Ok. I found something really fun to do today, as if I weren’t busy enough! It’s called google-wacking, sort of an information age, word-lovers research scavenger hunt. You enter word combinations in Google and give yourself kudos if only a single instance of that combination comes up.

Beer report: My dunkel hefeweizen, which I have dubbed “Ramcopter Black” (you’d have to see the label) is pretty much done and drinkable. My red ale has been in a secondary fermenter for nearly two weeks now, waiting for bottles… Hey, if you live in the LA area and drink beverages that come in pop-off capped glass bottles, save some for me. And lastly, I have a California Common that’s been doing its initial ferment for two weeks. My goal is to have everything bottled, labeled and aged for twenty days by the time March arrives.

Book report. I’m listening to Nickel Mountain now. I’d forgotten how good a writer John Gardner was. I also found a site called workingpoet.com that had some good reviews of books of poetry. I feel like I’m coming from the same direction as the guys that contribute the articles for the site, and, as the guys running it would be happy to hear, I got more motivated/inspired to write. Trouble is that up till October the site had new content every month; it operated more or less like an e-zine for writers. I hope they get back in the saddle there and do some more stuff. I think I want to write them and offer to help out.

Oh, and I went surfing for the first time last weekend. Yes, befrosted easterners, I was swimming in the January ocean, and because of the overcast sky and the brisk breeze, it actually felt warmer in the water. I don’t think I’d actually ever trusted a wetsuit enough to try it, but they sure work. The only downside was that my wetsuit was a bit too small for me, so I couldn’t really swim very well, not having full shoulder mobility. I’d like to do it again. Maybe I can spend some of my freelance editing paycheck for a clearance wetsuit. We’ll see.

Heather and I are working on helping our church’s library come to life. That involves evaluating books, cataloging them, setting up a computer database to track them, and writing reviews for books to get people interested in checking them out. If anyone has any good resources for software for small libraries, or anything else that I don’t even know that I need, let me know!

Also– if you aren’t on the weekly poem list and are interested in being on said list, let me know that as well, and I’ll add you. And let me know about good poets!