Perfection Attained. Curiosities in my tiny city

First off. If you haven't read the blog I wrote yesterday please scroll down and read it first. In fact skip this one altogether if you don't wanna waste time and JUST READ THAT ONE. It's not so cutesy.
And other than that.............

A. It WON'T STOP raining and snowing!!!!!!!!
B. I have almost given up on outdoor activities, cause it's hard enough to get out of BED when my house is this cold in the morning and it's almost JUNE! (4 days!)
C. What else is there to do but...........write another blog entry???

Seriously! I thought I lived in California?!! Even though I'm at 4000 feet elevation, I have heard thru the locals that winter weather this late in the game and so consistent is TOTALLY WEIRD. So I've taken to cuddling in blankets until mid-afternoon, building raging fires in my woodstove on a continual basis, and, currently, listening to some new tunes at my local Itunes Store. Ok, not THAT new, but to me....NEW.

This is I found today. Link to the song "Lemonade"
I like CocoRosie. I went to a concert of theirs a couple years back, and though the crowd was so hip that I felt like I was the shyest most goody-goody girl in the world, they put on a lovely show, complete with their mom on backing vocals.

I like it. I think next I wanna hear the entirety of the new Eminem album.

And.....without further adieu, some tidbits of my world circa this NEVERENDING WINTER.


Above. Violet syrup on homemade shortcake with strawberries and brown-sugar yogurt. Invention that sounded worth a try.


Above. Some homemade little blank books I put together for my very dear girlfriends that either had birthdays, going-away parties, or just needed a package sent from afar.


Above. Whiskey corner at our house.


Our sweet little wooden fairytale house. I'm hoping that SOMEDAY summer actually makes it here, and when it does our front porch is going to be my favorite place.


Our record listening station. Complete with cassette deck too!



Above: RHINO Records.
During late March, I went to Southern California with my dad and sister and we met up with my little brother Mikie. He took us to this great little town, Claremont, and I found a relic left over from the 1990s. A real, true, old fashioned spacious goodlooking record store that is NOT part of a giant chain!!! Rhino Records! This photo above shows my purse parked at the RECORD listening station. I also got the first glimpse into being truly "Old School" when two college kids (maybe 18) passed by me talking about how cool real records are and how they are the best on a rainy day. It wasn't so much their conversation that impressed upon me, in fact I've probably had the same one with somebody, it was more the way they were sort of bragging about liking records to each other and you could tell they both probably just had bought their first record player in like the last month! You could tell it was something BRAND NEW to them. It was so weird...realizing that certain analog ways of listening to or interpreting art are no longer necessary AT ALL, only pure novelty (and expensive!). I can remember being a little kid and knowing that a record player was the only WAY I could hear recorded music in my house, and in many of my friend's houses. I used to go to this kid's house after school sometimes and we would jump around to this excercise record for kids called "Mousercise"! Later they made a show out of it. And Heather and I were able to spin around to THIS SONG only because of our little record player! It was like a daily affirmation. I remember doing it outdoors sometimes, so it must have been a portable Fisher-Price record player that we used.



You may have seen a picture of weird clay looking babies at the top of this blog. Those were part of a baby shower contest to create your own baby out of a piece of Hubba Bubba bubble gum at Jocelyn and Dan's Baby Shower for their darling Juniper. I actually pretty much hate baby showers, ESPECIALLY the dumb games. I have to say however, Jocelyn's baby shower RULED. EVERY GAME WAS SO MUCH FUN. Well, here is the amazing couple on that jubilous day! By the way, both J and D are awesome and unique musicians and you should check that shit out!
Link to Jocelyn's website for her music, Alak HERE
Link to Dan's website for his music, Pregnant Here

And the three pregger ladies themselves! Since then, they've ALL had their tinys, and they are all healthy and happy.

And here is the glorious Juniper. Just 2 days old, in the arms of her loving uncles. :) BTW, both uncles are awesome musicians TOO!
Uncle Michael's music/ Afternoon Brother HERE
Uncle Matty's music/ Soft Devil- can't find a link............





Some of our good crew got married in recent months as well! (With more to come) These above photos were from the lovely Livia and Antwon's wedding, down at the American River, on a fine March Spring Day. Crazily enough, both weddings I've been to so far this year have found themselves bathed in sunlight and warmth. And both were next to the green and golden American River, land of Eureka! itself, where a mere 150 years ago shining pebbles of yellow gleam led ambitious and brave men and women from around the world to their destiny in the golden hills of California!


