Yes, it’s back again. After growing tired of the weekly updates being…well… weekly, I took a break from writing them and just wrote about gaming and movies instead. A lot, as it turns out. So much so, that now I’ve grown tired of that.
Enjoy not one, but two weeks worth of… stuff.Those of you who follow me on Twitter have probably already seen the updates — but for those of you who don’t and haven’t — about my barbecuing adventures. After having used disposable barbecues — out of convenience — for the beginning of the Summer I finally — thanks to some convincing — got myself an actual barbecue.
Introducing, the “Deluxe Kettle Charcoal BBQ”, courtesy of Argos who apparently doesn’t sell it any more for reasons unknown…
“Ooh. ‘Reasons unknown.’”
“Now that's the sort of hook that grabs the attention of me, the viewer.”
So, I carried it home — it was only like .8 km anyway — and assembled it. It looks pretty glorious, don’t you think?
 |
| “Kissed by smoke, hugged by sauce, licked by fire” |
But, I either suck at barbecuing — which feels unlikely — or I managed to buy a bad bag of briquettes because I keep having trouble getting the freaking thing burning like it should. Although, maybe it is me? Maybe because I’m used to barbecuing with pine and birch wood, I just don’t know how to deal with charcoal briquettes.
I have still managed to barbecue skewers of different kinds of meat — despite my ineptitude — as well as caramelise onion rings, which are so awesome that I had to make them again yesterday. And I’m going to make them again today.
 |
| “Hey, my name is Bruce and I’m unrelated to this post.” |
After a week of delicious — albeit more frustrating than it would have needed to be — barbecuing the weekend was finally upon us. It was my sons 5th birthday and in honour of that I took the afternoon off from work and joined my wife as she went to pick up our son from school. He seemed pleasantly surprised to be greeted by both of us.
Other than the presents awaiting him as we returned home, we spent the remainder of Friday just hanging out and eating home-made pizza.
The following day is mostly a hazy blur of — trying to — barbecue pirate-themed food, hunting for chocolate coins and eye-patch wearing children running around with water pistols.
Yes, Lucien had his birthday party and in the spirit of “my wife is awesome” she had been preparing all week by making pirate-themed accessories, like these pirateastic signs. Much to my delight — and suggestion — she also wrote “Arrrg you rrready to parrrty?” on his invitations. She even wrote about in her blog, which you can read in her post titled “Shipwrecked but still partying!”.
 |
| “Bewarrg of merrrrmaids, landlubberrrr!” |
In the spirit of the birthday party, I also took Lucien out for a real treasure hunting last Monday by taking him out on our first ever geocaching attempt. Sadly, we couldn’t find the cache this time but I’m sure we’re going to try it again.
This week also saw its fair share of unhappy events as I was also informed about fraudulent transactions that had been made on my debit card. Not a lot, in fact most of the transactions had been blocked by the security measures of my bank. “Thanks for that.”. But I still — obviously — had to cancel my current card, open some sort of investigation to get my money back and order a new card. I ordered it last Thursday and they said it would take 2-4 days for it to arrive which made me very nervous since we’re flying to Finland for a vacation next week. Thankfully the card arrived yesterday, which was so quick that even the bank teller was surprised.
And I think that’s about it for two weeks of stuff condensed into a single post.
…
Tomorrow marks the official start of my three week vacation. Which is why I’ll shave one last time today and after that I don’t have to shave for the next foreseeable three weeks. “Don’t have to” meaning I still can if I so choose to but probably won’t. Unless the missus complains.
Sadly, my “Beard of Social Defiance” with its -6 to Attractiveness isn’t even as defiant as I would like it to be, seeing as I have a job where it’s perfectly acceptable to sport facial hair.
But to make our vacation more interesting I thought I would complete random challenges — more about that later — such as “Around The Beard In 80 Days”, by growing a vacation beard.
