Things are beginning to slow down a bit on the work front (at least, in terms of programs) and so I have had some time to read again, as well as to think over my own activities and engagements. I had been trying to run more recently, but I had been having trouble with consistency. And so I came up with a goal to impose consistency on myself: 20 miles a week. It isn’t much, under 3 miles a day, in fact, but the real kicker is that I have to run at least 4 times a week if I am going to make it (mostly because I am not a big fan of long runs). Further more, to give the goal some weight, I have decided that I will reward myself if I can make it to 200 miles on this goal: that’s 10 weeks, to be precise. If I can make it 10 weeks on this goal, I get to buy my own homebrewer’s kit, and start experimenting with beer-making. I have wanted to do this for a while, and so I see my coupling of the two as one more way to reinforce my desire for consistent exercise.
I am doing well for this week (up to 13.1 miles as of Wednesday night) so hopefully I will be brewing beer come July 9th.
Wish me luck!
Deeper in me than I 
Luck!
You know that this means that if you decide to go for a run in the morning I’ll be sure that you actually make it up. . . 🙂 Only potential issue I see is scheduling things so that the beer can safely sit without oversight during the two weeks we’re in CA. But I think that should be manageable — Beth would know better than I.
Wooo beer! Good luck!
If/when you start looking around for kits, I’ve been quite happy with http://www.northernbrewer.com for equipment as well as for recipe kits.
And to answer Alex’s question, once brewed the beer will need to ferment. This can take 1-3 weeks (longer for stronger beers), and the beer certainly won’t suffer from sitting a few extra days if necessary. I like to monitor my batches while they’re brewing, but that’s because I’m a geek, and in fact we started a batch of dunkelweizen just before going out of town and it’s fine.