Viking Mead

One year ago I made mead following an old Viking recipe. It has four ingredients:

Water, raisins, honey and yeast. Well there is one more ingredient: time!

After 30 days this mead was bottled and put away.

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This past weekend I popped open the final product and had a taste:

To my surprise it was very bubbly and very strong. I had the alcohol listed at about 7% but I feel it was probably a bit higher. It was very dry, which is how I like it…the wife likes them sweeter. Maybe next time I will try for the sweeter mead. 

Can you guess what holiday is upon us?

​Just a friendly reminder of the current holiday:

Day 40

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And on day 40 we moved everything over to a new jug and added: Cinnamon, cloves and honey.

And now the long wait happens, we let this sit for about 4 months. I will bottle it around Labor Day…..more to come! 

New Baby

​We start this new year with a new fur baby: Bailey Piddles:

She is a golden doodle….I have no idea what that means. We got her from some stranger in the parking lot of a Home Goods….

The wife wanted to stop and look….and 30 seconds later we have a new baby! She is full of energy, tootsie rolls and puddles! 

Welcome to the family!

Apple Spice Mead

​I have taken on the mantle of making mead, honey wine.

I have always been fascinated with the idea of brewing your own booze, but the idea of setting up a whole elaborate set just was not what I was into. 

So last Christmas the wife got me this mead kit and I was off to the races. I made my first and second batch with the kit and the ingredients they supplied. The third one I used an old Viking recipe that used only the ingredients one could have found back then, and the last one I made I followed a blueberry mead recipe I found on YouTube. I will not be doing the blueberry mead again….that was way too sweet for my taste!

And now I am trying another recipe I found on the YouTube….Apple Spice Mead.

Simple ingredients:

Apples, honey, apple juice, cinnamon sticks and some cloves.

I am currently on step one: fermentation. This is supposed to last 40 days….once that part is done we will circle back 

Homemade….Vanilla Extract

​We started this in April and this weekend we pooped it open to make pancakes! 

We made homemade butter last weekend and saved the left over buttermilk for pancakes. We have really been on a ‘Home Made’ kick lately, here is a list of things we have made and are making:

Mead, honey wine

Butter

Buttermilk 

Sour Dough (Just started this, more to come on this)

Vanilla Extract 

Coming soon: Pasta

And how to make vanilla extract….take some vanilla beans, add to a large bottle, fill with vodka and then let it sit for about 7 months….BAM vanilla extract!

How to Save Money

​On today’s episode of living during hard times I present to you:

The Costco Tube of MEAT!

This is 10 lbs of 90/10 ground beef! This monstrosity cost about 57$.

We cut it up and separated it into 10 individual one pound sealed bags and froze them. In the end this came to about $5.70 a pound! And I am not sure where other people are around the world but here in my neck of the woods this meat usually runs about $11 a pound. 

And as you can see this is what they are charging at my local food store. I did a search on the average price of ground meat but as well all know the average of the whole does not always reflect the actual price of the local. 

According to the Googles the average price is $8.18 and after going to a few different stores I could not find any for that price. 

And no not looking to go political on this, or point fingers, at the end of the day I have eyes and a calculator. For reference here is the chart that also talks to the rise of the price of beef:

( https://www.macrotrends.net/4486/us-ground-beef-prices )

Prices go up we get frugal!

12 Years in the Making

I have always been a blogging/journaling kind of person. Inconsistent as hell but I still plug along. I started this particular journal in December of 2013, about a month after arriving in California. It really helped with getting my thoughts, frustrations and even some of my mental vomit out of my skull and onto a medium.

I have always loved the old fashion pen and paper kind of journals, at times I feel I have a real problem…I have started more journals than I have finished! The wife gets them from work, if a see a nice leather bound journal I have to physically and emotionally move away from it before I buy, yet another journal!

And yes I am probably going to get the same journal to continue what I have deemed, The Work Journal. To be honest it is one of the few journals I have actually been somewhat consistent with.

Work is s such a huge part of adult life and a place where soo much irritation is generated, it is hard NOT to want to journal about it! I really should go through my journals and thin them out…but they are mines…my precious…why should I give them up!?!?

Garden Sprinkler Adventure

About three weeks ago I notice that one of the hoses in our little backyard garden was leaking.

Nothing crazy, it had just become dry rotted and needed to be changed out. But as I tried to remove the little hose I snapped the spout on the head of the thingie that feed all the other hoses.

So this meant a trip to Home Depot, but to no ones surprise they did not have the one I was looking for. I ended up buying a different one that I thought would work just as fine. I got new hoses, caps and a candy bar….because of course you cannot make it out of Home Depot without buying candy!

