Original Gravity Brewing Company is coming to Milan!
This is very cool. The guy opening the place is a former Mechanical Engineer who found Home Brewing so addictive that he decided to open up a microbrewery right in town. I will certainly do what I can to support his business venture -- I sure hope it does well...
UPDATE: Original Gravity opened in June, and is now serving sandwiches. Lunch hours start this week (week of July 7th) and they're open every day except Sunday. Stop in -- the food and beer are quite good!
Mostly, I play with and hang out with my kids, but when they're in bed, I either sit outside and relax and read books (currently reading Cyptonomicon by Neal Stephenson) or I watch DVR'd TV shows, or I play with my Above and Beyond award from work -- my XBox 360. Normally, the Xbox kind of drives Jodi crazy (and makes Joshua into a little frenzied freak), but I was downloading and playing through some demos when we came across something that is incredibly amusing, relatively kid-safe, and fun as heck to play: Lego Star Wars.
After playing all the way through the demo, I broke down and bought it. I've played throught abut a half-dozen chapters and am finding the puzzles engaging, if a little simple (but I get stuck occasionally), but the animation and the creativity is stunning. I have to say, other than the Tiger Woods golf, this is my favorite game on this machine (and now I've played a few good ones, too: Orange Box, BioShock, Gears of War).
I'll report back after I've gotten further (assuming it holds my interest for a while), but for now, rainy evenings aren't so boring...
Yes, it has been a bit quiet around chrisoverbeek.com. I just renewed the domain for a couple of years, though, so for the time being, we're going to be around.
Things have been pretty busy for me and the family. I have been putting in a few extry hours at the office working on our next big release and trying to get our current releases wrapped up and out. Things at work are very busy but the things that are going on are interesting and challenging, so it is a good kind of busy.
At home, we've spent some time getting the yard all cleaned up (leaves and whatnot) so the spring growth can finally pop out and look all pretty. My insane trimming job on the Forsythias last spring paid some pretty cool dividends in that they were just bursting with bright yellow flowers. Now I have to figure out how to do it again! The Lilacs are just starting to bloom -- right on time (it seems like they usually bloom the first week of May here), and the 50ish-year-old lilac in the front was another of my trimming projects last year. I have a lot more old-growth to try to cut out of that bush, but it also seems to be regrowing very well, and is filling in a lot. The crocuses, daffodils, and buttercups are spent already. The hyacinths are mid-bloom, as are the tulips. The hostas, columbine, bleeding hearts, lilies of the valley, myrtle, ferms and peonies are all growing like crazy and getting ready for blooming, and the lillies, day lillies and chrysanthemums are shooting up, but they'll not bloom for at least 4 weeks, yet. On the vine front, the hops in the front of the house are again going crazy, and I have had to cut back the runners and rhizomes so they don't take over. 3 of our 5 clematis vines are still going strong and one of them is already budding, so we will have flowers in late May form that plant. It is hard to predict what will happen with the other two, but we've usually had at least some sparse blossoming each year, so I am holing out hope.
On other fronts, I have been learning to edit the video Jodi shot with the camera, and make a DVD from it. We certainly have to work on our camera-work -- the shaking and moving around is rather disconcerting at times. Oh well. So far, I *really* like the camera and the video we get from it is pretty incredible.