Happy New Year to the Sri Lankan Community on the island and around the world! April 13 Sri Lankans (Sinhala and Tamil) celebrated the move of the sun into the sign of Pisces, which traditionally marks the the beginning of a new year for them. My friends in the local Sri Lankan community here in […]

On June 13th, Jacob graduated from Durham School of the Arts High School. Here he is … the fresh-baked graduate and the proud family! Am 13. Juni feierte Jacob seinen High School Abschluß von  der Durham School of the Arts. Hier ist der frischgebackenel Schulabgänger mit der stolzen Familie! The Durham School of the Arts […]

Happy Leap Day! And congratulations to Ennio Morricone for finally winning his first competitive Academy Award for his score for Quentin Tarantino’s film The Hateful Eight (2015). Morricone’s almost 60-year career in music included over 500 film scores, 5 previous Oscar nominations: Days of Heaven (1979), The Mission (1986),  The Untouchables (1987), Bugsy (1991) and Malèna […]

We hope you all had a great start for 2015! We gave the old year a nice send-off with a big bonfire. We sat around the fire with the neighbors until well after midnight, grilling hot dogs and potatoes and drinking beers.

So … it’s Labor Day and the gas grill is busted. What to do? Fire up the hobo grill, of course! My half-barrel burn barrel came in really handy today. We lit a fire in the barrel and chucked some charcoal on top and grilled our chicken kebabs and sweet corn – old school. This […]

Germany wins the U20 Women’s Soccer Worldcup! Deutschland’s U20 Auswahl der Frauen hat in Kanada die Auswahl Nigeria’s knapp besiegt und damit den dritten großen internationalen Titel dieses Jahres für den deutschen Fußball ergattert! Super Leistung!    

Another Championship! Germany’s U19 Mannschaft is UEFA Champion! They defeated Portugal’s U19 team 1:0 today in Hungary in the final. Fortsetzung! Die deutsche U19 Nationalmannschaft ist Europameister! Die Jungs haben heute Portugal im Finale in Ungarn 1:0 geschlagen. Ganz tolle Leistung!

What a great Worldcup! And what a fantastic achievement by Jogi Löw and his Mannschaft! This moment had been 10 years in the making. In 2004, after the German debacle at Euro, former star-striker Jürgen Klinsmann took over from Rudi Völler as team manager. Klinsmann brought in a new assistant coach, Joachim Löw, who had […]

Last Friday we invited some friends over for our Black Friday Party, and, as usual, good times were had by all. When the whole world goes mad and shoppers storm the malls and discount stores, I like to gather some good friends down by the pond, where we light some fires to keep us warm […]

Last week, Laura and I returned to Paris for the first time in 20 years. Laura flew out during the previous week for work and I followed her on Saturday for a few days of fun in the City of Light. Saturday evening, we met with several folks from her work for a dinner cruise […]

Is mayonnaise an instrument?? Oh barnacles …

Tonight, I pulled batch #100 from my biodiesel reactor and started washing the fresh fuel. Back in Aug. 2006 I brewed my first batch and I’ve been cooking fuel ever since. I collected almost 5,000 gallons (20.000 liters) of used fryer oil from local restaurants and processed it with 1,000 Gallons of Methanol and about […]

A couple of days ago my 1991 Mercedes 300D counted Mile # 288888 288888 Meilen hat der Mercedes jetzt auf dem Buckel. Das sind 464920 KM. And yes, it’s 12/12/12 today. Funny numbers. PS: that’s 44,000 miles (70.000+ KM) on homebrew biodiesel just for that car.

Congratulations to Felix Baumgartner on his amazing skydive yesterday. Here is a very excellent 1:350 scale re-enactment: Kitties below the fold!

Happy Earth Day! Today I made biodiesel batch no. 82.* It is still in the processor right now. Today was a rainy, cool day. It rained all day, and that’s great, because we really need the water. Yesterday I cleaned my two 250 Gal (1000 Liter) rainwater containers. One of them was already 1/3 full […]

Today is Dain’s Birthday and the 5th anniversary of his bar, Dain’s Place! I went there for lunch today and gave Dain a bottle of last year’s barrel-aged Sexual Chocolate stout. Happy birthday, oh Bearded One!  

Partytime! Tapping a keg of Foothills Sexual Chocolate Stout and grilling goat sausages down by the pond. Good fun! Dan poured the first pint on 11/11/11 at 11:11 AM EST. Funny: that keg was filled at Foothills Brewery on 1/10/11.                               […]

… on a historical vote for equality and human rights. Regardless of their gender, consenting adults will be able to get married in the state of New York. New York is draped in rainbows this weekend!  

May 5th is this year’s National Day of Reason. I’ll be heading over to Raleigh tomorrow to check it out.