I like apple cider, but it’s hard to find good (or even real) cider around here without driving way out to the orchards in the foothills of the Sierra Nevadas.
So I bought a grinder and a press and built a cider station!
Building the bench took up a good chunk of Saturday–longer than I expected since it’s not exactly complicated, but I plugged along until it was done.
That made Sunday, Cider Sunday!
I bought 9.5 pounds of apples from Safeway: 50% Granny Smith, 25% Fuji, 25% Envy. I sliced them up, Corinne put them in the grinder, Heather ran the grinder. Then we loaded them into the press and out came beautiful, rich cider.
The 9.5 pounds of apples turned into 4.5 cups of cider. Less than I was expecting, but it tastes really good.
Also….not cost effective. I’ll have to pay attention to sale prices on apples. My delicious cider, ignoring equipment costs and labor, came at a cost of $6 a cup, yikes.
I did not get much of any game playing done in August.
The family played Vantage, but didn’t ended it incomplete to get to bed.
Then Heather and I played Vantage with friends and after several deaths (and running out of time) decided to call it a defeat.
We’re still really enjoying the game though. So much to explore. It’s really about the journey–not the destination, so leaving a game incomplete doesn’t seem like a waste of time. And being defeated is okay since you got to learn more about the world.
Did lots of reading but volumes two and three of the Baroque Cycle took a long time to get through.
The Confusion by Neal Stephenson
Volume two of the Baroque Cycle. The adventures continue around the world. Capers, betrayals, antics, and science.
The System of the World by Neal Stephenson
Volume three of the Baroque Cycle. We bring the 4300+ page story to a conclusion back in England. Isaac Newton’s mastery of the Mint is called in question after an epic heist. Our protagonist is imprisoned and led to the gallows. And alchemy brings someone back from the dead.
I enjoyed the series, but as I mentioned on volume one, I’m not sure how it would land for someone with no prior knowledge or interest in the early scientific revolution and its characters. Some knowledge of France and French helps too throughout.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
And now, for something completely different. This is one of Jess’ favorite authors, so I thought I’d give it a try.
It’s written entirely in present tense which gives it a strange feeling–which goes well with the story which is about a strange circus.
There are competing magic systems at play, but unlike, say, Sanderson, we’re not giving some in-depth explanation of how they work. It’s left vague and dreamlike.
It was certainly different than anything I’ve read recently. I liked it alright.
After getting the 2 expansions for Heat: Pedal to the Metal I needed an organizer. As sold you can’t consolidate all the components into the original box. The box, however, does have plenty of room once you remove the original insert. My design criteria included that it needed to fit with no lid lift and in such a way that turning the box sideways or upside down wouldn’t make a mess.
I found one existing organizer design, but didn’t like it and decided to make my own. After many hours of designing, tweaking, redesigning, poking, and prodding I completed it. I’m pretty happy with it.
I also finally completed, in preparation for the upcoming family reunion, the model of the Dickerson family house in Cromwell. I had been working on it last autumn, needed some details about the porch over the old garage, got them in the winter, and then couldn’t decide what to do with the model. To print it big enough for the smallest details to come out was going to require it be something like 11″ in the longest dimension. Too big. But also, it was going to need a lot of supports due to the roof overhangs and that was going to be a pain.
I finally decided to drop the finest details and modify the overhangs to be printable by adding subtle arches underneath them or removing sections that simply couldn’t be printed without supports. I then printed one for my parents and for each sibling and gave them out at the family reunion.
And only now as I’m writing this do I realize I never took pictures of all the printed houses! Lame. So here are some pictures of my prototype printed in purple. The final ones were printed in blue on a green base with some minor tweaks to improve issues I found in the prototype. I’m been considering printing one for myself in grey and painting it, but haven’t made up my mind yet.
I won another game of Hardback. The “fan fiction” mods make for some interesting tweaks to the game play.
Jess and I played Harvest with friends. Definitely a game you need to play a few times to get a feel for the timing of tasks and nuances of resource management. I lost.
Played Heat at the board game meetup. We played the Tunnel Vision expansion. It adds one track that has a slight nuance to it and a few new cards (as well as parts for another player). I lost.
Vantage was just released and arrived before we left on vacation. I got it to the table for the family before leaving since I was excited about it. It’s a cooperative exploration game where the point is to enjoy the journey. So it’s not really about winning or losing, but we were successful in achieving our mission goal.
The girls had a blast and we did smoothies for dinner to keep playing and then played past their bedtime and they were insistent we play again the next day.
It’s chill. You wander around this planet discovering people and places and secrets. You can pursue a mission goal or just enjoy the journey.
