Aloha…
All Good Things Must Come to an End
It’s our last full day of our vacation in Maui. It’s been a lot of fun, but we are both pretty tired and I think ready to come home. We spent our first 3 nights at the Diamond Resort and Spa in Wailea. It was very spacious, very quiet, and very relaxing. It was up on the hillside, and although it wasn’t on the beach, a very quick drive to a public beach with plenty of parking was all we really needed. We took some time to relax… especially my wife, who had been traveling on business and had a very long flight to get there. I made a panoramic image of the view from the sitting room at Diamond. Click thumbnail to enlarge… but be warned that the main image is over 3 MB.
From the Diamond, we moved to the Westin in LaHaina. It’s not quite as nice. It’s definitely not relaxing. It’s more like DisneyLand. There is definitely plenty to do here… there’s like 4 pools, 2 waterslides, 3 restaurants, and a million other things to do. But the hotel is full, the rooms are small, there are 1000s of people milling around, and it’s complete chaos. I’m sure others would like it here a lot. I hear people commenting that they absolutely love the place. But it’s just not our speed. The other thing I think that’s bothering me… I don’t care where you are… it’s fundamentally wrong to charge more than $5 for any drink that comes in a plastic cup. The poolside drinks here are like $8.50. That’s pretty extreme for 12 ounces of watered-down pina colada.
Beer Brewing Continues
In my March 29th post, I mentioned that the home brewing bug had bitten me big time. A lot has happened since then. I purchased a Deluxe Starter kit, and also an All-Grain kit from Northern Brewer. I had the All-Grain kit shipped directly to my brothers place, and on the last weekend of April, we made our first all-grain batch. We decided to do a simpler recipe, since it was our first time with this brewing method. We also wanted something that would ferment pretty fast so we could check our results. We made a clone of Bass Ale.
Three weeks later, we got together to check our work and brew another batch. This time my friend Jason Crook came along to lend a hand. The Bass clone came out really good. My brother had recently gotten a kegging system, so we put it to the task. I think between Jason and Jake and I, we drank most of that entire batch. We proceeded to make our Black Thunder Wheat - a blackberry wheat beer. It was a lot of fun and we all had a good time. My brother tells me that the beer is happily fermenting away.
We will try to get together early in June to make another batch of beer. We’re going to focus for a while on creating an easy-to-make, easy-to-drink, all-purpose Brown Ale that we can keep in supply as our regular house brew. The goal of the whole thing is, afterall, to keep us both steady in beer supply.
Kitchen Continues
Two and a half years running, and I’m still working on upgrading my kitchen. This was a three week project that really got the run on me. But I’m happy to say that I’ve finally finished stripping all the lacquer off of all the cabinet doors. That’s 3 coats of lacquer on two sides of 24 cabinet doors. It’s been a real pain. But I feel I’m finally in the home stretch. I have to paint the doors, re-paint some of the kitchen, and then hang the doors. My goal is to have the finishing touches put on the weekend of June 18th.
It’ll be great putting an end to a long and painful project. But in reality, it’s only closing one chapter. After the kitchen, I will move straight to the master bedroom, then the bathroom, and finally the hall/living room. After that, the whole place will have been repainted. But of course, by that time I will probably need to start the whole process over again.
Another Certification
In the end of April, I received another certification - the Certified Project Manager from the Project Management Leadership Group. This was part of a project management boot camp that was paid for by my company and held by the PMLG. It was a great program, and I would recommend it to anyone who does project management but does not have formal training. Like the PMP, it is based on the PMBOK, but unlike the PMP, the CPM is based on “immersion” training. It is applied learning, and through the entire boot camp you will not only learn, but also use newly learned skills in practical exercises. The Project Management Boot Camp was a lot of hard work, with lots of long hours, but it was also very fun. We all had a great time while learning great new skills. Check out the PMLG (link above) for more information.