Posted on

Is this Mordor?

Virulent yellow dust clouds smear the air, blown by too-warm winds, big as houses. Big as stadiums. The foul yellow stains everything, drifts through the skeletal remains of winter-naked trees under overcast skies. It’s already warm enough outside not to need the heating units inside despite the bleak view through double storm panes.

Spring time in North Carolina.

Posted on

Recipe for Chicken

Ruined Chicken Dinner

What you’ll need:
Expensive chicken
Expensive swanky BBQ sauce
Expensive swanky spice rub
Expensive natural charcoal
Cheap-ass Webber kettle grill

What you should do:

  1. Start by doing something smart like baking the huge chicken breast in the oven for 30 minutest first
  2. Use too many coals, pour them into the grill while they’re still too hot
  3. Put the pre-cooked breast and raw wings on the grill after rubbing with spices and basting with sauce
  4. Observe fire and smoke that leap from the lava-hot coals, try in vain to move the chicken around as fast as possible while choking on the smoke
  5. Fail to find cool spots to cook chicken without burning it.  Lava is everywhere
  6. Watch your dinner burn as long as you can stand it, then pull it off the grill as if you’re actually going to eat it

What you get:
Chicken burned to a black crisp on the outside and not really done on the inside.

On the up side the broccoli salad turned out great and you can’t burn booze. Well, I mean, you can but you have to work at it.

Posted on

Fun with electricity – an embarrassingly true story

So, this morning, after some poor life choices involving a very heavy roll of wire fencing, I decided to put up a hot wire to keep the dog in the back yard (and thus prevent her from eating the chickens). Several stores later, I had a roll of wire, some insulater clippy things, and an ADU (Automatic Devil Unit) that would electrify about 10 miles of hot wire. I brought it back to the house and, in pouring rain, started installing the clips. I strung the wire, ran some Romex from the ADU to the fence – which I cut too long – ran some more from the ADU to the grounding rod – which I cut too short – and wired it all together. Then I took it apart and wired it up the right way and plugged it in. The light blinked as lights do, but there was no popping noise, I think I need to drive the ground in deeper, for which I’ll need a much heavier hammer than I have. Still, I thought, it’s probably ok. Continue reading “Fun with electricity – an embarrassingly true story”