Damn my mess

I looked about last night to try and find my recipes and notes from my beer brewing sessions, just to go through them in my head and try to remember all the things that I had screwed up and come up with some lessons learned on my journey.  Keyword here was try and find, because of all the shit I have that is related to beer and cheese making (don't get me started on the next damn project I am looking into Charcuterie) I was not able to find the damn folder with my notes and recipes.

I have some of the gravities written on my whiteboard, but didn't find the papers.  Hope is not lost, I really only glanced about and all of the recipes that I was working with came from my LBS recipes folder so I could always just go get new copies, the only thing I will have lost is my session notes.  That makes me a little sad, but in all it is a recoverable offense.

In other and related news I had previously downloaded Beer Tools to give it a try (it is a recipe management and brewing assistant piece of software).  The software is fine, and it does give you a very nice looking little handout to print up that tells you what your beer will be like based on the ingredients and processes you add to it, but for some reason I found the process a little tedious and for $30 I wanted it to be less cumbersome.  I realize that software requires work in to get value out, but man I was not feeling it.  Until now.  If I had my recipes stored in there I wouldn't be looking for them now would I?  I'm torn, $30 is a drop in the bucket at this point but for the planning your brew session it seems like it would be easier and cheaper to use Beer Calculus and do a better job of keeping track of the damn notes, also you could print to PDF and keep a digital copy of your brew session for future reference.

If I don't find my recipes I may invest in the Beer Tools, just so I won't loose my session notes again.

[?]

On daughters

Right now my wife is pregnant, and we are in a small halo of people that I know that all independently decided to start having children, but are all pregnant at the same time.  Some are a little ahead or a little behind but ultimately we will all have children in 2011.  In our previous attempt we where going to have a girl and for myself I wanted this one to be a girl as well, for no other reason than I had gotten my mind ready for the daughter life.  I freaked out a little when I first heard it was going to be a girl, but after several months to hash it out in my own mind I was ready.  We found out that we are having a boy this time.

While having dinner the other night with our friends that where very close to their due date, my wife was asking questions of the mother to be and suddenly declared they where having a daughter.  Our friends had decided to not find out the sex, but my wife was sure.  On July 4th they had a daughter.  A woman at work is pregnant and I heard that she is having a daughter,  and some other friends that are a week away from finding out the gender I feel sure are also going to have a girl.  I'm sure it is me being a bad person, but I'm sadly jealous of all of them. 

As long as it took us to get pregnant I should be glad to be in the position of having a child.  I am glad, I'm happy that the baby is now big enough for my wife to feel him moving.  I'm happy that we can be in the position to have a child, can afford it, have the space and time and energy.  I'm glad for all of that, I still in my heart want to have a daughter.