I get home change out the head, replace all the houses and turn on the water. Come to find out the head I bought was designed for the slow drip feed type and not the free flowing jet type.

So this now this meant I was going to have to go and search through Amazon to find what I needed, and guess what? They had it, shit….they had several types and styles of the unregulated water flow heads I was looking for! The only draw back was it was going to take three days. So, with order in place I left everything until the new head came in and I got the motivation to start again.

Week three: with new head in hand and a nice cool dry day to motivate me, I was off to the races again!

(This was the mess I left three weeks ago)

This time it was an absolute success, hoses attached water tested and mess cleaned up, we have yet another adventure in home ownership under our belts!

Black Stone Grill

We have had this grill for two years now and it has been one of the best outdoor investments we have ever made.

The unboxing 2023

First time cooking on it

Yes it does require some work to maintain but it really is not that hard. We seasoned it on day one and have re-seasoned it several times since. The first time was because of my fuck up, I tried to cook a very sauce heavy meat concoction with tomatoes and it fucked things all up! And now my son did something similar and had to season it again. If you look on the internet they give you all kinds of over the top ways to do it and all kinds of products you don’t need.

What you need: a hand held torch, tallow, paper towels, squirt bottle and steel wood scrubbing pads.

Step one: Scrub all the entire surface with the steel wool. Put some elbow grease into this and get all food stuffs off.

Step two: Turn heat on and once hot squirt water all over the service.

Step three: Once all the water has evaporated slap some tallow on the service. Use paper towels to coat the entire surface evenly. And then let it cook off. I repeat this process two or three times. For the last coating I will let it cook for about 30 minutes.

I use the hand torch to get the edges nice a hot.

And honestly that is it. No special seasoning things or over the top gadgets. I have taken my grill from rusty to awesome using this.

Before:

After:

I have watched numerous videos on how to season your BlackStone and this is how I do it.

Blogging is my Therapy

Once upon a time I blogged to help with my thoughts. Then it became a place to joke and smoke, I made friends and had fun. But time has flown by since my first poorly written post and my inconsistent attempts at being a blogger.

I even tried creating my own web page, that didn’t last long. I am unfocused and very directionless. I get distracted easily and frustrated even easier.

Why am I here and what do I want from doing this? The answer is, I don’t have an answer. I am just here because, just because.

I used to sit behind a desk with little to do now I accidentally found myself behind a desk having to adult. It isn’t a hard job but it is mentally draining, I still journal to help keep me sane but it has been more pen and paper than online. I love the old style of writing and the art of journaling. That is kind of how and why I stated this journey. What do I want to do with it? To be honest, nothing really it is just something I like doing.

I do wish that I have been more consistent through all these years, but I am not one to dwell on failure. We move on and party on. The party is still raging on, the day to day is mundane and things have slowed down but we still have life in us so we march on!

My grammar, is poor; my blogging, sporadic; my mind, chaotic; but my intent is fun and the reason…more fun. I am almost 50 and my circle of friends has gotten smaller and my level of fucks to give even smaller. If you don’t like what I have to offer, that is ok I am not everyone’s cup of beer but if you do get at least a little something out of this leave a comment and I will comment back.

New Chapter

One of the things that really defines an adult is home ownership. At least that is what we have always been taught. And for a while I was really fighting against that idea. Not just because I did not think we could ever afford it, the idea of dealing with a house just was not something I wanted. But as time has gone on I realized that we really did need a home. I was done with dealing with landlords, HOA's and the small apartment life. But the next big issue was the cost; here in the Bay area houses are insanely expensive. 

But we finally pulled the trigger and decided we had to, our family just did not fit into apartment life anymore. So we started looking, but we were not willing to paying a million plus for a shack....and I mean that literally! 

The true eye opener was when they finished updating the condos located right behind us and we went to the open house. They wanted 1.2 million! This is a 1,430 square foot apartment, one parking spot, 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and nothing more than a paved patio backyard.

And let us not forget the neighborhood! This is not a million dollar area, let me just list the things I have seen in this lovely area:

• People drink beer on the corners just about every day
• Homeless people making camp in your front yard, and I mean this guy had a mattress, a pickle jar for a potty and a tent!
• People coming onto your property to dig through your recycling
• Gang activity, I am talking real gang shit: tags, drug deals and theft
• Loud parties every weekend, I am not talking about little parties I am talking about live music blasting to all hours of the night parties
• Questionable people at all times of the day and night walking up and down the street

And this is just a few of the things to look forward to! And not to mention this place has an HOA, I would rather pour gas down my pants and light it than ever deal with another HOA! I would also like to mention that while living in this wonderful million dollar area we had the Swat team come crashing into our place thanks to a wanted fugitive hiding out in our area, yep that sounds like a million dollar neighborhood to me!

So with this in mind we started looking....East ward. Starting in San Jose and finally ending in Modesto. I am not looking to give out my home address but in the end we found a home way way out in the land of farms and rodeos...Modesto Ca.

And not looking to brag but we got twice the amount of home for less than half the price of that million dollar neighborhood in San Jose. 5 bedrooms, three card garage, three full bathrooms and a god damn pool! Yeah, SJ you can eat a dick for your million dollar bullshit you are calling a home HA!

Yes it is one hell of a commute but it was worth it, for what we go in a home I will deal with the drive for work. And what is funny is the the distance for work got longer but not really the time. It would take me one to two hours to get home from work living in SJ (37 miles)and now living farther away (57 miles) the commute is about the same! Less stop and go traffic but still traffic, and honestly I do not mind the drive and it is a price I am willing to pay for what we got in return.

And the area we moved into is probably one of the best we could have hoped for: The high school is right down the street, we live a block away from a strip mall that has everything from Thai food, an axe throwing place to a food store! Our neighborhood is also a huge step up from our original, we have been here two years and we have had none of the issues we used to have!

This house needed work (which I am going to post about in the near future of all the work we have done so far). We had it inspected and found no deal breaking issues, it was build in the late 90's and was in need of some serious updating but other than that it was solid. So far we have updated two bathrooms, painted and fixed the exterior, changed one bedroom into an office, put in a new pool pump, cleaned out the dryer vent (this one was a huge socker) removed alllllll the upstairs carpeting that went all the way into the master bathroom.....yes there was carpeting in the bathroom! We have painted most of the interior but we have more painting to do, and we have many more plans in fixing our home. 

This is will be a never ending project and honestly I am cool with that, and these projects are part of why I have decided to start blogging again. I really wish I had bought a house in my younger stronger back days, but no day like the present to better oneself and the family. 

Our family story is a never ending, changing and moving entity. Welcome to my world 

(est; 2/2021)

Blogging From My Phone

Just another day at work because I did not win the lottery!

I downloaded the mobile app to use the blog from my phone to see if that would help me get back into the swing of things. Edit: It seems that if I want to blog from my phone I am going to have to pay money, maybe....we shall see....

I took down my website because I was spending money on something I was not putting any time into. Maybe someday I will go back and give that a whirl again, but for the time being I am just going to try and blog again.

The question of what do I want to do with my blog had been on my mind, everyone that has any form of social media presence has a purpose and a direction, where as with me…I am all over the place. And to be honest, that is how I like it. I do not want to be a product review blog, home improvement, a fitness guru or a travel blog. I am just going to try it all and see what happens. 

I am disappointed in myself for not keeping this up through the years and letting this place collect so much dust. 

I have tried the reboot and failed, tried the website and failed so this time I am just going to pick up where I am and move on.

So, where am I? I am 9 years at my current job, two years in a new home, 22 years married, one cat, one dog, bowling in a beer league (9 pins counts as a strike) and as of recent I am on meds for gout. 

I am over weight and in the process of trying to get healthier. I have reached a point where I am no longer comfortable and I need to hold myself accountable!

But do I want this to be my weight loss journal….no…it will just be a part of the whole chaotic experience.

I have so much I can put into this place, and because I am all over the place I am just going to start posting. I will have to add some time lines within the post but just a warning…it won’t be in order! 

I am not sure how far back I want to go but let’s just start and see where it goes, I will get the ball rolling later this week. This is just my dusting of my place looking for a good spot to place my laptop. 

More to come, welcome to the chaos. 

Old picture….2020 

FaceBook Wants Pay to Play

 I play with my blog and my site just for shits and giggles. I have no dreams of grandeur with this, hell even if I could wish for it I would not. I would lose followers due to my crappy writing and my in ability to be consistent. I do not care if anyone reads my page, I am here for me and me alone. It would be cool to interact with others who share this flair of blogging but in the end this is for my entertainment.

Now, Facebook (FB) has this thing where it likes to harass people into paying for views. Normally I do not send anything to my JournaledTimes FB page unless it is about a direct post from here. Last week I did a little spicy food challenge ( I will make a full post about that later) and I posted it to my Instagram (IG) account. But for some reason IG changed my posting settings to post to my JournaledTimes page. Not sure to why or how, so I was looking for my post but I could not find it because it was on my JournaledTimes page.

