(Ed. Note: This is a feature that I have been doing for a little while as a separate page on the site, and which I have decided to keep around based on feedback. I shall probably archive the first five or six of them on that page while I figure out what to do with them.)

Monday, January 5th

I’m up and editing Ron’s text on the Granite book. Ron has actually managed, with the benefit of archival organization and a pretty significant amount of discipline, to create the vast majority of an autobiographical text in something like three months. I had originally allotted more time because I didn’t know what his stamina would be like, given the ALS diagnosis. He’s gone from not really knowing how to tell his own story in prose to having become pretty good.

The spreadsheet tracking progress says that I’ve got something like 20,000 words to edit over about nine chapters. The difficulty here is that you have to let the text live in your head, but it’s not your story. The ability to make the whole cohere involves letting it occupy you and that means reading it and re-reading it not just for grammatical sense or style, but to feel enough for the author’s style that altering it for improvement continues to allow it to sound like Ron. People think of it as a technical gig, but it’s vastly more experientially gestalt. You need to get in the walls and crawl around. When we do the punch ups on it, we’ll make it sound like Ron is sitting next to you telling you the story. 

It’s nice to have a schedule for a while. I don’t typically, and this is somewhat fraught. If you don’t have set weekends, and your day could start at 9:00 AM or 6:30 PM, you could be forgiven for coming across as distracted. Raymond Chandler and P.G. Wodehouse viewed writing as a desk job of about four hours a day, and I’m trying that this time around, with most of the effort going in before lunch. Stephen King wrote until Beer O’Clock right up until he couldn’t remember having produced Cujo. 

I figure at two chapters a day, I’ll be ready to meet up on Friday and talk about next steps.

Tuesday, January 6th

The morning’s editing goes relatively smoothly, listening to Freddie Hubbard, but is interspersed with news from George Brown College that the Beer 1 class that was meant to start on the 15th has been cancelled nine days out for being a student short of the financial break even point. This has now happened to the last four sessions I’m meant to be running for a net loss of approximately four grand in billing over three months. It’s a good thing I’m diversified. The longer this goes on, diverse it gets.

The entire day is really a sign of the times. Now, it’s worth noting that I’m at about the lowest tier on the collegiate pedagogical ladder: contract staff. But this is being felt all over the province at approximately every level in Ontario colleges. Periodically, I get news out of Niagara’s Brewing Program, and they’re down to one intake a year. Sometimes I get updates from St. Lawrence College in Kingston, and it’s no different. 

Coincidentally, I break more or less even on the day due to the arrival of a cheque from my American publishers on the Histories. Some AI company had offered them 340 USD per title to be allowed to absorb their catalogue. A one time payment of 510 USD for your work to be absorbed into an LLM is significantly better than OpenAI and Meta’s slightly more rapacious strategy of pirating the text and giving you the finger. 

This is a dichotomy playing out in real time. People are not willing to pay for education or expertise, and if you create those things in text, they will be immediately subsumed into the AI’s maw, misunderstood, hallucinated about, and regurgitated into some manner of duffer’s guide. It’s a hell of a thing to periodically write research essays because they’re interesting to create while watching people around you completely absent themselves from their own interaction with their interests. People used to assume they were expert because they had googled things. Imagine a level below that and understand that’s how you’re mugging yourself if you use AI: you’re removing your own necessity from the situation.

As Nietzsche points out in Beyond Good and Evil, “When the house is on fire, one forgets even the dinner — Yes, but one recovers it from the ashes.” Off to cash a cheque.

I buy a 2025 Fuller’s Vintage Ale, an O’Hara’s Leann Follain, and an Achel Tripel at Summerhill (the subway station now has an elevator, which is good on an icy day), and pick up a Flashfood order from Harvest Wagon. They get incredible sourdough from the city’s best bakeries and they often go as day olds. I don’t know who actually shops at Harvest Wagon, but I suspect they are not in my tax bracket given that Mutti Passata is 12 bucks a throw ($3.97 at Walmart). 

Wednesday, January 7th

Around midnight, I am laid low by President’s Choice Everything Bagel Seasoning Hummus. 

It is very likely salmonella, but in the throes of evacuation you’re not looking for diagnostics. The horrid wrench of your innards and the borborygmic thrum of the vagus nerve leaves you without the wherewithal for questions. A temporary washroom anchorite, your movements are dictated by the rising hairs on your neck and full body chill that suggest another expulsive bout is imminent and likely explosive. If you’re very unlucky, the water you’re trying to keep down will reappear in a vertebral whipcrack of retching that seems temporarily to dislocate your entire identity if not a few ribs.

By 3 PM, I’m on Powerade and filling out CFIA paperwork. By 4 PM, I’m full of Advil and the fever is breaking. 

Kyle Osland is meant to drop off beer but kindly reschedules.

I am also now behind on editing, but caught up on Fallout Season 2. Walton Goggins is awesome. Aaron Moten sort of puts me in mind of a young Denzel Washington.