SOOO. Ruebi and Manuel's Bachelorette/ Bachelor Party and Despidida. It was great fun. I got to catch up with my beloved girls in the city and we pranced thru the Mission wearing feather boas and sporting paper bags with little drinks in them. (This took place after a glorious afternoon patio party for Ruebi with champagne cocktails and penis straws! I don't have those pics tho....they were Polaroids and got donated to Ruebi). As you can tell, our dear Ruebi is pregnant. And by that 2nd pic you can probably also tell, she's about the sexiest pregnant gal you've ever laid eyes on!




I only have a few shots from Ruebi's wedding itself, because I was in it and there was a photographer and I wanted to just ENJOY the party. So hopefully more of those pics will one day arrive within my territory. There is a little video too, of the Ruebi gettin' ready for the big moment.



Me.
My family.

Imperfectionista: Visions of the Clumsy, the Bad, and the Ugly

That's what I am. Absolutely, soddingly, imperfect.

I am not much of a blogger, as you can tell from the last date of an entry here, but I occasionally DO like to read other people's blogs. I have to be very selective these days though, because with the overwhelming cuteness going on in the girly blog world, I am very lucky to come up from a reading session not feeling like an old stepped-on piece of dried macaroni. (This is a term I frequently use when NOT feeling cute, sexy, important, creative, or anything else that's loosely related to the word "special").

Anyhow, I got to thinking about possibly, just possibly, creating a blog entry now and again that focuses mainly ON my many imperfections. Or imperfect days or happenings. Or my erroneous ways in general, like hogging out on too much fried fast food sometimes, or ending up in a Walmart and actually LOOKING at clothes, or throwing my recycling into the regular trash at gas stations, or getting psychotically drunk and my face melting off, or ridiculous arguments that Arth and I have about nothing that almost leave us wanting a fricking divorce when they're over. You know.... the wicked details that might make other not-so-cute-all-the-time girls feel a little BETTER about themselves (in comparison to the dorky and clumsy things that so oft happen within my world!) Note: this is so NOT a diss to the cute blogs.....this is only a funny, weirdly happy idea that I got in my head and totally feel like delving into.

Can't believe I'm going public with the following photo. But I just have to. It's morally right.




Yes, the above photo is me circa the 1986 or something. God-awful. I have to harbor some animosity toward my parents for LETTING ME OUT OF THE HOUSE LIKE THIS! It's like their first-born was some kind of wild-child or something that they kept locked in the closet until this day.

And for the present.


EWWWW.


Yesterday I got a push to make the blog entry a reality....
Art and I had to take a little trip to the local overgrown suburban sprawl known as "Folsom". There we made our way to the Factory Outlets in search of well-priced but quality work shoes for my Arth. After our first jaunt into a store, a downpour began. Like, SOAKING rain. Needless to say I wanted to head back to the trunk of my car to grab my umbrella, but the outlets are such like a maze that we had a hard time finding the right path to the part of the parking lot where our car WAS. In an attempt to cross (at a cross-walk) I completely BAILED. I slipped on a wet, newly-painted speed bump and landed on my wrist and bum. My entire palm was coated in white paint and there where some unmistakable white handprints on my black hoodie as well as white paint on my tights, shoes, and purse. To top it off, I was also getting soaked. I was caught so off-guard by the white paint that I forgot to be embarrassed, which was nice, and was more worried about my favorite black hoodie having a permanent kindergarten painting on it (my hand). Art helped me up and we rushed to the food court area where I found a bathroom and tried to find some paper towels to wipe away the paint. Alack. No paper towels ANYWHERE.
I made my way back into the actual food court and grabbed some napkins. Not such a great idea because the minute after I dampened them and started rubbing, they tore into tiny shreds that not only did nothing to remove the paint, but started a linty looking mess on top of it! So I went for the gold, turned on the faucet, and dunked my favorite hoodie in the bathroom sink, wringing it out and scrubbing 1800's style. I emerged from the bathroom with my dripping hoodie and a bit of a temper. A young man who had served Art some coffee saw my wet and white painty dilemma and kindly pointed me in the direction of the Outlet Information Center so that I might be able to file a report.

