This is Our Bold Hero, coming to you Galaxy News Radio–style from a makeshift setup in the attic of my new place. My wood floors are done, but I want to paint and hang up some curtains before I move to the main floor. So in the meantime I've been coming up here to use the internet and going down to the basement to sleep and watch t.v.

That basement room is kind of nice, actually. There's not much about it that's correct, but I like what they were trying to do with that loose carpeting and cracked wood paneling. Add in a minifridge, my Xbox 360, and my parents' hunting lodge loveseat and I may never see the sun again.

I'd say that it'll probably be three weeks before I can get really settled in. I lived here for almost two weeks without water until I finally bought a $1 pipe cap for downstairs and turned the water heater on, but the plumber will have plenty to do when he finally arrives tomorrow. You can hear water dripping from prettymuch anywhere in the house.

The awesome fridge is coming on Tuesday glory glory hallelujah, and I should be done painting everything I want to paint (i.e. most of the main floor) by sometime next weekend. My contractor assures me that the garage door will open soon.

There's still plenty to be done besides that, but I look forward to the point where I'm not longer spending all this money and I can just relax, even if everything isn't perfect. Working plumbing and cold beer will help with that.

Snow on the ground! Nature, what did I just say?!

It's been a quick week, and I've been tired for most of it. There've been too many hours at work, too many loose ends to take care of before I finally buy the house on Monday. That's the official day now.

It annoys me — and annoys my brother's anxious fiancee even more — that I won't be able to move all my stuff in immediately because of all the work that needs to be done on the house, but I'm planning to spend this weekend packing and (if all goes well at closing) much of next week repairing the house and getting settled in. The best part about this move will be not having to do it again in a couple years.

In other news, I just got back from a week in Bonita Springs with my family (except for Matt, who'll be in Florida while I'm moving out of his place). I didn't do anything particularly exciting, but it was warm and relaxing down there and that was all I needed.

We ate out for dinner every night — I'm trying to eat only "happy meat" at least until Lent is over, so I had a lot of shrimp and stone crab and grouper — but during the day everyone prettymuch did their own thing.

My thing was hanging out by the pool and reading: I must have read at least 3,000 pages last week, all of it sci-fi. Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light was pretty good, but I was only about five pages into Dan Simmons' The Hollow Man before I remembered why I'd never bother to finish the Hyperion Cantos.

When I wasn't reading I was usually either biking around while listening to podcasts, or wandering the nearby outdoor mall. The World Market store there had cool furniture and imported beer, although I only looked longingly at both offerings. Neither was worth carting all the way home.

On Tuesday or Wednesday of last week we saw The Watchmen, the story to which I only vaguely remembered from when I read it seven or eight years ago. Apparently there was a squid? And some stuff about a boat, which I'm sure I skipped over.

Anyways, I thought Rorschach was extremely well done and that's all I wanted. I can't remember where I heard it, but I like the idea that geeks should see the movie as an accessory to the graphic novel rather than an adaptation.

My littlest brother Josh left on Friday and my mom arrived late that night, so on Saturday we hit up a garden center and two flea markets in nearby Fort Myers.

There was a lot of cool stuff at the garden center (I've been thinking about getting a tropical for the bathroom), but I didn't see lemon verbena or miracle fruit. I might have to go to the seed catalog for some lemon verbena this year if I can't find a plant. After killing my last one and not being able to find another place in Minnesota that has them, I consider finding and growing lemon verbena a personal challenge.

Fleamasters, the second flea market we went to, was bustling with tourists and stocked with an incredible variety of cheap merchandise. It was like the Minnesota State Fair — without the gouging or the impassible crowds. I got some (happy meat–hypocritical) leather belts and an old book on growing herbs, and managed to purchase a neat German goblet at one of the garage sale booths just before the whole place shut down. St. Paul garage sales are up there with sandals on the list of things I'm looking forward to this spring.

I really like the idea that I left for Florida for a week and almost all the snow melted while I was gone and we're not going to have any more until November. Yeah, let's do that.

I've been cleaning Matt's house all weekend, in the aftermath of my highly successful War on Mice. Those little guys just love poison. Can't get enough of it.

My plans to move into the new place continue more or less on schedule; however, the water wasn't on when we inspected the house last week, so I have to look at that this Wednesday.

There are still some minor loose ends, but everything else is basically ready to go once the plumbing checks out, which is good because I'm off to Florida this coming Friday. I'm counting on all this snow being gone when I get back.

Theoretically I could close on the new place as soon as I'm in town again, and then move in once the electrical system is brought up to code. Crazy to think that this could be my last weekend living in Matt's house.

So here's the meme I just checked out:

Here's a totally random way to make your new random band's new random album cover. Post one! Go to "Wikipedia." Hit "random" and the first article you get is the name of your band. Then go to "Random Quotations" and the last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album. Then, go to Flickr and click on "Explore the Last Seven Days" and the third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

And here's the amazing result:

I turned 26 on Thursday. So I feel old, but some of that is probably from all the beer I had yesterday night. After Winterfest and my birthday, I think I'm done binge drinking for a while.

Actually though, I think I'm dealing with this pretty well. Most of my friends here are older than me, and I did a lot of cool stuff when I was 25, so I don't feel like I've completely wasted the past year or anything like that.

If all goes well, this week I'm going to make an offer on a house, turn 26, and have a bunch of people over on Friday for drinking games. Things could get hectic.

I went to Winterfest with Jess this weekend. It was fun, but not quite as good as last year: there were less people I knew and the venue was more cramped. The glasses were way cooler though. Little mini-goblets.

The beers... I think the beers were better this year, though part of that may just be my palate changing. I actually didn't like Fitger's last time I had their stuff, but this year they were one of my favorite brewers. I tried about 30 beers; here are the ones that stood out:

• Schell's U Bier, an uncarbonated, unfiltered pilsner. Reminded me of sitting around drinking kölsch in Germany.


• Cold Spring's Moonlight Ale, a 50/50 blend of porter and bock that really worked.


• Cold Spring's Honey Almond Weiss, an unfiltered honey wheat beer with almonds. Not mind-blowing or anything, but it had a cleanliness I liked.


• Fitger's El Diablo, my favorite of the three Belgian golden ales they had. We recommended this to an older couple that liked lighter beers, and they thanked Jess later for the tip.


• Fitger's Procrastinator Doppelbock, which was... delicious. Love the style, loved the execution.


• Fitger's Framboise, the sour result of a 5-year wild lambic project.


• Great Waters' King Boreas Imperial Witbeer, a 8.25% ABV witbier.


• Lift Bridge's Imperial Stout, for which my only note here is "good." I'm a Darkness guy, but I liked this better than all the non-Surly stouts on offer.


• Lift Bridge's Belgian Biscotti, which I foisted upon Jess immediately. I told her I'd double her vote if she picked something delicious, so this is what we both voted for.


• Rock Bottom's Tripel Framboise, which was fruity and drinkable. Good, but not sour like you might expect from the name.


• Surly's Three was good, 50% honey, 50% German Dark Munich malt. That was a nice surprise, since I didn't like Two when I tried it last year. I had this late in the night though, so ideally I'd like to taste it again on draft, unrationed.


• Surly's Darkness is still good, still exactly what I'm looking for in an Imperial Stout. This was my original vote before I changed to match Jess.