Dude. Your wife is badass. I like to think of myself as a badass wife, but Anne has me out-badassed by miles. I've just become her biggest fan, I think. Anyhow, nice to visually see you at DragonCon! I hope you'll come back so I can buy a book from you and actually say hi. And I'm fairly certain that you could get them to do a brewing panel with you on it, since that falls quite in line with a few of the different programming tracks. Hell, steal an empty room and have a beerfest where people bring their home-brews. I'm pretty sure that someone at DC could get that taken care of for you. I'd come. I'd PAY to come. Seriously. Do eeeet!

ROFL!!! ok, really I'm sorry you're dealing with this. It sounds horrid. Ok, a few things on allergies... Vitamin c and local honey both help. Here's a link to some vitamin c and allergies info, written by a doctor. There is also info about certain foods which you should probably avoid. The entirety of the site will have you scratching your head and wondering why the hell you haven't heard of this before. Page one: http://www.doctoryourself.com/allergies.html Page two: http://www.doctoryourself.com/allergies_2.html Ok, now for the honey, the idea is to eat the pollen in the honey, so you want to be sure to get a local honey. If you can, find out what kind of Hell Tree that is, and get a local honey that has those trees where the bees have been hanging out. Here's the thought process: yanno how old school kinds used to eat a bit of poison every day to build an immunity? Same concept. You're ingesting the Hell Tree Poison so that your body does not react when you breathe in said poison. There is another school of thought that says to drink tea of the tree leaves, stamens, and pollen, but considering the threat of actual poisoning, better not try that. I have, however, tried the other two, and I have to note a marked improvement in my seasonal allergies. As for the toxic waste cat shits... I feed my cats a raw diet, and they have the most lovely non stinky shits. Cats are made to eat dead mice and birds at dead mouse temperature, and they have trouble digesting all that other crap. No one likes to talk about it, but much protein in commercial pet foods includes the bodies of euthanized cats and dogs. And whatever diseases they had, collars they were wearing, and whatever chemical in their system put them to sleep. Is it any wonder that our pets don't do well with crapping? This also reduces their health and shortens their lives. I don't have the recipe link handy for the food recipe I use, but if you're interested in looking at the link to the vet that posted it, let me know, and I'll hunt the URL down. Cheers!

Hehheh... Yeah, I'm a huge fan of the "leave it the hell alone and let nature do what it does" method. This post reminded me to go check my mead, which I had not done for at least 6 months. Ah! Such beautiful stuff I have now! I need to stop fermentation to prevent bottle bombs, clarify, and bottle, but it is SO tasty! It would definitely benefit from some French Oak, but I'm astonished at the flavor. I didn't even pitch yeast itself - I went way old school and threw in organic, pesticide-free raisins from a favorite vendor at a farmers market while I lived in SoCal. whatever yeasty beasties were on those grapes are what went in to the must. So far, success! I'll have to try that with cider. I know what I'm drinking at the birth of my first child in 6 months... :D (although, pregnancy sucks when you can't taste the home brew lovelies.)

Don't worry about it. It will still be beer. I personally go the super-low-involvement method and make mead. Mix, leave it alone forever, rack it after you've forgotten about it, moved it cross-country, then remembered it again... BTW, there's a lovely brew shop in the west valley called The Beer, Wine, And Cheesemaking shop. Great little place right off Ventura in Woodland Hills, not far from the Topanga Canyon exit. If you're headed towards Ventura County for any reason, it's a great pace to hit up!