No big deal really, I just left it and moved on. Then I started getting harassed by FB to boost my post…..but I had to pay for it! Now I am not looking to put anymore money into this hobby than I already do, I pay a yearly fee to WordPress to keep my hobby on a legit page .

At first it was just a simple post that popped up and I left it alone. But then it kept coming up over and over again. So I went to see what this was about, all these post about boosting!

Well, as it turns out I have to pay if I want to get more views from FB. And honestly that seems a bit fucked up, I will only get more views if I pay them money…..as I am not going to do that but I am curious as to how that works?

What are they going to do to boost my post that was not happening already? I pay them money and they do what with it? How are other people that are not currently in my circle of friends going to see a video I posted on my page? I am interested in what they mean by boosting…..but not enough to pay money.

FB, a multi billion dollar company, wants my pennies to boost my shitty little video….yeah no thanks. I am not hard up to artificially add views to my site. Reminds me of those fucktart influencers on IG that pay for their followers. You like my shit or you don't, makes no difference to me.

Come and follow or fuck off, I am not about to pump my money into a system that has no real proof it even works. I mean when was the last time you heard anyone thanking FB for their fame through boosting?

Kids New Bed

For sometime we have wanted to get the kids room in order. New beds, reorganized and CLEANED. Today we finally accomplished that very task. We bought them new loft beds with storage, a mini man cave area and drawers for their clothes.
It was an all day under taking that was well worth it! My feet are killing me, the wife is complaining about her back but we are DONE.
We will tackle our room in the next two weeks. It is in need of some serious over hauling as well, de-cluttered life is what we have been striving for and we are about to have it!
I love a weekend that ends with an accomplishment!

For the hundredth time.......I reboot

I blogged originally in 4/2005.......holy shit 11 years of my bullshit. Erratic bullshit, very inconsistent and always full of run on sentences. I had this notion that I wanted to do a recap of all the things that have happened in my world since I put a real post down.

But then I figured that was way too much of an undertaking so I am just going to randomly post shit that I have filled my life with. Vacations, pictures....lots of pictures, family, friends and all the things in between.

I have had this blog in my brain but life gets in the way and I have found that if I do not set goals for myself things like this just keep slipping by. Hell, it has been almost one year to date since my last POST!

So where to restart this love affair.....? I guess lets start with last weekend where we went to the Marin Highlands, right across the Golden Gate bridge:

We have been to this location numerous times and each time we find something new. This is the radar site at the top of one of the hills. Damn good view and great location to shot down Russians spies lol

So here is slow beginnings, one fast post and time to go to bed. I started blogging at work back in the day, but my current job is just to demanding to even think about trying blogging at this place. I am going to try and post regularly but I have said that once before......fingers closed.

Product Endorsement: Target Ice Cubes

 It has been sometime since I did an actual blog post about a product endorsement, I unfortunately do not get paid for these. But when I like something, I like to share and when I do not like something I share as well. I belong to Yelp to reach even more people with my  endorsements. I am a huge fan of Yelp.com and use the shit out of it! Before going to a new restaurant I will check the reviews and will even add my own; the good, the bad and yes even the ugly.
I never really gave much thought as to why I do these. In the end I guess it's just a hobby of mine. So, why do I do it? I like doing it, it's fun and I feel that maybe it can help someone else find that new favorite place/thing/dodad or avoid a real shit hole or something not worth the time or effort buying it.
But on with my blog:
I was watching a show that was talking about this high end bar in Japan that has the bartenders carving each round ice cube by hand for their supper high end scotch. And when I say high end I mean $3,900.00 a bottle high end! But I was intrigued by the round ice cubes, and I wanted one! And as fate would have it, the next day we were walking around Target and saw these:



I could not wait to get these bad boys out of the box and in ma drank!



So, I add the water and went about my business. Once science, magic or God did their thing my round ice cubes were ready! The only thing I can negative about these is that they were a little hard to get out, but run a little tap water over then and they pop right out.



So here is to Target and their round ice cubes 'trays'



CHEERS!

New Jersey 2015/2016 Visit

This post is just a simple post to put some pictures up of our trip back to NJ. The family traveled from CA to NJ for the Christmas and New Years 2016. We ate way too much dinner food and Dunkin Donuts! Great times great company, visited NYC and just relaxed for a minute. Life is just becoming so fast and so complicated, the higher up the ladder you go the more responsibility you are given. I do miss the easier days but sometimes you have to move up or dont move at all...

I should blog more, it is very therapeutic. But I need to add that to an action item to my reminders to blog. I have soo much on my plate that if I do not use Outlook to remind me of shit I dont do it lol.
I just need to remember to add it when I get to work :-)