That weekend seemed a little brief. I don’t think I used my time very wisely, but that’s not too rare an occurrence. I’ll throw out a brief recap. Saturday I got up at the crack of 11:00 and took Teagan to her first obedience class at the Ward Parkway Petsmart. It went OK I guess. They use that “clicker training” method, which I’m a bit skeptical of, but I’ll give it a shot. Honestly the results can’t be any worse than what I’ve been trying by myself, so what the heck. After that, I headed back home and threw a slab of ribs on the grill. Ribs were on sale everywhere this weekend, so I’d decided to practice up. For round one, we bought a slab of “St. Louis” style spareribs from Super Target. I put that in quotes because they didn’t really cut them right, if you ask me. The “flap” was still on the back of them, and they hadn’t cut off the entire top part correctly either. Knuckleheads. I went ahead and threw them on the smoker as they were though. The job the butcher did on them turned out to be the least of my worries anyway, as I didn’t exactly do a spectacular job cooking them. Probably needed about another hour of cooking, and they were way too spicy.
Sunday I got up much earlier than Saturday, and Munkirs came over for a morning bike ride. Oh, you mean Sunday morning when it rained so hard? Yeah, that Sunday morning. Luckily we got a pretty clear heads-up on what was coming when the ear-splitting thunder started. We had time to get back to my house before the real downpour started. After the rain subsided, I fired up the smoker again and started on round 2 of the rib project. This time we made our purchase at the local Price Chopper. Donette brought home a full slab of spareribs and I cut them myself, and I liked the results a lot better. I used a much sweeter rub this time too, and a less spicy sauce as well. I got about an hour of cooking on them and it clouded up and started pouring again. I mean it was really pouring. I decided the ribs were a loss and we just headed up to 75th Street. We killed about an hour and a half up there, then headed back home to survey the damage. Remarkably, the smoker was still at a rock-solid 200 degrees and burning fine. Pleasantly surprised, I went back to the business of cooking the rest of the afternoon. This slab came out far better than the previous day’s effort, that is until I decided to finish them up on the gas grill. I had the bright idea to “crisp them up a bit.” By the time I came back outside about 5 minutes later, they were indeed crispy. Took several minutes to put out the fire, as a matter of fact. The only good news, if there was any, was that they were on the grill with the bones down, so only that side got blackened. They went from being probably one of my best sparerib efforts ever to “edible” in the last few minutes of cooking, RATS. We ate them though, and honestly I think they were still better than the slab on Saturday.
Monday we briefly considered cooking another slab of ribs, but for one thing we still had most of the others left over in the fridge, and for another thing I was still mad about the fire. Instead, I started work on digging a hole in the back yard to bury our fancy new “Doggie Dooley” we bought a few weeks ago. Yes, that is basically a small septic tank you see there. It turned into a bit more of a job than I anticipated. A 2′ x 2′ x 2′ hole turned out to be quite a bit bigger than I thought, especially when you’re digging in a corner where there is only one side to dig from. Luckily I waited until the sun was nice and high to get started too, so I’d be fully miserable. The whole time I was digging Teagan was laying on the ground beside me sleeping. I couldn’t help but think that, as many holes as she has dug in my back yard, it would be useful if she’d help with this one too. Not a lick of help though. After I finally got that dang thing sunk, we headed off to the pool to relax. It was crowded, but the weather was great and so was the water, so we hung out several hours. After that we briefly considered heading to 75th Street to watch the Royals, but neither of us really felt like it so we just finished out the weekend at home.
Final story of the weekend. So, as we’re enjoying the ballgame and some Sonic hotdogs, I think to myself, “Say, that dog has been gone a while.” Unusual for her, since she is always glued to our sides. Worried that the fireworks had scared her, I started looking around to see where she had gone. She was nowhere to be found, then finally I glanced out the window and saw her in the corner of the yard, about shoulder-deep in the ground, digging just as hard as she could around the new doggie dooley. Oh no. No no no no no. I’ll tell you what, for a lil’ thing she had moved a pretty impressive amount of dirt in a short time. Where was all that energy when I was digging the hole the first time? I got it filled back in for the most part, and blocked off her doggie door so she couldn’t just do it again, but it appears we have a problem. Ever tried to convince a terrier-breed dog to give up on one of their “projects” they’ve started? Especially a terrier breed that some brainiac decided to cross with the stubbornness of a bulldog? Fantastic. Maybe I can just click that little thing they gave me in class and she’ll quit. Uh huh.