I'm not the suing type, hope to never be, but in such a situation I thought it best to at least report what had happened JUST IN CASE my wrist never stopped hurting or something. We found the Info Center and I saw white foot prints leading in!!! A lady inside was holding an ice pack on her head. Poor thing almost cracked her head open on the same flippin' speed bump. The same thing had happened to two others, one being an Outlet employee! The nice people inside got my info, took pictures of my painted purse and tights, and then me and Art got the HECK OUT OF THERE. We headed back to the car where I got my umbrella so we could do some real shopping.

Imperfection Police
1. My skirt and tights were already shoddy, had runs and a holey zipper (a put-together girl wouldn't be caught DEAD walking NEXT to me!) but now they also have skids of white paint on them.
2. Somewhere along the line, a cat must have peed in my car in the last week or so, so Art and I kept getting whiffs as we drove.
3. Our car has a missing front turnlight cover (the orange panel), a broken front bumper (previous owner hit a deer TWO times) and duct tape WRAPPING the passenger rear view mirror to the car.
4. Car is messy
5. The one NICE thing I was carrying, my vintage carpetbag purse, now has white paint near the handle.
6. Art's shoes had holes and his feet were drenched, hence immediately replacing them with the new ones once he found some dry socks* in the back of the car.
* another major imperfection- what the heck was an old pair of socks doing back there???
7. I lost my Bluetooth AGAIN during all of this.
8. My makeup got rained off just enough to reveal my dirty, chimney-sweep like melasma spots on my forehead. One of the great gifts of aging.....dirty looking skin even when it's clean as a whistle.
9. Maje cellulite under there.


STROKE OF LUCK: Iphone = Still OK, despite the fall.

Redemption Afterwards: Drinking a Pliny the Elder at TWO SEPARATE LOCATIONS! (Folsom and Placerville)


Of course, kiddos, I'm the scary-looking one.

Bottling before the Castle

So, before we move into our new wooden Cabin Castle...........................


We most definitely were under pressure to do the bottling of our beer! That way we can pass some out to our helpers on March 1st!





We had our first taste last night.....yummy IPA. More on the new house and it's revelries later!

Beer Girl. I am a girl who loves making and drinking beer.

It's true. I am a girl who loves beer. I love learning about and partaking in many different kinds of foods, wines, sake, coffee ......but mostly, and truly, I love beer..........(OK- coffee ties.) Especially super hoppy IPAs. And I loved them enough that I decided to learn how to make them myself. That's kind of saying alot for me- because it ain't no simple process, crafting a beer. It's a fricking science project, complete with precise degree-ery and vials and vats and boilovers.......... so many instructions that my brain literally HURT after our first batch (AND our 2nd!). Mad scientists, I guess we are. Mad for beer.

One of our firsts!

So we undertook the task of making our first batch of beer this past December. We started our brew on Nov. 30 and it was bottled and delicious by December 21st! We modeled our recipe after Lagunitas IPA but substituted the hops they called for with our own that we grew last summer! It turned out lovely, with about 6.7% alcohol. We were very proud of our first born- our Solstice Brew....which we named "Hoppin' A Feel".....among other names. Anyhow, we were almost finished with our last bottle from the first batch a couple days ago(5 gallons makes 42 or so 16 oz beers!!!!!) and we needed to get brewing on the 2nd batch. By the way, 42 bottles of good beer costs about 200 bucks at $4.50- $5.00 a bottle...so we are saving some serious money doing this as well! The cost of each batch is about 30-40 dollars! After startup costs of course...........


Modeling some of our last bottles from Batch Numero Uno.

Aha! A little navigation thru the process.

This handbook is my bible, constantly referring to it. (One of the contributing factors to my brain literally HURTING though)

OK. The bag on the left is full of the grains to be steeped, four different kinds, kindly cracked by the nice lady with the grinder at Sierra Moonshine Brewing Supplies.....Steeping these grains is Step One. The middle bags are dried malt extract.....which come into the brew at Step Two.


You put the cracked grains into a metal pot and then cover them with about ten cups of hot water....154 degrees to be precise. You then soak them in that pot, in an oven turned to 154 degrees, for 45 minutes.

