Turns out that the guy who wants me to go to Chicago REALLY needs me there. So we haggled, and I’m going. My travel-free month of July now has travel in it.

The good news is that we haggled to the point that my trip to Chicago is a day-trip. I depart SLC at 8am, arrive at O’Hare at 12:45, present from 2:00 to 3:45, and then zip back to the airport in time to catch a 4:52pm flight home.

There will be no meeting with Chicago-area Schlockers this time around, I’m afraid. But I don’t have to spend the night, either. It’s just a really long work-day spent mostly on planes.

–Howard

When I commented about making pancakes on my new Weber grill I was KIDDING.

Then I got to thinking about it. Heck, I was planning to do more bacon on it anyway. So I went into the garage to find the Dutch oven (I’ve done pancakes in that before, over open flame no less) and sitting next to it was the griddle from my old Camp Chef grill.

10 minutes later I was cooking pancakes and bacon on the grill, outdoors. At 9:00pm.

Seriously, I was kidding about making pancakes out there, but those were some of the best freakin’ pancakes I’ve ever made.

–Howard

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!