new heater for the pbr

My brother darrel and I went to E-town to pick up a new stove for the Square-tunda. That thing is a hoss- about 30 inches wide, 18deep, and pretty damn heavy. It took Darrel, cousin Luke and I to wrestle that thing out of the truck and up onto the porch.
I'm going to get some pictures of it to post.

The old stove looks kinda lonely out next to the curb, waiting for someone to scrap it out. I sure as hell hope that whoever picks it up doesn't try to have a large fire in the thing, or else they're going to meet the fire department.

As normal as it's ever going to get

After eating several bags of salad, pine bark and newspaper to get the fiber back into my diet after FnC, everything seems to be back to normal.

Next year, barring any natural desasters I'm need to remember to bring salad, celery, and maybe some medamucil.

In other news, I've been reading Lost Continent by Bryson, and it's pretty funny in the way that only bryson can do.

He's in Mississippi and feels this state trooper leering at him at a traffic light-

"...but I had to calm down because a state trooper pulled up alongside me at a traffic light and began looking me over with that sort of casual disdain you often get when you give a dangerously stupid person a gun and a squad car. He was sweaty and overweight and sat low in his seat. I assume he was descended from the apes like all the rest of us, but clearly in his case it had been a fairly gentle slope."

Pig nuts keep falling on my head

Cousin Luke and I went down to the U-boat on Saturday to see if we could each drink an eighteen pack and still make it up to the cabin after being in the boat all day. It turns out that we can. I caught the biggest and the smallest, while he caught the most, be he cheated. It seemed that every time I started to get a nibble, that he was moving the boat so he could get to a better hole. He's a mother fucker and I'm not going fishing with him again. At least not for two weeks when my schedule clears up.

The funny part was on Sunday when we brought the boat up the hill. I took the paddles and poles. Luke bent down to grab something, and WHACK! A big ole' hickory nut hit him squah in the back of his noodle with a sound reminiscent of Sister Francis's yardstick across my desk.(Now you know why I wake up violently) That thing must've fallen twenty feet. I started to laugh, and he looked up at me with this horrible scowl. While still laughing, I realized why he looked pissed.
Imagine that you just got walloped with something, and you look up to see me laughing and holding a boat paddle, and you know I'm an asshole.
Twernt me that hit him, but that's still funny.

Did I mention the black pot of steaming hatred?

After a beer and a good cry on the porch, it was time for the peppers to go in.
I used the pampered chef chopper to dice up the peppers, and then I put them into the smaller zip top snack bags, and then put the smaller bags into a larger one for storage in the freezer. That way I had dolable amounts frozen.

I ripped one bag open and tossed it in the pot, then stirred it around to start to thaw it. The big clump started breaking down into smaller ones, and so I tasted it.
After deciding that it wasn't as hot as I wanted it, I put in some more chili powder, and tasted it again.
Not hot enough- needs another bag of peppers.
Stir, stir, stir, taste- not bad, but not warm enough for me- 3rd round of chili powder and let it simmer for a bit.

Now, I don't know if they know the exact degree over Kelvin at which the oils from frozen peppers melts, but it's reached somewhere between time it takes between"not as hot as I wanted it" and "3rd round of chili pepper," because when I opened the lid and put my face down there to smell, I noticed that every pore on my face started to open up. My dumb ass then thought that tasting it again would be a good idea.
As soon as the stuff hit my lips I started tearing up again. The only way I could cry this much would be to watch a tape of Neil O'Donnel throwing the interception against Dallas while in a funeral mass. I took two spoonfuls and then a big glass of water. I took another taste, and holy mother of crap- IT WAS HOTTER!
Some got stuck in the back of my throat and I felt my uvula being cooked, so I started gargling beer, which is fine until some of it went in my nose. Sneeze fest #3 coming right up.
I then through in a pinch of ground clove , a 1/4 teaspoon of rosemary, and the spaghetti and let it simmer. About 15 minutes later I tasted it again, and somehow it seemed hotter still. I said to hell with it and took the stuff off the stove and then put some into containers for people at work. Suckers.

The next morning I got a glass of water, and used the glass that I had the night before, and burned my lips again. No fair! I'm just getting aspirin and a vitamin, no need to burn my lips! Sweet bucket of shit that stuff was hot.

Upon egress, it felt like someone had barbed wire through my pucker ring.

black pot of steaming hatred

After a few minutes of rinsing and cussing, beer was in order. This I can do with my eyes closed and blacked out, so there was little chance of The Kaiser being injured in the making of this drunk.

Next came the peppers that I had frozen just a few days prior.

Oh oh. I gotta poop. Talk at you later!

That's what burning teeth smell like

Remember the peppers I mentioned yesterday? You'll enjoy this.

Last night as I left work, I was wondering what I should eat for dinner, when my brain chimed in and said,"It's going to get colder, so how about chili?"
"Sweet," I told my brain. "good job."

I went to the market and learned two things:
1) filling the hand basket with canned tomato sauce, diced maters, tomato paste and a family pack of burger gets heavy after four aisles or so, and
2) don't go to the store on the day that the circular comes out with the sales listed.

After setting down the goods on the table and retrieving the pot from the cabinet, I began to assemble what I thought was going to be the first masterpiece of the culinary season. I thought wrong, and very wrong, but that's for later.

Never being one for following a recipe to make chili, seeing as I've been making the stuff for over a decade, I still generally follow certain steps so that I can taste it as it goes along, guaranteeing the quality. Tomato sauce; check. Brooks chili hot beans; check. Minced garlic; check.
I have never really plopped anything into the pot as it starts to simmer, as you never know how hot the freed blops of splashed chili may be when they land on your arm, or more to the point in this case, the inside of my right nostril. The garlic and chili pepper laced hot tomato sauce immediately began to auger in to my old factory. I started to cry like I had been punched in the nose while watching Roy Hobbes hit the lights-out home run at the end of The natural. It is an unnatural act to snort water, but I was willing to try anything to get that homemade napalm out of my nose.
Getting that under control, I started cutting up the onions and putting them in the pot. I don't cut them on a board. I instead hold the onions (one at a time) in my left hand and dice bit by bit down to the end. When I can no longer hold the onion, it's done and on to the next one. Well, I stripped the scrappy stuff from the outside of the first one and walked over to the pot and made the first cuts this way, then the second cuts this way, then owwwwwwwww. HOW IN THE FLYING-ASS-MOTHER-FUCK CAN THIS HAPPEN? I'M WEARING GLASSES! The onion had squirted me in the left eye and began to BUURRRRRRRRRRRRN. I started cussing like I was trying out for the part of Ralphie's dad in The Christmas Story. I was so pissed off that I grabbed the pot to throw the fucking thing out in the yard. However, the pot was spared when I missed the handles and managed to grab both sides of a scalding hot pot and burn my hands. Immediately dropping the pot, and still with one eyeful of onion juice turning it into sulfuric acid, and the other eye again full of tears, and now my nose running, I ran to the sink to cool my hands while I flooded my eyes this time with water.
Do you know how hard it is to see when you're pissed off, and teared up? Hard enough to not notice two things:
1)the tap, with the water purifier on it, is closer than i thought, and
2)I was still wearing my glasses
So, now I have an acidic eyeball, burnt hands, and a cut on the bridge of my nose where I smashed my face into the tap. Yay.
I ran upstairs to the shower, turned on the water and stood in front of the head. After drenching myself long enough to see again, I toweled off and went back to my masterpiece, this black pot of steaming hatred.

this isn't the end of the story, but I want to get home, to put on new bandages. Pt 2 tomorrow.

Can't skimp on the meat

This past Saturday I chopped up several snack bagfuls of jalapeno and Cayenne peppers from the garden. We are going to have a pot of chili at fish and chips that is going to straight up cleanse a few colons.

Since my tomatoes are dying, I don't think that I'll have fresh ones for the chili, but I'll have some for burgers and sandwiches if you like.

Speaking of which, how about we start talking about the menu. If the good doctor would please send me a link to the FnC site that I lost when the old computer died, that would be great.

In other news, God-willing and the creek don't rise, Cousin Luke and I are going to go to Boston this weekend and go fishing. Any takers?

Time off for good behavior

I'm back from three full days off from work, and I think I'm more tired now than before. Trying to catch up on all the house work I missed over a month probably wasn't a good idea.

Cutting th grass will have to wait.

Drinking my weight in beer probably wasn't a smart thing either.

Here's a picture of the Church in 1901 on Derby Day.

For all of those wanting a refressher course, it was about a mile outside of city limits at the time.

this Picture is even old. The new sides dwarf the old spires.