Brutus 10 clone progress report: I am at the point where I need to do a full boil water test, to make sure the burners and pump are all working and up to par for brewing beer. Unfortunately the excesses of the Texas daytime summer heat have stifled my motivation for performing such a test. Heat indices reaching ~120 make is miserable outside during the day.

So, instead, I will present to you a loose string of random thoughts.

The other day I had mowed the yard and become parched. It was shortly after that that I enjoyed one of life's little gifts that people take for granted: A nice tall cold glass of ice water is nearly impossible to beat. A glass of water so cold that beads of sweat glisten off its surface, eventually growing so large that gravity wins, resulting in a small puddle of condensation on your coaster. The kind of refreshment that you feel all the way to your core, and instantly you know that water, as slang would deem, is the shit.

When you are a small child, perhaps sometimes even into middle school years, you really are blissfully unaware of the behind the scenes magic that happens to produce an end result. I remember when I was very small and travelling with my dad and we arrived at stop light, he would say "Hey, watch this", and then he would snap his fingers and make the light change to green. I was always blown away by it. It was the late 70s, and I was 4 or 5 years old, I didn't really understand how he did it. This thought crossed my mind the other day when I cooked some pork shoulder. I smoked the meat all night and the next day. Between the prep the day before and the cooking process, I spent a solid 17 hours on it. That seems excessive when you consider it only takes maybe 20 minutes to eat it. When I go to a restaurant and eat a pulled pork sandwich, that means that someone spent in the neighborhood of 17 hours making it, and I suppose I have never thought about that while eating such an item, but I plan to. I may even go out of my way to do it, just so I can have those thoughts.

I was applying my deodorant this morning and noticed that is was called Right Guard 3D. THREE FUCKING D! It seems that 3D is the new thing the kids are into these days, why not spray it into your armpit as well. All I can say is I'm damn happy thing the latest fad aint peanut butter.