:TESTO:Here's an overview of my summer. It's beginning to look a lot like crazy, everywhen you go. I'm looking forward to it, especially the super-compressed move in mid-July.

June 28-July 1: Totally Awesome Liz and Nat's Wedding in Toledo, Super Fun Crashing-Erik's-House Party in Ann Arbor.

July 2-July 4: Begin to Move. I signed my lease today!

July 5-July 15: A few rather unplanned (and therefore full of adventurey possibility, and as such wicked sweet) days in San Francisco surrounding a week of rather intense training with Oracle to teach Database Programming to high schoolers, which I'll probably never do but it gets me to San Francisco for free, and provides some mental hard-tack this summer. This span will include visits to Benny and Chris, and possibly Nick Arioli, who I understand is something of a hotshot manager at Friendster. I may help Chief Engineer Scott invent plexiglass while I'm in town. or at least chuckle genially at his use of 20th-century computer technology.

July 16-July 18: Finish Moving. I need to buy two more A/C window units, as the old tenant is taking hers with her. (and her microwave, and her spice rack... we'll see how I can get by without those things. The third floor will definitely need air conditioning, being a third floor.)

July 19-July 23: Regional Burning-Man Event in Ashville, NC, with sister and my new brother-in-law, and his older son. Gonna take some mead to insert into the gift economy, if the darned stuff ever finishes fermenting.

-a short pause, to breathe, and unpack. probably a house-opening dinner party, with pie-

August 6 - 10: Cisco Academy Curriculum Update Training - I actually have a good time at these all-day intensive trainings, as the leaders are intelligent and well-versed professionals, experts in both teaching and content. Not your normal Professional Development bullshit.

--visit Rafe in Maine? pick fresh blueberries and make maple wine?--

August  21-22: Bonus Professional Development at Digital Harbor. This may be your normal PD bullshit, I hope it's not.

August 23-FOREVER: Getting ready to teach, then teaching. :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:A few weeks ago, I started a gallon of molasses ale, with roughly equal parts blackstrap molasses and brown sugar, along with some juniper berries. I tasted it a week ago, and it was too syrupy-fruity, so I added a little water steeped with half an ounce of hops.

Fermentation has slowed, and as I want some amount of bubbly for this beerish brew, I went ahead and bottled it before it fully halted. The intent is to drink it soon (before I leave for SF), so it doesn't have a chance to build up pressure, and I suspect that ale does not age in as dignified a manner as mead and wine.

My own definitions of beer, wine, and ale are very loose, and don't consider the sugar source in the typing. It might be more accurate to call this "vesou" or "grappe", which is the fermented, undistilled forerunner to rum. But I think it's nicer to give a loose term that allows a frame of reference for the flavor and alcohol content of the brew, and this one is "ale", in my head, namely a higher-octane, full-flavored beerish sort of thing.

I also baked a cherry pie this morning, having clambered out my bathroom window to pick cherries from the tree in my very backyard, as the boughs hung ripely above the kitchen's nice flat roof. I'm rather excited to share it with people who will eat it, which is in the works as well. I'm making calzoni for dinner, and have invited a few friends over. It has been such a long while since I cooked a big meal for several people.

Also, I've found a place to rent, for a ridiculously good price. Three somewhat narrow stories, for $650 a month, not four blocks from where I live now. Horray for me! I'll have to throw another dinner party once I move.

Away, to make the calzone-dough! :ENDTESTO:

:TESTO:I am so very glad to have found my pants, my wits, and the universe.
Luckily, they were all in the same place. :ENDTESTO: