February Stars and Snow

Billy Bragg & Wilco - California Stars

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Hi loves.
Phew! SO many things going on lately, both the good news and the bad news, it's enough to really make a girl want to cozy up at home with good wine and the husbie and yummy dinners for nights on end. I've had loads of homework what with my Photoshop, Poli Sci, French, Business, and Health classes. I really really love and am fascinated with each and every class, I love nurturing my brain and feeling it grow! My Health class is really informative and fun, oddly, cause it's an online course. We are reading a textbook called An Invitation To Health, which is actually a thoroughly enjoyable and wise read. It addresses a completely holistic outlook at being healthy and views total well-being through physical, mental, social, spiritual, environmental, and emotional filters. Each part of our self health plays into another part of our self health, directly affects it. Literally and scientifically the thoughts you think (whether you worry too much or stress out or feel hurried, whether you take time to breathe and slow down and completely chillax) make a DIRECT impact on your immune system through something called the HPA axis- which includes the hypothalamus, pituitary, and adrenal glands. Your glands send out messages (hormones and chemicals) that can block or propagate T-Cell growth, which in turn can break down OR strengthen your immune system. I always knew being and optimist could save a life , but now I have the diagrams and chemistry knowledge to back my gut instinct up! Although I was already a believer in a holistic view towards health, this book is cinching the deal. I'm reading it through online version on a website called Coursesmart. I like old fashioned books very much, but I also love technology a whole hell of a lot!
On a different note, my Photoshop class is blowing my mind! This past week I got to learn how to make a layered composite graphic. We started with this picture and had to dress Max (our textbook author's son I think) any way we wanted! Plus put him in a new environment!
Here's the start photo.


Here's the first dress up photo.


And here's what I dressed him in!


Needless to say, I am LOVING classes, but extremely busy! But I managed to take Thursday night off last week from French class and venture with my Pops and Art to Russian River Brewing Company where we got to taste the once-a-year-only cult classic Pliny the Younger! I had so much fun and Dad drank root beer and Art and I got a little toasted tasting all the delicious beer at RRBC and eating tons of Cheese Louise pizza (local salty DELICIOUS cheeses)! It was so kind of my dad to be our Designated Driver and put up with my inCESSANT talking cause I was having such a blast. I tend to talk a TON when I am in a good creative mood, poor dad! Unfortunately we got some really cool pics of a few other things like giant 50 gallon (or more) muslim hop bags with the names of the hops on them but they are all on my dad's awesome camera!
Here are just a few I took on ye ol' Iphone. The black and white one of me I just messed with in Photoshop. I got rid of this tiny area on my front teeth where one tooth juts out! I can't wait to get adult braces to make my Photoshop touch-ups a reality!







In the meantime I looked out my bathroom window this morning and this is what I saw. I LOVE IT. It's been really nice to have such a warm beginning to 2011, but MAN I was craving a bit more winter before the full Spring begins! I do love it though when it's beautiful and clear out on a February night and the stars are blowing around like in the Wilco song.

Hopaholics Are Us, Hop To It!

I always get so proud when the bottling is o'er.
To all whom I see in Fevrier! You get one of these babies! Not the giant one I am loving in the first pic, but one of the tinies in the last pic.....

Happy Friday 1am.

Frenchy!

So I started my French class....
and before I had even begun I had started wearing more stripes, thinking of little blouses tucked into pleated circle skirts, fat sweet cursive handwriting, riding down streets in scooters, bangs, my favorite perfumes, the smell of shampoo in Paris when I was there.....
Needless to say, I have a new mini-obsession. I feel as though something is about to be born (and it's not a tiny baby, though a girl can wish....) I can't wait to watch EVERY Anna Karina film and start saying "a toute" on a daily basis. Oh.....and plan a trip to France and possibly play a show or two there....





I don't think there's anyone quite so beautiful...though I have told my dear friend Alela that she reminds me of the lass, perhaps a sister lost in time....and the French seem to love her just as well!

Lord I'm Grateful

First of all I found this beautiful Etsy shop by a woman called Flor Larios....here is a link and some photos from her Flickr and her shop.

Valentine's Cards!

Isn't her work so lovely?

For the past two days I have been yuckily sick......mainly a ton of horrific sneezing, stuffed up face, and some chest congestion. To top it off I've been sleeping terribly. I have been waking in the night (past two nights) like three times and staying up for an hour or so, trying to breathe through my nose (nearly impossible) and worrying my head off about ........ EVERYTHING.

