Jefke.com

so enough talk of meetings and resturants with pope themed rooms and the complexities of the consumer packaged goods industry. lets get back to basics, blog style…back to…the house.

so for sometime i have been in something of a home improvement hibertnation, not really doing much at all. i believe i have remarked that this is not for lack of things to do, but more from the fact that the things that need to be done are things i don’t wanna do, such as painting trim in 4 rooms and shit. at the same there, there are some projects that need to be done that are out of my range of abilites. take for example, the cold wall in what will be the nursery.

but jefke, that was taken care of LAST march, when the dirtbag previous owner of the house hired the insulation guy, capt’n fat jack to fill the wall up with blown insulation..what is this you recycling content now?

no fair reader, i am not, and the term is Leveraging, not recycling. you see. the blown insulation did indeed solve one problem, the fact that our pipes were freezing and the thermostat was going off continually. it did not, however, solve the cause of those problems, namely the fact that part of the house was sealed up against the elements with vinyl siding alone.  so shut the fuck up. (sorry, i’ve been watching alot of deadwood lately)

so anyway, i knew that the problem was this bump out that was built on to the back of the chimney, and there were 2 ways to see what was going on…to either take that apart or go in through the drywall in the bedroom. neither of these acts are something i feel comfortable with doing. so enter jono. you might remember him as the guy that put in our attic stairs.

we were going to wait for the weather to get warmer and attack it from the outside in, but after jono did some work in our downstairs bathroom, and there was litterally wind blowing in the house. so it seemed like a good idea to see what was what behind that wall upstairs. and what was the what? i’ll tell you what. it was just plywood, wiht insulation up against the drywall–thus creating a nice open area for wind to blow around.  i have pictures, i’ll post them up.  it’s just fuckign amazing that someone was like, hmm, i guess this is good enough. how this this passed inspection…i’ll never know.  i would sue the guy that renovated the house, if i thought it would do anything. but it wouldn’t, so i won’t.

so jono went to the deoot and got some foam and insulation and such. and did a good job of stopping the mass amounts of air that was getting in. it’d be impossible to stop it all, but this is a much better start.

so for shits and giggles i had him rip apart the window sill that was also leaking in tons of air. surprise surprise, same thing! insulation stuffed in there but big gaps letting in all the air. he’s gonna work on that today.

so after the workday i headed over to the booze store for a 6 pack. as i got to the cooler isle, i noticed a display of Peter Celis beers. my jaw dropped when i saw that they finally released a Grand Cru over here.  here’s a brief history…:

"And then there was Celis …
Peter Celis was famous for rescuing Belgium’s "white beer" style when he was at Hoegaarden. He founded the Celis Brewery in Austin, Texas, in 1992 and his beers were an instant success. In 1995, Miller Brewing Co. bought a majority interest in the brewery — then took complete control early in 2000. In December of that year Miller announced the brewery would close and the property would be sold. Production ceased before the beginning of 2001. The equipment and brands were sold to Michigan Brewing Co. "

now see what was interesting to me about celis, was that he started hoegaarden, then sold it to interbrew, and didn’t like what they were doing with the brand. so he does some research and decides to move to austin to start making his beer the way he wants to, as a microbrew. i remember going to a small bar in brugge, and they were serving this celis white stuff, and i couldn’t figure it out–why server a non hoegaarden hoegaarden. well because it was the real hoegaarden. not that i ever had any beer in that bar other than their tripple. man, brugges tripple—packs a whallop.

anywho, one of my most favorist beers was the hoegaarden grand cru, which has never been available over here. i remember way back when reading that celis had one, but it wasn’t distributed. so imagine my excietment when i saw it last night. i snatched some up and hurried home. (though i did help a lady with a late model camaro, which needed to be pushed out of her parking spot because reverse had crapped out on her.)

and i’m happy to announce that the PC GC tastes pretty damn near the same as the GC i remember from the motherland. i think they did somethign to the head though, so it won’t foam over all the american’s pint glasses. i only needed 2 to feel pretty good too, so i’m guessing it has a belgian style alch. content. oh there is joy in jefkeville.

so as natty and i settled down to eat our pizza in front of the TV…the money pit was on, which i thought was apropos given the work on the house. still a funny movie, the money pit.

ok, i gotta get some work done. have a GC for me everyone.