a batch of an espresso blend for myself, but went a bit farther into second crack to darken the roast a bit more. Both final products are resting away in the cabinet right now, and I must say the kitchen smells utterly fantastic.