A little bit of everything

Where to begin? Summer’s here and a lot has happened. M and I are working on an ambitious bathroom renovation. There’s a new attachment for the grill. Our Subaru is spawning clones. We saw Indy 4. Babies R us is an awkward place. That’s a good chunk I’ve bitten off, so I’ll start with those.
First, the bathroom renovation. We started out looking for a fake plant for the living room. Despite inhabiting Bandmeltun for almost 2 years, we still have some big open spaces. Our stuff looks nice and we lack the clutter of people have lived together for 15 years. Sometimes though, the large clean walls look a little Spartan, so we started looking for some plants. Despite a thriving herb garden last year, I haven’t rid myself of old herbicidal tendencies and cannot be trusted with live foliage. M used to have some healthy plants back at her old apartment. They were getting a little too big, so instead of buying new pots, I dug them out of their existing pots and chopped off the roots that were making the plant snug in the pot. Then I packed in more dirt for new roots to grow. The strange garden of Dr Moreau quickly staggered to a state of what can best be described as shock and awe. Short of setting the plants on fire there isn’t much worse I could have done. So when M asked about getting some plants, I started thinking Target instead of the garden center. We ended up at HomeGoods, a store I’ve only seriously considered for ridiculous statuary destined for jaw dropping gifts (mostly of the what the... category, but dropping). We ended up with a decent looking ficus-tree similie. It ended up being a little too tall, so we returned it for a smaller plante-ganger and ended up with a somewhat striking vessel sink. I wasn’t planning on changing the bathroom, but M got 2 separate compliments on her way to the checkout, so this sink had something going for it. We took it home to prevent someone else from stealing it, not knowing what we’re really do with it. Since then, I have immersed myself in preparations for bathroom renovation. We’ll have to replace the vanity top, run some new hot/cold hoses, install a faucet and drain, remove tile from a wall and re-paint the bathroom. Most of the pieces have actually been assembled already, so construction will commence very soon. I’ll document the process while it underway, but no pics beforehand. I’m excited. I think M is a little nervous. The changes will be huge.
As part of the wedding giftage, we received a somewhat unique grill attachment. Normally this would seem like a gift that only I would get pleasure or use out of, but I have demonstrated sufficient grilling/bbq skills to let M give me a chance with this. We picked up the Char-griller firebox attachment at a local big-box home improvement store that we’ve almost moved in to and set it up as soon as we got home. I already had a chicken brining and we were ready to go once the fire got going. The chimney was stocked with charcoal, the woodchips were soaked and the fire was lit. While the coals heated up, I mixed up a Jamaican jerk rub and spiced up the bird. With the coals glowing in the fire box, I put the chicken in the main chamber with a drip pan. We got a ton of smoke with the woodchips and I started to get really excited, but when the temperature got all the way up to 150 and stopped there, I started to get worried. 150 is as low as the grill thermo goes, i.e. there was no heat in the main cooking chamber. The chicken had been there for a while, bathing in smoke, albeit at a temperature you can get in your car trunk on a hot day. We’re not exactly cooking with gas here. So I dumped the chips directly onto the coals and went online. While the chips flared up, I noticed the temp spiked. I went to look at the directions to see if it was ok to burn wood in the fire box, and sure enough, that’s what I was supposed to do all along. Queue frantic forest search for dry kindling that wasn’t covered in fungus or filled with termites. I found some non-pine hardwoods and built a raging inferno. Almost immediately I was satisfied to hear the sounds of rendering chicken fat. After a sufficient time soaking up the fire, I decided to look at the bird. All most real infernos need is oxygen, and at this point I had an inch of superheated chicken fat bubbling and sizzling, waiting for a sweet gulp of oxygen. Open the lid and we had ignition! 2 foot flames roared out of the cooking chamber. I rescued the bird before permanent damage occurred, but lesson learned. The resultant chicken was, to put it mildly, awe-inspiring. Moist, smoky, tender, spicy, sweet - we ate half of a 6lb bird in 4 minutes flat. This was pure eating pleasure. I’ve been thinking about chicken all week. The chicken gave me a fever and the only cure was more protein seared over hardwood charcoal, which we took care of a few hours ago. The summer is going to be a hot smoky mess and I can’t wait.



The Newport blue Subaru outback now has not one but two identically colored vehicles parked within 30 feet of Bandmeltun. I guess people liked it so much, they decided to get some of their own. My consolation is that we got it first and nicer. I can’t help it if they like our style.
We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – very entertaining summer fare. Spielberg, Lucas and Ford may be a combined 191 years old, but they’ve been very successful at what they’ve done. There’s no reason why this would have been a bad movie. There were parts from the previous Indy incarnations, as well as some of the stuff Spielberg and Lucas have done in separate franchises. I read that Spielberg even dug up one of the lenses he shot Raiders of the Lost Ark with, so this would look similar. The worst part of the movie was all the kids there who didn’t know all the backstory and missed so many of the references that made us laugh. That’s a little movie snobbery, but hey I’m old enough to start playing that card.
Speaking of being old, I got some new jeans this weekend. My recent healthy-eating kick has my 36’s literally falling off my backside if I don’t have a belt. They’re actually kind of baggy and would look better if I had them on backwards and it were 1993 again. Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘em. We hit up a local Marshalls and I actually had a hard time finding anything that would look appropriate on a 30 year old professionally employed married man. I don’t have to rock the dad-jeans, but I can do without elaborate embroidery and skater-baggy legs. I may have to start shopping at an old guy store. Oh yeah, I started eating plain yogurt too. It tastes better with my grape-nuts. And there were some durn kids making noise outside my window too early in the morning on the weekend. These are all true statements. I may have to start watching O’Reily to see how my true peeps roll.
As part of the recent bebe-boom we are in the middle of, M had to get some gifts for a baby shower, which means we got to go to Babies R us. Oh my. This was another place I never saw myself going into. I may not go back for a while. I could go on for a while about the defcon-1 awkwardness I experienced, but I will spare you.


That's about it for now. I have a ton more to write. Maybe a mid-week post can be in store if we're all lucky. BRH