It is done

I have, for the third and hopefully final time, quit WoW. I’ve removed myself from the raiding guild that I had joined and have requested Blizzard deactivate my account. The last month has been a strange and difficult one. Raiding is much like having a job. There are twenty hours a week that are raid time and there is a significant portion of time necessary to prepare for the raid time. A common way to afford the expense of raiding is to do daily quests which reward you money when you complete them. The job parallel is even less subtle there. It has become increasingly hard to balance work, social life and the video game. It was consuming all of my personal time at home most of the week. I am looking forward to being able to row again and to pursue the new hobby (lord help me, more on that later). Plus someone has to take down the Christmas tree. Hopefully my friends in the game will not think too badly of me.

I mentioned the new hobby. After New Year’s I had a dinner party at my house. This marks the first major non-family gathering in over four years, the prior being the actual house warming party. I cooked dinner for everyone and was able to get some use out of the new dining table I’d purchased. All in all it worked out well. I was a little disappointed in the okra and the bread I’d made. The okra I’m willing to chalk up to weird food, don’t care, won’t fix. The bread is another issue entirely though. Bread is deceptively simple. A baguette has only four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt. That’s it. The rest is chemistry. I managed to make a dry, dense, pale loaf which everyone said tasted fine but I thought was weak. I don’t know why but the bread falls into the same weird little niche in my brain that the woodworking does. I may not have to make everything myself but I ought to be able to demonstrate the ability. So, I bought a few books and I’ve started trying to get better.

The first book is The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. I’ve enjoyed reading the introductory part due to the discussion of the science involved. The author, Peter Reinhart, mentions several times in this section a bread he calls “pain à l’ancienne” and talks about how awesome it is. I tried making it and it worked and I only ruined half of it. Yay me. I took two of the three baguettes that were not burned halfway through to games night at Dan’s house and everyone seemed to think it was good. I ate the third one myself. I did forget to take pictures though.

Saturday night I started the dough for a beer bread out of the second book, The Bread Bible by Rose Beranbaum. It has a few more ingredients in it and I ended up needing to add more beer to it than the recipe called for in order to get the consistency in the dough I wanted but after I baked it today it was wonderful. I took some pictures which are in the “House and Yard” gallery in the images section of this place. There’s a link to one here. I’m sure I’ll have more to write about as I try more of the recipes in the books but I’ve had a pretty good start and it has been taking up much less time than the WoWs. Amazing.