Then, with a wire colander, you strain the water out of those grains into an even bigger pot and you make sure to get all the precious drops pressed out as to get that flavor into your beer. That part is called "sparging". You have to pour more 154 degree water (which you have been heating) over your colander and smash all the flavor out.

Then you add the Dried Malt Extract (DME) to the grain water and as much more water as you can add to the pot with room at the top so it doesn't boil over. And you add your hop bag...a vinyl mesh bag that sits in the brew during the whole time it boils. You add the hops in increments as the recipe calls for. Note our hops and scale to the right of them. We have to do our brew in two pots as we only have a 3 1/2 gallon pot and a smaller one. In our small pot we just boil the hops loose and then strain them out at the end.


The boiling goes on for so long that every single window in our house gets fogged up. This recipe calls for a full HOUR AND A HALF of boiling the hops and brew. And every half hour you add more hops....and what you are making is called "wort". This time we used hops from our crop last year as well as some amazing smelling Cascades that we bought. You lose some water with all the steam during the time that it's boiling as it's best to not have the brew covered with a lid. (Lets the impurities escape) We make up for water loss at the end by boiling an extra gallon or so of water and adding it in to the final bucket. (Everything has to be boiled so as to stay sterilized!)

Finally....when the boil is over....you fill a large tub with ice water, so as to cool the wort as quickly as possible down to about 75 degrees. At this point in the process ART DITCHED OUT ON ME (band practice) and I had to finish the brew alone!!! Pretty scary as 5 gallons of sticky sterile wort can be a really heavy thing to be left with! First I let each of our two brew pots cool down a bit in the tub....but then I had to strain them out and transfer the wort from BOTH to a 7 gallon fermentation bucket to finish cooling it. Because at some point you have to combine the two pots and add the extra sterilized water to make the full five gallons! I was a bit overwhelmed doing this pouring alone. You have to be SO careful....A: because if it gets on your floor this stuff is a sticky PAIN to clean up. And B: Because you have to be so fricking STERILE about everything. You can't touch your arm into the bucket or anything. Only a sterilized spoon. Needless to say I was a bit frazzled.

After straining it into the big bucket.
Plus, the cooling part is kind of a pain in the butt. You have to have a pitcher of the sterilization fluid prepared and ready for utensils to constantly be soaked. This solution is made from iodine and if you were at the Unicorn Brew Amateur Film Festival in Placerville you might have seen it's cinematic debut in Shane Skogberg's amazing videojournal film that shows it dissolving into a carboy jug. (A possible metaphor?) ANYHOO....the cooling takes FOREVER and you have to constantly sterilize the spoon you are stirring with AS WELL AS the thermometer you are taking readings with and you can't just add cold water into the wort to cool it or anything. You have to just WAIT. Stir and stir and stir. You can't really just leave the lid off either (to let the steam escape) and go take an hour long break cause weird stuff could fall in. You have to babysit the cooling wort. Or at least....that's what I think you're supposed to do. I get overly worried about everything though, so I am sure other people are way more lax. But after all the painstaking measuring and boiling and creating of the wort, I'll be DAMNED if some stray ant or piece of lint is gonna fall in MY brew. You can't get anything in the wort so as to not contaminate it's precious cleanliness - for it is stray bacteria or wild yeasts that roam free in even just the air that can actually ruin a good beer! So you have to just set it there....in the bathtub for us, and keep taking off the lid and stirring it with a sterile spoon and keep stirring the ice water in the tub (with anything BUT your sterile spoon) around the pot or bucket. It's much easier with two people.

Once your wort is cooled to 75 degrees you get to "pitch" the yeast!!! Yay! The hardest part is over. "Pitching" means just shaking up the yeast and adding it in to the bucket and stirring it up. If Art had been here, he would have first picked up the bucket out of the tub and shaken it pretty well...with the lid on tight. This aerates the wort and then the yeast takes to its new home pretty easily. But he wasn't here, so I just stirred like crazy to aerate it. Apparently, it worked well despite my doubts, because that bucket is in the other room this very moment bubbling away!!!!!


After stirring in the yeast you attach the sterilized "air lock and stopper" which is a handy little unit with water in it that blocks ANYTHING from getting in your bucket while simultaneously allowing gas bubbles to escape. They escape through the little blockage of water and out the cap which has tiny teensy little holes in it. But the sterilized water in this unit stops bacteria from entering the bucket. Also....you must keep your home around 70-80 degrees.....optimum fermenting weather. Fine with me, we just have to work extra hard to keep that fire a goin'!


