How I spent Memorial Day and the following week

I'm known as "The BBQ Guy" in my area at work (KnitTech also has a "BBQ Guy" in her area). I told the gang that I would be willing to smoke a brisket for anyone as long as I could cut it open and save a few pieces. This way I could practice for competitions One of my Co-workers took me up on the offer this weekend and since I had some open space on the grill I had KnitTech pick up 3 packages of "corned beef". We ground up a TON of black pepper and coated all 3 of them and I smoked them up. A bit of research and I learned that the difference between "Pastrami" and "Corned Beef" is that pastrami is smoked while corned beef is boiled. Yeppers, homemade Pastrami It turned out wondrous. I sliced one of the 3 into thin slices with the meat slicer that Mom gave us for Christmas 2 years ago, while the other 2 were chopped into chunks. KnitTech converted the chunks into hash for breakfast and then made breakfast burritos for a week of work breakfasts.



Monday we celebrated BabyBirds 3rd birthday. I tried to get "cute" pictures but she just wouldn't hold still. So you'll have to settle for these.



The little made out pretty good. She got gifts from Great-Grandparents, Grandparents, and her Aunt & Uncle. At least that was the stuff she got that day. Big hits were the "gardening stuff" from Aunt Perky & Uncle Kommandant, along with the really cool refrigerator magnet talking letters from my Mom. We must have heard the ABC song 100 times. I'm sure her parents are really enjoying it also.

Monday Aggie also got his toes clipped. Kommandant helped with this process and it actually went pretty good.

The downside. He doesn't make the little "clicking" sound when he sneaks up on you as you walk across the room.

And now the not so fun part. Wednesday when coming home from work I thought I was coming down with something. I had a faculty meeting that night so I didn't want to go to the Dr (not o mention it wasn't that bad). Thursday I got to work and started to feel a pain in my back. This slowly grew to the point where I couldn't sit or even talk coherently on the phone. Needless to say I left work early and headed to the ER. While there the Nurse asked "on a scale of 1 - 10, how much does it hurt?" I answered with a 6, and KnitTech piped in with "for the rest of the world that would be an 8". The nurse chuckled and said "well at least he didn't say 10 like most people. I think that Allie at HyperBole and Half has a much better representation of the pain scale. An IV and some pain med later and it was confirmed that I had another kidney stone. I'm not sure why my body likes to make stones. Guess I'll be drinking a lot more water with Citrus juice in it. I spent Thursday night stoned out of my mind on pain meds and under KnitTechs demand recommendation stayed home on Friday. Stone has passed and I'm feeling much better now.