One thing I inherited from BOTH sides of my family, no thank you, is the ability to worry EXCESSIVELY. About really minute but real things in my life. And that's what I did in the night last night, I awoke ...probably around 6 am....and lay there worrying about some of the most random or improbable stuff! I couldn't get back to sleep. My mind covered things like: school starting Tuesday (and books costing hundreds of dollars), whether my Photoshop teacher would let me use my own computer instead of the "required" Mac Lab (which is all the way in Sacramento) and if he didn't whether I should drop the class this semester or not, the fact that at any moment our landlord could tell us we have to move out (TOTALLY UNFOUNDED!!! SO STUPID and NOT gonna happen), never being able to start a web design career because I procrastinate too much, wondering if certain people hate me because I lost touch with them (totally random from years ago!), remembering DVDs I borrowed from someone that I still have and need to return, things I needed to tell Art to buy on his way home from Nevada City the next day (which I promptly forgot, dang!), becoming a scientist next month when it comes to actually nailing down my cycle and when I ovulate, wondering if my student grant/loan would make it in time for my trip next week.....and OH the list went on.

When I finally fell asleep again it was clearly without anything peaceful on my mind. And I ended up having a terrifying and horrendous nightmare! It included ALL of my worst recent fears and then some. It started with someone stealing my new Macbook Pro and replacing it with an old broken Ibook....and it got worse from there, complete with being attacked (and actually feeling pain) by a "Freddy" type character from Nightmare on Elm Street (I've never even seen it!) and Art and I realizing that we could no longer live in our house because he knew where we lived. It all sounds trite now, but it was a terrifying place to be. I awoke calmly, but with a very fearful heavy foreign feeling that was pushing me to go back to sleep. But I knew the dream would continue, as has happened in the past. Nightmares are extremely rare for me thank God, but when they do come that tends to be the case, and I DID NOT want this horrible dream to take over again.

So I decided to look up "reasons for nightmares" on Google on my iPhone, as I figured I could defeat the dream if I overanalyzed and picked it apart. I found some pretty common-sense answers that didn't tell me anything I didn't already know and I still felt heavy and strange, so I decided to bring a little spirituality into it. I did sort of feel a darkness in my head and I wanted to bring in some peace and light. Even after a half hour of lying there that heavy feeling would not go away.


(Tangent) Though the word doesn't quite sound right to me, due to the damage that has been done in the past, I am, I suppose, a mystical sort of Christian. I prefer to use terms that involve less prompting for problematic discussions with my friends, as many of them think of the Inquisition, their own unhappy parents, an unconscious super-consumerist, environmentally damaging way of life, pushiness, or even the promotion of hatred ("Jesus Hates Gays" signs) when they think of Christianity. So I lean toward addressing the issue by explaining my spirituality as "I like what Jesus taught.....alot", or "I believe in God- be it called also the Great Spirit or the Beloved or Heavenly Father/Mother " or "I am a follower of Jesus", because I tend to agree that many "Christians" represent a super-American very UN-Christlike version of living life. Massive air-conditioned homes, constant grouchy ungratefulness (um hello how can you say you believe in and love God if you HATE LIVING the life-legend that was the whole idea of God?), 2-5 SUVs in the driveway, greed and control-freakishness, a disregard for the needy, an unconsciousness of other peoples or countries, and even judgement and disdain for those other people and places. It's NOTHING like what I am (I hope) or what I aspire to be. In fact I hope to live quite the opposite..... But I did come to feel this way about the teachings of true love by Jesus through a certain progress in my life that transpired by what-seemed-like-magic and no conversation is going to make me feel any differently. It's just what I believe and I honestly can't even help it. It's just where my life has led me, and believe me, it was NOT an overnight process. Major events took place to lead me to it. I don't go to church, I participate in many things that lots of Christians would not approve of (mainly a bit of gambling, rambling around on road trips, and drinking) and I have almost zero friends who believe the same thing as me. Nevertheless the things I believe ring true in my heart of hearts. It can be difficult never being around fellow believers, but I just don't want to pretend to be something I am not in a church around people who I feel are judging me for being raggedy, poor, and having a variety of friends. So for now I'm just doing what I can to have spirituality and gratefulness to God in my soul daily and to share that with my Arthie, who thankfully believes like I do. I do have an idea that Catholicism is a bit more of my kind of thing than the uber-modern Christian pop culture churches around here, but I have yet to even have been to a Midnight Mass. I wish there were a true-love church with lots of singing for poor creative artist types who have old cars and love being alive! I always feel so small and weird in the midst of wealthy older people, maybe that's my own issue. But I also love all my friends so much, their beliefs spiritually matter so much less to me than their sweet golden hearts do. That's all that matters to me, careful love and the way one spreads it to others and makes a contagious goodness catch fire.