Thursday, January 8th

I manage to keep down avocado toast and coffee, so at this point there’s probably nothing wrong with me. Editing continues, albeit at a reduced speed. Ron has two chapters that actually employ writerly tricks: contrast and cadence. They don’t need much in the way of help, which is lovely. 

Good news out of Uxbridge, where Mike Lounds gets in touch to say The Second Wedge are producing a double batch of Zivotni Czech Style Lager this year. We get in touch with David Carriere to order Saaz and Vital hops in time for the brewday at the beginning of February. Mike’s lagers were popular enough last year that they’ve shifted the production schedule to ensure that they have enough of them for the summer cycling season and farmer’s markets at the brewery. 

Zivotni was originally a mashup of a Czech Specialni Lezak borrowing from Postrizinie in Nymburk and a Cold IPA with a rice component. The Vital hops were a bit of an accident, given that our order for Agnus was shipped elsewhere. The Vital is not all that common. The essential oil breakdown seems to put Farnesene on par with Humulene, making it a little zippy and spicy. The aroma is aided by the huge myrcene content and the fact that the linalool and geraniol are off the charts high, at least proportionally. That’s lavender, lilac, geranium, and orange blossom to you.

When we named it Zivotni, which is the literal Czech translation of Vital, Eva from the consulate pointed out that that made it sound like some kind of vitamin supplement you’d sell to the elderly. It also apparently translates as “animals” in Russian.  I like it because it tastes like spring and is maybe some kind of Maibock analog.

Friday, January 9th

The morning is spent editing, and by the time my meeting with Rob rolls around, I’m through all but the two most recently produced chapters. We more or less know where we stand when we meet with his niece Amy, who is a published author out in Halifax. She is full of very good advice, and since it’s the first time we’re talking, there’s a small sussing out period where she’s trying to figure out if I know what I’m talking about. My stuff has been niche non-fiction, so that’s understandable. By the time we’re talking about AI adoption and she gets that OpenAI has scraped my titles, I think I’ve got credibility established. 

Ron is a little worried about the production aspect of a self published title, which is reasonable, so I make a note to do some digging. The results suggest that there isn’t actually very much to worry about. You could theoretically have a turnaround of a couple of weeks and we’re at least half a year out from launch, although we could speed that along. I originally envisioned having a complete text by April 1st and we’ve already moved it up a month. Did I mention he’s doing great?

By the time we’re done with the afternoon meeting, Sam, Mare, and Tim are done with their brewday and we gather around the bar for some 50 Heartbeats, which is a touch higher on finishing gravity than last year, so not quite as sharply bitter in balance. It’s a collab with Ren Navarro and probably one of the best West Coast IPAs in Ontario. Mare and Tim do the beer the justice of allowing it not to contemporize. West Coast IPA isn’t supposed to taste like 2026 Everywhere. It’s supposed to taste like 2006 California. 

Saturday, January 10th

Having done a little research on printing costs and having edited a small amount of material, it’s Dave Smith’s birthday. Dave took the beer workshop at George Brown before the pandemic and finished the certificate during it. At some point, he volunteered to be a beer carney at the CNE and we’ve since become pretty good friends. He’s a little like what you might get if Colin Mochrie had been part of the staff at Empire Records. During the CNE we sit in the booth and do improv bits about the various foodstuffs that might exist on the midway and some of the more gaudily attired patrons.

The party runs from the Victory Cafe to Anti-Social Pinball. The taps at Victory seem to be incentivized local craft with the potential exception of Side Launch Wheat, so I order an Orval. The young Irish server calls me Mister, which I suppose means I’ve aged out of Fella. The kid has a sort of Scouse inflection. I really like the fact that you’ve about a 25% chance to get an Irish server in Toronto. Toronto kids don’t really grow up in pubs anymore, so it’s nice to have people to model the behaviour.

There’s discussion at the table of Neil and Maz Brereton, who used to own the joint when it was on Markham. They’re opening up a C’est What stand in the St. Lawrence Market, which is a direction no one really foresaw for County Durham Brewing. Someone asks whether they’re retired and I say that if they’re not in a pub, they’re on a boat. 

We play a lot of Big Buck Hunter, at which I’m surprisingly good. I play some pinball, at which I’m surprisingly bad. I think the golden age of pinball was probably in the 90’s. I think the new skins on the machines probably don’t get as much time to develop concept and they don’t have quite the same feel. Either that or Great Lakes Canuck is stronger than I remember.

Since I didn’t eat at Victory, I treat myself to a Shelby’s Shawarma on the way home. I have been seeing the ads forever, but the circumstance has never lined up. I like the fresh saj bread, but the flavour profile seems a little muddy to me. Needs more acid and more crunch. Nothing to write home about, but a pretty good option for a chain. Also, the Shawarma Man character is classic Ontario small businessman promotion in a Mel Lastman sort of vein. 

I’ll stick with Flaming Stove.

Sunday, January 11th

Mostly doomscrolling with periodic coffee.