First microscope pictures

For Christmas, we bought Reed a new microscope and some goodies to go with it - including blank slides. This morning, after my normal breadmaking, I thought it would be fun to look at the dough and yeast under the microscope. So Reed and I spent a half hour being amateur scientists in our office.

First was a chunk of our bread dough -- flour, salt, water, and yeast, having risen overnight:

Then a bit of dry yeast, which wasn't particularly exciting:

I thought that if we dyed our samples with iodine, they might pop a bit more. The bread dough turned out to be pretty tough to do -- it didn't seem that the iodine really penetrated the mix terribly much. Around the periphery, though, we did get an interesting result -- we all thought it looked very much like a top-down view of a forest:

The yeast, though, was quite interesting:

His microscope isn't setup for taking pictures, so unfortunately the quality isn't great.

Pictures of beer, bread, and scouting things

Pinewood Derby 2019

...which featured a Battle Bus for the first time

My keg's thermostat stopped working, so I had to rebuild it. This time, it went significantly better than the first one, probably because this time I had soldering flux and because I made such a monstrosity last time that I've learned a little bit about what not to do.

I made a bike rack for in our garage, which should help protect Jake's new bike and my motorcycle.

Reed and I went to Monster Jam with our cub scout pack

And in the evening, I busted out some brewing equipment and started an oatmeal stout.

Reed was super excited for me to come home on Monday. We texted each other as I was on the bus home. When I got home, "Dad, I am ready to jump on you ♥"

My first attempt to use spent beer grains in bread. We'll see how it turns out in the morning.

Some end- and beginning-of-year pictures from the Shireys

Getting ready for our Christmas party with my French meetup, the boys wanted to get their own button-up shirts and ties. They learned how to tie a Windsor and are now pros.

One of the tables at the Microsoft Garage, which is a neat design I'm going to attempt to replicate at some point.

Speaking of the Garage, one of the guys I run into on a regular basis has this in his office/neighborhood at work.

Christmas Eve hike with the family to Central Peak. (We didn't actually go the whole way, which is okay.)

At the start of the new year, I was so close to having finished my French version of A Brief History of Time. Jake sent "Little Spot" with me to work so I could read with him on the bus. I don't know how much Little Spot understood.

Roasting a pound of coffee (which takes maybe an hour?)

Oh yeah, and buying another 14 pounds of coffee:

We bought Jake a new bike for Christmas, and bright and early the next day, he wanted to go out on a bike ride.