SOOOO- back to original topic- to rid myself of my nightmarish feeling I started to speak out loud in a little whisper, asking God, or the Great Spirit in Everything, for a little peace and started thinking of all the things I am grateful for. Once I got started on my thankfulness, the list went on and on. It was the exact opposite of my worrying spell. Instead of thinking that things would be taken away from me, I started thanking the universe for everything I have right now. Which is so much. I may not own my home or have a fancy couch or a new car but I have the most amazing friends that have blown my mind with their creativity and kindness, the nicest family and so does Art, both of us are healthy and strong and we have our beloved cats and goldfish and pond snails and this beautiful forest around us and this amazing cabin house that shelters us and we are so close to so much beautiful wilderness, the ocean and desert just a stone's throw.....after a few minutes of focusing on such goodness I realized that the heavy fearful feeling was gone and everything seemed good again. I believe our attitudes and state of minds attract similar energies to us and I have believed this for long enough that once my mind was focused on all the tremendous beauty of being alive I knew I had nothing to fear. Nothing at all but goodness was around me.

And I went back to sleep and had sweet dreams.

The Desiderata is so beautiful and wise, I love reading it.

I love the lamb art.

A real photo of a unicorn!

Hopular and Attractive! Our third homebrew.

Art and I made an evening out of future ale last night and brewed our third batch of beer ever. An IPA, of course, cause we are addicted to those green beauties called hops. For the past two years we have grown and dried our own hops and put them into our beer! It's the most satisfying feeling ever, taking a drink from a cold, hoppy, delicious bottle of your own homegrown and homebrewed India Pale Ale.

I saw it bubble tonight!

If you've ever brewed your own beer than you know how sweet it is to witness the first time the airlock and stopper lets a bubble through. That means the yeast is going to work at fermenting your precious and hard-earned wort (wort is what beer is called before it has any yeast added to make it alcoholic). If bubbling never happens it means something isn't going right, so I am very grateful this moment that the bubbles have begun! If you have any interest in creating your own beer perhaps you'd like to read my blog entry from last February where I document the brew-day process step by step. I am quite proud of that entry, as I used it to help my own self along the way this time. Sometimes those brewing books can be confusing....

We stuck our bucket by the woodstove this evening cause the wort needed to warm up a bit to get that yeast going. Here's a pic of it without a cover, but the light has to stay out - so right now it's blanketed in wool.

Art and I are so lucky that his grandmother's property has been blessed with 30-year-old hop vines. They told us that they had actually tried to remove the vines on repeated occasion...but when we found out the treasure we were sitting on (we used to live there) we made immediate use of the honor. We did nothing more but tie some lines of string to the top of an old antenna and water the ground....alot. They grew inches every day. Next thing you know we were cutting down masses of hops. That was 2009. This past year we got about twice as many! I still haven't even fertilized the ground ever (I shall this spring tho because those sweet vines deserve it!), but thar she grew. Beautiful, huge, fat hops that were filled with the yellow dusty gold they call lupelin. It's what gives the hops their flavor. It's what gives good BEER its flavor. We cut them down this past year in different sessions and then lay them to dry on screens. Then we smashed them tight into double freezer bags and put them into our freezer, to be stored until our first brew day. We waited a few months because we were so busy, but it was so fun pulling them out and putting them to use!

We got so many bags of hops this year, this is just a fraction! We still have so many of the green delights (in case you want to add a few to your own brew:)


There's our dirty, sticky brew. It's extremely sugary, because basically all it is is water, sugars from grains, and giant bags of hops added in. You boil that brew for a full hour and a half. This time we had the company of the lovely Jorden Mingle, as he's ready to start a batch of his own soon and wanted to watch the process. Here's a photo of him (kind of out of place but it's all I could find), taken from the Epic Dust blog, a western short film series that Cinema Caldera is creating here in El Dorado County.

And more of the brewing.



Sterilizing equipment is extremely important! That's the fermenting bucket, before the wort is in it, filled with a sterilizing solution. I have to soak anything that touches the future wort in that solution for a full minute.

Cooling the wort as quickly as possible. We did ours with ice and a bathtub (the po' man's way).



Kind of an idiotic pic, but it's the only one cause let's just say I'm the brewhand and Art is the photographer. I'm thankful he took any pics at all though, cause I didn't take a one.

So ladies and gentlemen, somewhere in the beginning of February, our Hopular Valentine's beer shall be ready for the tasting. In the meantime, I'm watching those bubbles rise up, and it's extremely fulfilling.