Long Time No Taco

Duality is one of my favorite concepts. I believe it to be a simplification of the multi-faceted nature of existence, but it allows for comparison, contrast, and ultimately, deeper understanding. If you look back at some of my other blog posts, they deal with two main topics: one abstract, and one concrete aspect in my life, how they relate to my past, and one another. Today's post is no different: Much has happened since I moved from NYC to L.A., and I have been terrible at keeping you up to date. The struggle started with the basics of work, shelter, and transportation. Finding an apartment in Koreatown near a public transportation hub with Michelle, we have been slowly decorating and introducing our cats to each other. Work has by far been the trickiest aspect. After a couple months of fruitless job hunting, I realize that the task requires its own special skill set - a clear image of an ideal job, and a dogged effort to pursue that from every available angle without distr...

Here is an update on my hard-cider brewing! If you read about my trip to Dutchess County , you may recall I mentioned doing some weird measurement taking. That was using a hydrometer to take the apple-pear cider's "Original Gravity" - indicating how much sugar (and other "dissolved solids") are in my cider to be fermented. That number was 1.047. That number, on its own tells me very little, except that the maximum potential  alcohol content is almost 6.2%.  Two weeks have passed, and yesterday I bottled that cider. I'll describe that step in a second, but wrapping up the heavy, gravity talk (hey, you should know by now: I love my puns), I took another reading to find the new specific gravity was 1.002, meaning almost all of the dissolved solids had been turned to alcohol. This tells me two things: My apple-pear cider will have a 5.88% ABV, and with almost no sugars left unfermented, it will taste extremely dry! As I type this, I am drinking a "...

     I spent yesterday "upstate" in Dutchess County, with my JET Alum friends. We visited the farmers market in Rhinebeck, Mead Orchards in Tivoli, and Sawkill Farm, in Red Hook (not to be confused with the Brooklyn neighborhood of the same name).       The excellent Farmers Market obliterated my delusions of budgeting. I bought honey, beer, cheese, meat, pickles, and whiskey to take home. That doesn't include the tacos and Thai mini-crepes with meringue and toasted coconut, we bought and ate there! Half the sellers, it turned out, also sell at the Union Square's farmers markets. While initially, I felt disappointed by that news, I would have never found them or understood them as well, were it not for this trip, and now I know where I can find more without the travel.      The Mead Orchard apple picking was equally fun and amazing, but our tour guides gave us less than one hour there, and constantly threatened to leave stragglers b...

More accurately: I Need to Start Using a Mash Tun.  Warning: The following contains more beer brewing jargon than the average person will care to learn. That said, you can replace most terms with "beer-thingy" in your head, and be just fine. I became passionate about home brewing after receiving a 1-gallon starter kit from Brooklyn Brew Shop  as a birthday present, a few years ago. This year, I finally made the jump to brewing 5-gallon batches. Left: One-gallon Black IPA, Right: Five-gallon brew-in-a-bag Galaxy hop IPA, Taken 8/23/15 Every home brewer has a different history and approach. My kit being for all-grain brewing, it wasn't until this year that I even saw what an extract looked like. Eventually, I would use both dry and liquid extracts to make a Rye Saison, and a clone of President Obama's White House Honey Porter, but it turns out, most home brewers enter the hobby exclusively using these extracts. Many never make all-grain batches, even after y...

Warning: The following is completely personal and extremely boring (possibly): Today marks my tenth day wading in the murky and thus-far, for me, unexplored waters of unemployment. The last time I was unemployed this long, I was preparing to start my senior year at the University of Arizona. That summer, I had just turned 21 and moved back to Tucson after a "Year in Japan", study abroad program. Somebody Saaaave Me! Back then, I sat at my computer, catching up on episodes of Smallville. Now, I watch Breaking Bad. A feeling of languishing, reminiscent of that summer 10 years ago washes over me, whenever I review how many days have past without being gainfully employed. Despite my ultimate confidence that everything will work out, and my steadfast belief in the rewards of an easy-going attitude, I simultaneously despise the concept of "wasting my life". Having grown up poor, putting myself through college and already having paid off my student loans, any dis...

After four challenging and intense years as a telelvion news producer for Japanese network, Tokyo Broadcasting System, I decided I want a change. This came as a shock to many, and immediately came the barrage of "Why?"s. Suffice it to say that while all the classic reasons for leaving a job applied, I left on the best of terms and they have treated me well. Now that my two weeks of paid leave have ended though, I am really and truly unemployed, in the best sense of the status. I need to begin finding new work. "What do you want to do?" invariably follows the previous question. And therein lies the rub, because I haven't answered that question for myself yet! I know what my hobbies are: writing, craft beer tasting, home brewing, cooking, traveling, and studying foreign language. So now I need to decide if I want to continue with journalism and/or production, pursue making one or several of my hobbies into a profession, or find some yet-to-be-discovered t...