We have a "beer corner" cause usually you are supposed to let the beer ferment in a darkish closet or something but we have NO extra room in any of our closets! Not with mine and Art's clothes around! So.....we have this handy wooden divider thing and we arranged it with the beer bucket in the corner of our living room and put a dark cloth on top to keep the light out.


Here she is. Lady Lager! (JK she's an ale dangit) It already has a good "krausen" forming on top! A very good sign and it's only been 2 days! Bubbles are constantly coming thru the loop on our air lock and stopper. You can hear it all night. It's so exciting.

And although I was left with not one, but TWO hefty vision-killing migraines that ensued about a half hour after I was finished, the stress and hard work and headaches will be surely worth it in the end. I am a beer girl and ain't nothing in the world gonna stop me from DRINKING it and from BREWING it. Cheers!!! If I see you in 3 1/2 weeks I might just pass you an excellent bottle of brew!!! Cross my fingers it turns out good that is!


My friends are all happy about it.

Two New Friends!

Today....rainy day that it was, Art and I played Iphone Scrabble all day, drank coffee, and ran funny little errands. We ended up at a great little pet store in Grass Valley called Muttley's Pet Emporium, on East Main Street. Art surprised me by wantin' himself two pet googly goldfish! We already have five regular goldfish...all whom used to live outdoors in a pond at our old house here. The five we have left are the survivors of an original batch of 16 or so, many got eaten by local raccoons. These guys have been with us for 2 1/2 years! They have been moved from their pond, where they ate only bugs, mosquito larvae, mosquitoes and such, to our trailer ramshackle home in Placerville, where they lived a year in the freezing laundry room (and two passed on to goldy heaven) and then back to Grass Valley where they currently reside in a big tank in our kitchen. I am endeared to them so. And now they have new friends!


I hope they do well here, our other fish seem to love it far more than our last residence (I think the tap water here is much better to begin with).


Also........a renewed and ongoing love for one of my favorite childhood movies. The other morning while making the bed I burst into it's theme song "Tomorrow" and Art only replied by saying "that's not what you should be singing Skerg!" Because he knows how BADLY I am wishing for it to snow. I wish it snowed all winter long here! Anyways, I SO loved the movie Annie. And just recently my Mom gave me back some relics from my childhood she had saved. I love drinking coff from this lovely Leapin' Lizards mug!


Our new cassette racks. We have been collecting cassette racks as we both realized you can buy amazing sounding whole albums for a quarter or so at most thrift stores. We both can actually HEAR the difference between tape and CD. There is so much more SOUND coming thru, except of course, on the warbled ones, which we know that someday...they all will warp into.
Henceforth....LPs.


Our family grows!!!!




Love and rockets,
Adie Beatty

Coal Beautiere Blog from my Myspace page- thought I'd post it

Cause no one ever goes to Myspace anymore!
Well, here's a little tidbit that I didn't put on myspace! I just got this dress in the mail today! It's soooo gorgeous. The lovey lady backtovintage on ebay sent me the wrong Robbie Bee dress at first, and she let me KEEP IT PLUS she sent me the one I originally ordered! This one. It's made of dark blue printed rayon. I am so in love with it. Its far better than the pic! Her store is UNBELIEVABLY cheap! This dress cost me 12$! Plus I got to keep that other one. Go check her store out.



Hi kids.
First off....for those who don't like CD Baby or want to order our 2007 Album Fight Your Broken Heart and Fly from out of the US, I added a Paypal Button in our About section. You kind of have to search for it though. It's under a photo of two 1920's girls. Our Gypsytown Music Website is now gone and I am working on another little web project for the future...to accompany my excitement for the day that In The Wake Of ESP (our next album) is released in 2010. I know it's been so very long and I have pushed the date back 20 times.... but I am just trying to live life and be inspired WHILST recording occasionally and constructing new thoughts and ideas about what KIND of music I want the album to portray. I still can't figure that out. I just want it to be the KIND of music one wants to play while en motion. Can that be a genre? Driving/traveling/running singing-out-loud music? So I am tweaking with Reason 4 and finding out how far a little electro goes. As well as just trying to rock out occasionally while still keeping a the more spirit-esque magic feeling from Fight Your Broken......I do expect our paranormal-adoring new album to be out circa the early months of 2010. It's a good year, besides, has a ring to it. I think it might be perfect good luck to release our songs in 10! Luck of getting brilliant and good listeners I do wish!

