Happy Friday! I can't believe we made it here again. Already. This week flew by. School is in session and I am staying busy. Today is both Day of Encouragement and Give a Hug and High Five day. Here's your e-high five. Smack. You're the best! You can do it! Only 1 more day before you're off! You matter! I hope you have a friend or family member who acts as your hype man. Everybody needs a cheerleader every now and then. Ok, enough of that. I'm excited to move my patio stuff out of my kitchen and back to the deck this weekend. We pushed the kitchen table out for the bathtub planter, traeger, and giant ceramic planters. Add in the extreme amount of legos, and our kitchen looks like crazy town. Anybody partying like it's 1999 this weekend @Misanthropic ? Smoking some delicious meats @Nettdata or @jdoogie ? Anyone going for a hike and reveling in nature @Binary ? Have a safe weekend and be good.
Not this weekend, it's actually my sister's wedding so I will be getting very drunk at that. HOWEVER, next weekend is our annual all day fall BBQ. And it's also the 20th anniversary at that, so there will definitely be plenty of smoked meats then that I will try and get plenty of pictures of.
Back from our memorial trip to southern Oregon. Crater Lake did not disappoint. What did disappoint was the amount of mosquitos, lack of cell reception and horribly inaccurate weather predictions. 80% chance of thunderstorms meant blue skies. Cloudy with a slight chance of sprinkles meant biblical deluges. Part of the plan was for us to carry his ashes down to the water at Crater Lake which is a pretty strenuous hike back up. About 700' elevation gain in 1.1 miles and when we got to the trailhead, it was raining pretty good and some of the group questioned if we should do the hike. I flatly said that I was going come hell or high water because I know he'd do the same for me. The Wifey quickly chimes in "Where GTE goes, I go". The rest of the group agrees to go and we started down the trail. About 10 mins in, the rain lets up to a light drizzle and the closer to the water we got, the more the sun came out. By the time we got to the water's edge, it was great weather. I pulled him out of my backpack, sat him on a rock, cracked a beer and we all told some stories and memories. It was a good day.
We got out yesterday for a 4-summit day. Rest day today, then tomorrow the wildfire smoke will decide whether we do something small or large. Smoked meats = good. Smoked summits = bad. @GTE awesome to hear that a memorial trip like that worked out. Pushing through the shitty weather was the right thing to do but it would have been less enjoyable to sit around talking in the rain. Sounds like it was meant to happen. Mountain weather is an absolute crapshoot. About the only thing I've found that works is sticking my hand out. If it's wet, it's raining.
I’m at a friend’s cottage relaxing with the dog. We’re all better than decent cooks so the meals have been insanely good. As have the drinks. Zoe’s just loving being free range and relaxing as well. So no smoking, just some grilling, from curried chicken to marinated lamb chops to fois gras burgers.
A birthday dinner for an in law is the only thing on my radar. This weekend will be much more sedate than last night was. We had a couple of new guys in the garage and I think we broke one of them. It’s happened before, but rarely. Someone comes for the first time, miscalculates, and winds up so fucked up that they never appear at the garage again, sometimes because their wives forbid it. One of the dudes last night was cruising along, when I looked over at him and saw all of the signs - a panicked look on his face, he lost the ability to communicate at all other than pointing, spent far too long in the bathroom etc. His wife was coming to pick him up, and if he didn’t yack in the car on the way home I’ll be shocked. We’re not going to be seeing that guy again.
A while back we took a coworker out to a late lunch for his birthday. We ended up being the only ones on an outside patio and after some beers someone had the bright idea to order shots. Then a second round of shots. I can see where this is going, so I and one other abstain from the second round. Two of my coworkers are semi-immune to the effects of alcohol and are Uber-ing home, so they drink with impunity. Birthday boy drinks both the shots we abstained from, and orders another beer, attempting to keep up. Everyone else slows way down after the shots. A joke is made about hairy chests. One coworker partially unbuttons his shirt to highlight the joke. Birthday boy stands up, grabs his own button-up shirt and tears it open, WWE-style. Buttons fly everywhere. A waitress has left a small bowl of candy as a birthday treat, and when it's gone birthday boy storms into the bar and demands more - we go in, wrestle him out, and sit him in front of his (fifth? twelfth?) beer. He slowly slides down in his chair over the next hour, only opening his eyes to laugh at a joke. Then his wife shows up to get him, and she's dressed to the nines - fancy dress, stockings, nicely done hair, heels - and we find out that they have an expensive and extremely hard-to-get dinner reservation with his parents and in-laws. We loaded him sideways into the back seat of the car with his shirt hanging open, he puked on the floor, and that was the last time we ever saw him outside of work.
I bought another boat. One of those end of season deals that are too good to pass up. I may try to flip it for about double what I paid in the sping, or I may keep it and sell another one. The guy I bought it from didn't know jack shit about boats and it definitely has some maintenance items to catch up on. Like, if the bilge pump quits today, I might have to put it on the beach and call for help, so much water is coming in the stuffing box that needs to be repacked. If we make it home, I'll get the stuff and do that tomorrow.
A friend of mine just bought a new boat too. Another friend is out with him on it now doing some fly fishing on the BC coast. It’s fucking amazing.
Not quite like he does, but kinda. I've got a festival gig here at home tomorrow and then another one on Sunday about 3 hours away. Once upon a time it'd be a weekend long party but not any more. Some of the band are doing a “Festival Eve” impromptu thing at the club having the festival but I opted out. First off because I didn’t know about it until last night but also because I’ve been up since 0330 and need some semblance of rest if I’m gonna be worth a damn on stage.
The Wifey and her friend convinced me to go see Darius Rucker last night. I don't have anything against him but only know 3-4 songs of his. It was a great show. Dude genuinely looks like he's having the time of his life and something about how he moves, I thought the women were going to slide off their seats. Also pretty cool that out of the six other band members, the newest bandmate has been with him for 14 years. Pretty good mix of his music, Hooties, and a few surprising covers. During the encore, he said they were going to do a 90's fuck-boy song. All the lights went red and they busted out No Diggity. I've never seen so many middle aged white women jump to their feet lol
Darius Rucker is pretty cool guy. He did similar stuff when we saw him in Nashville a few years ago. He does really fun crowd work.
Waiting to watch the Canello/Crawfird fight on Netflix but the fight on right now is a fucking war— every single punch is a power punch meant to kill, like Hearns and Haggler. Already made the card worth watching.