What's Wrong With My Brew???

Hi. I'm new to this site and new to beer brewing. So far my experience with brewing has not been good. On my first attempt I killed my yeast by trying to rehydrate the dry yeast with water that was to hot. On my second batch I tried to brew, I got a little bit of activity in my bucket fermentor, but it wasn't much and it completely stopped activity a day later. What's wrong with my brew? Am I just not cut out to be a brewer?

I tried to brew the Brewer's Best Red Ale. The starting gravity should have been 1.042, I recorded it at about 1.029 but I didn't mix the water and wort before I took the reading so I think that affected the reading. I put the wort (73 degrees, 2.5 gallons) in the bucket fermentor, added the 2.5 gallons of cold water, took a gravity reading, sprinkled the dry yeast, stirred, sealed the fermentor. The temp was about 68 degrees. One day later there was some bubbling but stopped a day later. 5 days later the gravity was 1.02 at 68 degrees, final gravity should be 1.008.

Anyone know what went wrong?

BAD BREWER 83 said:

One day later there was some bubbling but stopped a day later. 5 days later the gravity was 1.02 at 68 degrees, final gravity should be 1.008. Anyone know what went wrong?

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It can take more than five days to reach your final gravity, most all of the time it does. Are you saying its @ 1.020 now(five days after pitching) or that it has been 'stuck' at 1.020 for several days. By the way, don't worry it happens to the best of us

Sounds like it's doing just fine right now to me! It should drop some more, that's true. The beer right now is 68 degrees?

Relax man, don't start off by saying you're not cut out to be a brewer just because you're not flying from the get-go. It'll be cool, just give it some time. First off, http://www.howtobrew.com. Read through the first section, and you'll be well on your way to rocking socks off!

Secondly, to determine what went wrong, it'll help if you post the recipe you followed, because otherwise it's very hard to see where something may not be 100% squared away.

You'll get it man, you've got an awesome community of brewers at your back here! I'm still a n00b too, and this site has been an immense help!