Yesterday I had a bit more energy so I got a bit more done -- in the morning, cleaned the garage a little bit before going to the SCARE business meeting (at which I became Secretary on the BoD during the transitional government; gotta enter my hand-written notes in today).
After that, more garage cleaning and then I realized I had to pitch (pour) the yeast into my ciders... I used a bubbler aerator to oxygenate the worts (new toy!) for 15 minutes each and then I stirred the yeast in with much splashing and foaming as well. I only let the yeast stabilize for about an hour out of the fridge, instead of doing the puff-up-the-smack-pack wait of three hours, mostly because I forgot about it until it was 6 and I didn't want to wait until 9.
Twelve hours later, no significant bubbler activity, I'm disappointed. Did my campden tablets not dissipate and instead killed my yeast? Was there too much cleanitizer residue? Did the pitch from 50ºF (guessing) to 70ºF shock the yeast too much? Am I just too impatient and this is a normal "waiting period" before it takes off? I seem to recall that almost all of my cider brews take a while before activity appears, but that may be wishful remembering too.
We'll see. I've had decent luck with brewing in the past, so I expect this will work too, though there are a few new things I've done in this batch.
I also made two cuts in the vortex fire pillar device, and I have a plan for the legs and assembly of it all. Two cuts takes a while, this is 4.5" steel pipe with a wall thickness of about a quarter inch. Hefty stuff.