Friday, April 5, 2013

Of Wights, Mead, and Bike Rides

I had my first bike ride of the season/year yesterday. Rather than burden someone for a ride to work I had Grendal look over the bike the night before to make sure everything was good. After decking myself out in a backpack, a leather jacket, gloves, and a scarf, I was off. While it's only a 15 minute-ish ride it is still kinda chilly in the mornings, so that sort of bundling up was needed.  It was nice to ride again. My legs disagreed with me by the end of the day but I loved it. Set me off to a good start too. Healthy sort of breakfast, after ride munch, and a nice salad with an avocado(with a side of yogurt and some blah bread pudding) for lunch! While I may not need to drop any fat, I do need to tone up in general.  Though, I don't think my legs need the work. A couple years of martial arts and hula mixed kinda does that to the legs. It's my stomach and upper body that need to shape up. So, it looks like yoga and what not for that.

The mead should be reaching the point of racking. This also means that Grendal and I need to figure out what fruits we're putting in for half the batch. He knows he wants blackberry and cherry, while I'm kinda leaning towards apples and strawberries. If we stick with those, that just leaves two more that are undecided. Who knows. The book I have (The Compleat Meadmaker) suggests a couple of different fruits to use so I may stick with that.

I've been bothering Grendal with the idea of coming up with names for our different meads because, well, I'm hoping we continue to make it and possibly make it for others. I suggested 'Allfather' for the classic mead, which he responded with 'The Allfather's Eye Drops'.  I think I can compromise with 'The Allfather's Eye' and we both can be happy. I also had the idea of doing a mixed berry version in hopes that it's yummy and call it 'The Bifrost'.  And while Grendal doesn't like carbonation, I think he liked the idea of a sparkling mead to be known as 'Mimir's Well.'  I do know the apple version will have some reference to Idunna and we joked about a really red mead being a reference to Tyr, though I wonder if that would be in bad taste.

Speaking of the happenings of the past few days, Grendal and I had a little 'spook' moment the other night. Now, we have a tendency to misplace our combs. He blames it on me and while I misplace it more often then he does, I'm not the only one to blame. Anyway, we had lost our good one a few weeks ago and no amount of cleaning seemed to help. Hell, we cleaned rather well because we had a friend showing up and NOTHING! Well, the other day I came home to find our combs lying together on the bed. Of course I figured this meant Grendal had found it and was showing me as such while he was at work. So, I just put it over with the brush we had and left it at that. Later that night he goes to brush his hair with the comb and the following happened:

Grendal- Where did you find the good comb?
Me- It was just laying next to your pillow. I thought you put it there.
Grendal- Uh, no.
Me- What? *skeptical stare* You're not shitting me, are you?
Grendal- You're not shitting me?
Me- *stare*
Grendal- *stare*

Usually by this point one of us would confess to the other if we had been fooling around. I have a tendency to be easily duped in certain situations and was honestly expecting Grendal to be all 'Haha, fooled you'  yet there wasn't such a response.  He just had an uneasy look on his face and I went downstairs to do whatever it was I was going to do.

We've had spirits (both nice and grumpy) in the house before, but they seemed to either have quieted down or moved on over the years. While I do believe in the little folk, we've never had an indication of them being around. With my increased work in the world of Asatru I've begun offering foods to the Land Wights in the area. It made me wonder if I have a House Wight and they're making themselves known by doing such a thing. I'll set up another offering dish for the House Wight on the off chance we have one. Maybe that will make the atmosphere in the house a little more happy.

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