Our Rather Simple Yet Chaotic Life: Lisa's Birthday Weekend

Last weekend we celebrated Lisa's birthday....pretty much all weekend. On Friday, her actual birthday, stopped by the grocery and picked up some beef tenderloin filets, chicken breast filets to grill along with the shrimp we had defrosting. Bev and Ted came over for dinner and we opened gifts and had a concord grape birthday pie (made by Bev) for dessert. With our on going girth control efforts, we started buying smaller cuts of meat in hope of controlling our portion size a bit. We probably over indulged a bit on Friday as well as again on Sunday. I bought a laptop for Lisa this year ( I got a ridiculously great buy on it from Frys.com. The laptop isn't top of the line but it's more than capable of doing what Lisa wants to do with it; basically surf her craft blogs on the net.

Once dinner was done, I ended up in the basement assembling a shelving unit Lisa got from her mom and dad. We actually ended up purchasing another duplicate shelving unit on Saturday as well. Its amazing how much "stuff" we've accumulated over the years. Saturday was also a big beer brewing day. I brewed a red ale as well as a summertime wheat that has a bit of bitter orange peel, coriander and cumin seed. I also blew two of my 4 kegs over the weekend and I think the third is not far off so I needed to do some brewing quickly. I may end up brewing another batch of "Hell's Gate Porter" this weekend. Unfortunately, brewing two beers in one day is a big time eater so I didn't really get much else done other than assembling the second shelving unit.

Over the past week I also ended up installing light switches in the basement storage rooms. Up to this point I had left the old original pull cord lights in the non-living areas of the basement. Unfortunately, the storage areas aren't always organized well and you end up tripping over "stuff" as you searched for the pull cord for the light. Switched installed....problem solved!

Sunday, I woke up early to fire up the smoker again. This time the menu consisted of beef brisket, pork shoulder roast and chicken. The brisket turned out so much better this time than the first time I tried it. I guess the key is to cook it to a much higher temperature than the 165 degrees many suggest and to keep it moist. I got the temp up to about 180 before I pulled it off the heat and I think it would have been even better if I cooked it an hour or so longer. Even Lisa, who really likes the way the chicken turns out, liked the brisket the best of the three meats. I can't wait to smoke another brisket.

One real pain in the rear end has been my lawn tractor. I've have a problem starting the thing all season. I ended up doing some research online and thought I had the solution. It seem as though the valves on my mower engine come out of adjustment pretty easily. I ended up adjusting the valves and the engine started right up. After a couple of uses, I end up with the same issue. The last time I adjusted the valve, I think I mistakenly adjusted the exhaust valve to the gap the intake was supposed to be at and the intake to the exhaust gap. I also think I need to install a new seal on the valve cover because when I started the tractor on Sunday, the damn thing smoked like a locomotive and it wouldn't stop smoking. Not to mention the engine wanted to stall. Needless to say, it was a longer ordeal cutting the lawn with the walk behind on Sunday. Tonight, I'm going to take another stab at adjusting the valves and resealing the valve cover. I'm just too cheap to spend the $300-$400 to send the 6 year old tractor that I only spent $900 for in the first place to the repair shop.

Finally, I think I have mentioned that I have two of my very good friends that I've know forever (one I met in 7the grade and the other in high school) getting married this summer for the second time. The strange thing is that both are having larger weddings than I would think you would have the second time around. Jeff's wedding is in Columbus in August while John's is in Wisconsin in October. We received Jeff's invitation last week and in typical Jeff fashion it was in the form of a concert poster. I think Jeff and Paula just wanted to have a quick 10 minute ceremony and it's really just about throwing a party. John, on the other hand, is having his wedding at a resort in Wisconsin. Now the fact that his fiancee has never been married I can understand a bit more ceremonious affair. The biggest issue is that John has invited me, and he has only invited 4, to a "bachelor party" in Las Vegas. I'm looking for some gold bullion to fall from the sky, because the money tree in the back yard is dead and all the leaves are gone. I also found out that I have a work trip that I must make on the Saturday or Sunday of the weekend of said bachelor party. Of course, the business trip is the perfect excuse but nope. The reply I got was "can't you fly in on Thursday and fly to Orlando on Saturday or Sunday" and "maybe you can get work to pay for the Vegas to Orlando to Detroit leg of the trip" so you only have to foot the bill for the flight to Vegas. What the hell am I supposed to do........?

And a post would not be complete without a few parting pictures: