Another April Another DC

A Karaoke party at Celine and Yoon's apt and Kelly Koo was there for a conference.  exactly at the stroke of midnight a neighbor down the hall knocked and said they could hear us through a wall a wall a wall.  In hindsight I don't know how anyone thought it would be ok to have us all singing at the top of our lungs

puzzle, by Zachary Choy

Lulu, by Zachary Choy

at a burning man exhibit

directly across the street from the whitehouse.

The Obamas portraits were revealed recently at the National Portrait gallery but they aren't the first to have non-standard portrait styles.  JFK by Willem De Kooning

Bill Clinton by Chuck Close

Barak Obama by Kehinde Wiley

Michelle Obama by Amy Sherald

an ad on the metro for the F-35 Lightning II fighter jet.  Don't know why or who they are advertising to other than touting 'Merica

the USA Science and Engineering Festival.  Zackary passed by all this cool stuff because all he wanted was to see the "body" stuff.  This thing shows where your veins are.

some new Raider helicopter.  This was a STEM festival for kids with lots of coding booths, and other sciences but there was also a huge section for military booths because it was put on by the department of defense.  Recruiting them early?

Jen's crowning life achievement.  She was obsessed with finishing this 1000 piece puzzle so we had no choice but to help her.  These are Disney's Tsum Tsums, some clever person's way to sell a new product line of disney charcters in this cute simpler style.  

JPNY

JP, Jong Pil came to New York from Seoul for 2 days as part of their honeymoon

quick stop at Cafe Steinhof in park slope for some German sausages

coffee at Cafe Regular

like half of the beers at the Other Half right now have lactose in them

Fat Cat adult playground.

JP got thrashed

it's said that Joe's Pizza is the best slice in NY, it's pretty good but I would argue even table 87 is a better slice but I guess its not a traditional slice place.

JP's dream would come true the next night

we got a drink upstairs at the Olive tree cafe and bar and saw several famous comedians hanging out at the bar and in booths

Bagel Hole is a gross name and the place doesn't look like much but it is the best bagel in the Parkslope/Greenwood/Gowanus/Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill area and Mayor Bill De Blasio's favorite.

the pizza slice Louis CK eats before he runs down into the comedy cellar in the opening credits of his show Louie.  We saw Colin Quinn at the Comedy Cellar then at BBQ at Mighty Quinn's (not very good!).

welcome to NYC JP.

we drank some craft brews at home and then JP and Emi were off to Cancun in the very early morning.

transplanting into larger containers.

Springtimes

all the seeds have come up

we've done it, our first 100% successful brew, Resistor pale ale and little guy session IPA.  They both are actually pretty good.

i finally turned that thing I found on the street into this seedling shelf

the goya is sending out tendrils

in a few hours time it's latched on.

at El Tanampa on 4th ave is super Mexican and good.

Steven wasn't available so it was just me and bob for this brew sesh and what a sesh it was.  We had decided to do all grain BIAB (brea in a bag) method this time around cuz its cheaper and more authentic and better tasting.  This is all the grains for one 5 gallon batch.

the grains need to be kept at temperature for an hour so their sugars get extracted.  This is steven's new huge 10 gallon brew pot.  We didn't sparge (which is pouring a gallon or two of like 170f water over the grains at the end to extract the last bit of sugar but without the off flavor releasing squeezes that you would think would just do the job).

in the end it took like 9 hrs to do 2 five gallon batches, the stove was on max blast for like 6-7 hrs, the carbon monoxide detector even went off in the last 20 min which is scary.  So we can't do all grain brewing again unless we have some kind of solution because we can't have the stove blasting for that long or be waiting around for so many gallons of water to boil.  Which is a bummer cuz this beer came out the best.

got all my gardening stuff and am ready for spring

got all my street found wood garbage treasure.

but winters these days suck so this is March 21st, 2018.

i found a bunch of swing top bottles for cheap nearby on craigslist so I emailed and then I got an email back saying it was our old neighbors that lived upstairs from us in Carroll Gardens cuz they moved a few months before us to Park Slope as well.  What are the chances.

Jen's older sister was friends with RuthieAnn Miles in school when the grew up in Hawaii.  At the intersection of 9th street and 5th avenue a woman ran a red light and struck the pregnant RuthieAnn, her daughter, her friend Lauren Lew and her son. Her daughter Abigail and her friend Lauren son Joshua were killed.  RuthieAnn's unborn child is ok the last I heard.  The driver has a history of running red lights and speeding.  It seems callous to mention that RuthieAnn is a TONY award winning actress, winning in 2015 for The King and I, but it is impressive.  Jen and I cross every street much more cautiously now.  This is absolutely heartbreaking