Nathan Williams

Paul Krugman is such a nerd. Click through to see why.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/q/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/limited-posting-for-the-next-few-days/

Let's see, what's in the company kitchen?
How about some Smart Balance butter-substitute on a low-carb bagel, washed down with a quick latte - decaf espresso, fat-free half-and-half, and splenda?

I feel more plastic already.

Best part of a blog post proselyting homemade breakfast egg sandwiches:

2) Put a frying pan on the oven. Turn the gas to medium-high. If you do not have a gas stove, start dating someone who does have a gas stove and make breakfast at his or her house.

Somewhere in August, either while packing for the move or while moving, I hurt my back. I probably lifted something badly. I don't remember noticing it happening at the time; I was probably too busy. After the dust of moving had settled, though, I started noticing this ache on one side, fairly localized. It doesn't spasm, and it's not really at the level of preventing me from doing specific motions - though I have refrained from going to the gym, out of fear of making it worse.

A month or so later and it's not really better. The ache comes and goes, reappearing more if I do much (any) lifting or even just standing/bending for a while (like cooking in the kitchen). Sometimes it's present in the morning when I wake up, too. I still haven't found specific acts that make it hurt right at the moment; it's always something I notice a bit later. OTC painkillers have a mild effect, but Advil does not seem like it should be the breakfast of champions.

I'd sort of like to know what I did to myself. But the real question is this: is it worth seeing a doctor about it? I suspect that going to a doctor will yield no more diagnosis than I have now and some directions to not overdo it and wait, which I'm already trying to do. I also suspect that if I call now, I will get an appointment some time next March, which doesn't exactly inspire me to hit the phones (Darkly, I also suspect this is my body telling me "Welcome to your 30s", and that it's a lifetime of chronic pain from here on in).

What say you, unprofessional back-pain specialists of the Internet?

That was worth staying up for.

I was going to write up something about this weekend, but I think I'll just put up this picture instead.
( Apple and smiles )

Last week I brewed my first batch since moving to the new apartment. It was a pretty straightforward English bitter, and the brew day went well - having a shaded yard with a picnic table, hose faucet, and an electrical outlet was very nice. That batch was part of a grander plan, however, which took place today. I brewed my biggest beer yet, stretching the limits of my system, and made a barleywine. 22 pounds of grain for about six gallons of beer at 1.100 gravity, and it just about filled my mash tun. When it was cooled and ready for pitching, I racked it directly onto the yeast cake from last week's batch (having decanted that beer into a smaller carboy), and sure enough, it took of fermenting in under two hours. The mash also produced some second runnings, so I made a small beer with the remainder, and got a 3-gallon batch of about 1.040 as a result. So now I have 13-14 gallons of beer, in various versions of English styles, happily fermenting away.

Aside from taking up nine hours and making my back hurt a bit, it was a fine way to spend a day.

UPDATE: Overnight, the barleywine fermented so vigorously that it lost about a gallon of liquid out the blow-off tube. Maybe I would have been better off to make a slightly smaller barleywine batch and then a full-size beer from the second runnings.

Impromptu self-portrait meme

1. Take a picture of yourself right now.
2. Don't change your clothes, don't fix your hair...just take a picture.
3. Post that picture with NO editing.
4. Post these instructions with your picture.

( cut )

Everyone is mentioning how or whether they "cheated" the rules somehow. I took a second picture with a different camera after realizing that holding a 50mm lens at arm's length wasn't going to work very well.

Fight with your partner... on the internet! To paraphrase a friend, it's like having YouTube commenters as relationship counselors.

Unclear if this is better or worse than last week's installment.