Pursuing Calefaction

We’re in full swing now. My weekends are frantic catch-up sessions (usually spoiled by my brain shutting down, leading to panic on Sundays), and the weekdays are just rolling from period to period, struggling to stay one step ahead of my students. The number of things I must do piles up higher and higher, but you know what? I’ll get them done.

I have several masters now: grad school, wherein I am conducting a literacy intervention; Latin teaching, which is actually the least difficult to navigate of my various occupations; Beginning Teacher orientation, which is paperwork beyond measure; and the HCoop, of which I am the treasurer (for what reason I allowed my friend Clinton to convince me into doing I know not). This reminds me of all the times I have put too many irons in the fire and ended up burning myself badly. I guess this is life with ADHD. But for the first time, I think I can actually manage it. Things slip, it’s true. I’m not doing everything perfectly, and I could do much better by my friends. But perhaps for the first time in my life, I’m doing concrete good in the world instead of just marking time. So I’ll take it. Light a man on fire, indeed.

I opened a couple of my beers from last year. (I had set aside a bottle from each batch, for just this purpose.) The special bitter, my first, was a full year old. It tasted very nearly exactly like feet. The sorghum was a bit better for being 11 months old, but it was decidedly off. I dumped most of both down the sink. The IPA was still vaguely hoppy, but again, the foot flavor permeated the malt body, and so most of it, too, went down the drain. The big surprise was the hefeweizen. Now, it was only 8 months old, so I’m sure that played a role in its qualities, but it was surprisingly free of funk. Much of the original citrusy blood orange flavor was gone, but had I been interested in it, I would have finished the whole thing. Also, so far, no gushers, so no sign of bottle infections yet. Hooray, good sanitation technique!

I officially have a collection of Scotch now. Last year, my sister and I went down to the Judge’s Bench in Ellicott City, MD to engage in a scotch tasting. We ended up working our way through 2 full flights (4 different scotches in each), under the soft tones of proprietor Mike Johnson’s narration of the different regions and malts we were drinking. He’s quite the whisky nerd. So, I know that I’m not yet inclined to drink an Islay, but Speyside and Highland varieties hit the spot all right. Well, to celebrate my status as a full-time, salaried employee of Wake County teaching Latin, I secured a bottle of Dalwhinnie 15 year, a scotch I remember liking rather a great deal when we tasted it. And that choice has not done me wrong! On top of this, the Sidhe, knowing my predilection for  delicious alcohol, took me to the booze store for an early Valentine’s Day present. We were looking at the Balvenie 14, a Speyside, but we settled on a bottle of Macallan 12 year (a Highland), which I had read about in various whisky threads as worth considering. Again, not disappointed in the slightest. So, in the last 4 weeks, we have spent $110 on Scotch.

This could get very expensive.

I quit Twitter. Not because I don’t want to talk to anyone–I desperately do–but it is far too easy to kill time. Minecraft, too, sits unused. But these are good developments. When I was a child, I engaged in childish things. Now that I am an adult, well, time to do the things that adults do. And yet: etsi provectus in sententiis sis, esse parvulus in spiritu debes!