Looking at and thinking about lightning strikes

 I captured some lightning strikes on video, it was neat to look at the individual frames and observe the qualitative standard progression of how they work.

My visceral reactions to GLOW: delving in to my childhood during the 1980's

I recently watched GLOW - the Netflix TV series about the 1980's female wrestling show of the same name (Gorgeous Ladies Of Wresting) and was extremely surprised that seeing the styles of the 80's and hearing the music had a deep / profound impact on me.  It hit me.  It connected.  I was 9-10 years old at the that time, but hated it!  It's not that I decried the music publicly but secretly loved - I have no memory of ever enjoying it.  I wrote this blog post to explore why I deeply enjoyed it now, and have loved watching GLOW.

Repairing (repointing) stone retaining walls

Some stones had fallen off some stone walls in our backyard, and I decided to repair them - basically cleaning up the area where the stones should go, mortaring them back in place.  Note these are nominally retaining walls but the work I did was not structural - there is not a bulge or tilt to these walls, the stones for the most part were on the top or edge of the wall.

Spiderwebs in the mist

I came out Sunday morning, it was slightly misty and humid, and all of these dense spiderwebs were visible on the ground.

Garden in late May

I've been enjoying our garden lately - planted in late April, with plants bought from Cape Cod Wholesale Nursery (thank you!).

Brewing an all-grain guiness stout clone

Decided to brew a Guinness clone using an all-grain method!  This is our second attempt at an all-grain brew, and we bought a larger pot for the mash, and I rigged up some insulation and thermal mass to help keep the temperature stable during the mash.

link to recipe

link to pdf of above in case that link breaks

Bought all ingredients from Northern Brewer:

5 lbs. Briess Full Pint Brewers Malt

1 lb. Briess Black (Patent) Malt

Wyeast 1084 Irish Ale Yeast

2.4 oz. East Kent Goldings (EKG) Hop Pellets

2.5 lbs. Flaked Barley

Pictures of a chickadee that I thought was a woodpecker because it was pecking at the wood siding on the house

This small woodpecker has been pecking directly on our house.  Initially I thought it was the same as this other one that we see near the house, but after looking at the pictures they are quite different.