You may or may not be familiar with the expression “When all you’ve got is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail.”

Well, this evening I cooked a strip of bacon on my new grill.

It drained onto the “flavor bar” (that’s what Weber calls folded strips of metal — elongated, upside-down ‘V’ bars) and produced a minimum of flare-up considering the amount of grease involved. It also smoked up the inside of the grill quite nicely. Oh, and when it came off, it was crispy and perfect.

The cost of the fuel I used was probably 20 times what it costs to cook the same strip of bacon over natural gas in a small fry-pan indoors, but who’s counting cost? I cooked bacon on a barbecue grill!

Oh, and the house did NOT smell like bacon when I finished, so I would have been able to eat it without the kids begging for some had I not pranced about the kitchen announcing that I’d cooked bacon on the barbecue grill. As it is, I had to commit to making pancakes and bacon for a night-time snack for everybody.

Pancakes are going to be tougher, seeing as there’s no griddle. Hmmm…

–Howard

It may sound like a small thing, but I had a great idea when I was sitting on the toilet.

(Note: Most of the best scripting moments for Schlock Mercenary are plumbing-related — the bath, the shower, or the can.)

Gimme more of that TMI!

Long story short: I got out my single-burner Camp Chef grill and found it unusable. Sandra and I had decided to put off buying a nice gas grill this year, since we thought the Camp Chef would hold us through the summer. We were wrong. Sandra decided to free up some money, and sent me out…

Now for the rest of the story:

I’ve been looking at grills for a while now. I popped down to Home Depot, found what I wanted, pre-assembled, and noticed that it was not going to fit in my beetle, or in the minivan. So I drove home, borrowed a large truck from a neighbor, and headed back to HD.

The “refuel me now” light was on. Well, okay. I decided to call it truck rental, and I put $25 worth of fuel in this beast. I noticed a girl smiling at me as I scrambled back up into it. She was not smiling in a “gee, you’re cute” way. She was smiling in a “you must be compensating for something if you’re driving a truck that big, shorty” kind of way.

Well, yeah. I’m compensating for the fact that this grill won’t fit in my minivan.

So… Home Depot. I got the grill, some nice grilling tools, a cover, a propane refill (the full tank I purchased at Sam’s Club got emptied in my garage, probably by Gleek who admits to “just cleaning it.” The good news is that my house did not blow up.) and four bungie cords to hold the thing in place. That’s $500 for the grill, $55 for the cover, and the rest of it plus tax came to $630.

I got it home, Sandra and I got it set up, and here it was, noon. The meat was marinating but not ready. I was hungry. I just dropped $655 on getting a grill onto my back deck (can’t forget the $25 I dropped on truck fuel), and I was going to grill something, by gum.

So… I made a hot dog. Actually, I made two. So I guess that’s two $327.50 hot dogs. Not quite so bad. And now that we’ve had dinner, I really ought to prorate the cost of the grill across 6 skewers of meat and four skewers of veggies.

Prorated evenly, Each skewer and each hot-dog cost $54.58.

This has been the most expensive barbecue I’ve ever had, and I’m not even counting the cost of the meat.

–Howard

Last night I put together an abstract for my GoH (Guest of Honor) session at Linucon this October. The GoH session is the “all about me” session where I get 50 minutes to talk about whatever I want to.

I’m attending the ‘Con as both a Sci-Fi Guy (Schlock Mercenary) and a Linux Guy (GroupWise), and on either topic I can ramble for hours. And then it occurred to me… THAT, in and of itself, is kind of interesting.

I Am NOT A Renaissance Man. I Don't Know How To Fence.
By day he manages a 100-million dollar software business. By night he creates the finest science fiction ever to grace the world of webcomics. By-and-by he teaches Sunday School, raises four children, and invents foodstuffs. Meet the man who gave the world GroupWise on Linux, Schlock Mercenary, and the Chupaqueso, and learn the dark secret of his so-called success.

I crack me up.