By the way, you DO know I love ghosts do you not? As well as cemetaries and ghost stories and hearing about paranormal events and listening to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory. I have always loved such. As a little mormon girl I would always go straight to the card catalogue at the library and look up the subject matter "ESP" and "Paranormal" and then I would spend hours reading stories of ghosts and browsing photos of ghosts. Or reading about the Bermuda Triangle or clairvoyance or telekinesis. Back then the books about such matters had amazing covers and photos within. The passion for such things of the other dimensions has not fizzled whatsohaveyou in my older years. If anything....let's just say the longer I live the more I think that I am GETTING MORE ALIVE and life itself is turning into a ghost. I am hoping by the time I see my dying day that it was life all along that actually turns into a spirit and I myself will have become completely more alive than ever! It's an optimistic way to look at it, to say the least................And then this October I discovered an amazing band called Dead Man's Bones and I got to see them play live on their smashingly rad Halloween Tour this year, in San Francisco. They even had a children's choir dressed as ghouls that sing along to each song. The kids were awesome. The crowd screamed more for the kids than for the guys in the band. And weird, it's Ryan Gosling (of The Notebook, yes) and his good friend Zack's band.

Just to let you know we are playing our first show in 8 months and I am actually excited instead of scared. It's in my lovely hometown of Placerville at the magical and haunted Cozmic Cafe which is located in a 150 year old building that houses the remains of an old mining tunnel in the back of the cafe. As a teenager I could feel that the place was truly haunted...and it used to be a rock and gem store that I would frequent in search of new magic items...they carried more than just crystals. It's not just a regular building either....it's a two story giant building with a dance hall upstairs that has a beautiful bar and a bouncing wooden floor. The downstairs has the mine. In the olden OLDEN days it was the Placerville Sodaworks Company. Now it's called the Cozmic Cafe -kind of a dumb name if you ask me-, but it's my favorite venue in the hills. Even better than anything in Nevada City. I would give the honor of being MY fave venue to St. Joseph's Hall in Grass Valley but they don't have a beautiful wooden bar that serves delicious varieties of local beers! Once again...the brews reel me in.
Oh....that show is this upcoming Sunday. The 20th of December- at an amateur film festival called "Unicorn Brew" put on by my two dear buddies...Darin and Jamie. A handful of my favorite friends have their bizarre and beautiful films entered in and that night we will get to watch the weird short movies and see local loca acts play their music. I think I am actually "starring" in like THREE of those movies. And I haven't seen 2 of them. It's gonna be odd and I hope good and not bad! SO.....despite the fact that I no longer live there, if you ever get a chance to see a show at the Cozmic Cafe...please GO! Or...if you are in a band and want an amazing venue.....talk to me! I no longer help book anything in Grass Valley or Nevada City, but I would love to help you get a show in Placerville. It's a tiny little town that has had a slew of AWESOME kids hanging around in it lately, making clothes and crafts and beer and art and music and you should visit them!

Merry Christmas too. Such the best Halloween and Fall and Thanksgiving and Christmas season I have ever had. It's been perfect. With all the love in my heart as ever! And thanks be to Jesus, reason for the season that he is.......well, for the part of the season I like best! Gift giving (and getting ;)) and being kind and singing beautiful hymns and stories about that magic baby and that bright star and those wise men. And thanks be to God for the most beautiful and crazy and perfect set of friends and family and true love that I have. I love them all more than I ever could have imagined as a child that I could love. Whatever you take God to be (or not)......I am so beyond grateful to That great and powerful energy and spirit for coordinating life the way that it is coordinated. There are basically real miracles everysinglewhere I look, one's just gots to have the eyes to see and hear and know them.




May you all keep the love and notice it in each other and even in your least favorite people, because I promise!, there it lies and you will be happier (and stay younger!) to have loved than to have hated. Tis true. Love always wins.
And for all the animals too.

Happy Holidays 2009,

Adrienne