Well, another season gone by for the Triple Fat Back BBQ team.  I’m too tired and beat up to objectively re-tell the events of the weekend…  Rignt now I still feel like it’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life.  It really was a fantastic time though;  I know this because everybody else told me so, and they seem like reliable enough people.

The events of the weekend started Thursday, which I would say might be my favorite night of the weekend.  We get down there and set a few things up, and then just sit around and enjoy the day.  Fix a little dinner, listen to some music;  Pretty much just hang out.  If not for the $(@*#%^ trains rumbling by, blowing their stupid horns every 30 friggin’ minutes, it would be downright relaxing.  We actually went to bed at a rather reasonable hour, but it’s hard to get a quality night of rest when it sounds like a freight train is about to run into the camper.

Friday, of course, is the big fiesta.  I thought we put on a pretty good event this year;  I might have even had fun for a bit.  Man is it a lot of what can only be called “work” though.  All told, I’m sure we cooked up over 300 lbs of meat this year, which then of course needs chopped/sliced/sauced or whatever the case may be.  I’ll admit it’s a good time though, once it gets rolling.  We had the same band as the last few years, The Unusual Suspects.  They put on a solid show, plus I like that they mix in some good blues;  Fits the atmosphere better than most of the bands down there.  This year’s TFB production also featured the inaugural show of “Guitars For Christmas,” a new local band that treated us to a short three-song set, just to get their name out there on the music scene.  Actually, if you didn’t have the pleasure (??) of enjoying their show, Guitars For Christmas is made up of Martin, Scotten, Belanger & Zim, each of whom got new instruments for Christmas last year.  Isn’t that cute.  While I could probably come up with a string of adjectives as long as this page to describe their performance, I think I’ll just go with “entertaining.”

Saturday the Royal was still dragging on, but I didn’t put in much face-time.  I was pretty beat down from the whole Friday debacle I think.  Not that there was much going on anyway;  It’s sort of a dead day that they mixed into the event to get more money out of us.  We had friends in from Nebraska that drove in for the party Friday night too, so wanted to see them as much as we could while they were in town.  Later in the day Martin got a TV set up at the spot and everybody came down to watch the MU game.  Not the best game ever, but at least we were on the MU side of things;  I think our Nebraska friends got less entertainment out of it than we did.  After the game was over, we fired up the smoker and got to work.  This is without a doubt my least favorite portion of the event.  Every single time we do one of these, I find myself shivering in a lawn chair at four o’clock in the morning, swearing I will never do another BBQ.  Hmmmm, what does this mean?  I’m a slow learner?  I don’t hate it as much as I’m absolutely positive I do?  I’m not really sure.  It was as brutally miserable as ever, that much I can say, made only worse by the fact that I forgot to bring warmer clothes.

We got all our stuff turned in and got the heck out of there around 2:30 Sunday afternoon.  I actually thought I was feeling rather rested compared to a few of these things I’ve done, but I didn’t even get all the way home before I was fast asleep.  (Donette was driving luckily.)  The rest of the day was spent on the couch, watching television and drifting in and out of consciousness.  They finally got the results of the competition up this morning, and I’m happy to say Team TFB did “respectable,” which is about all we really strive for.  I was particularly pleased that my brisket got back to middle-of-the-road scores, as opposed to the drubbing I’ve taken at the last two competitions we’ve done this year.  Of course you could also say that, after trying several different things, I’m right back where I left off from last season.  Oh well!

Now before all the hate mail starts about getting the pictures up, I’ll admit there was a little technical glitch with the photos this year.  I didn’t take any.  Seriously, I think I took like 3 or 4, and those were nothing of interest.  My camera was in my supply box and I just didn’t get it out for some reason.  So, if anybody happened to be there over the weekend and has a few pictures for me, send them my way.

Triple Fat Back BBQ will be in booth 476 again this year, hope everybody can make it.  (This is really just a test post for my own entertainment/project.)

Another short week in the making, nice.  Thursday begins the long weekend at the American Royal BBQ, so I took off Thursday and Friday.  Let the marathon begin…  Now if I can just get through Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Today has already kicked off with a little car trouble…  I guess I left something on in the “truck,” so we woke up to a dead battery this morning.  It will be interesting to see how long it sits in the garage before we take the trouble to get it jumped;  I’m conservatively guessing two weeks, unless we need it to haul stuff around this coming weekend.

The BBQ activities have already started, actually.  Friday I crossed the river and went up to Martin’s house to start prep work for the party.  We trimmed up a little meat so we’d be ready to cook the next day;  Nearly 160 pounds of brisket and pork butt.  Whew, that’s a lot of flesh.  Gets a little bigger every year;  That doesn’t even count all the ribs, chicken & sausage that we still have to get done.  We got it all carved up and seasoned, then I retreated back to the safety of the southlands, stopping by the 810 Zone on the way for some socialization.  I went to a guy’s 24th birthday party, just to make myself feel younger.  And I supposed it worked, at least until I went home at 8:30 because I was getting tired.

Saturday I once again crossed the river;  Twice in one weekend!  Geez that’s more miles than we put on the car in the entire last month.  Martin had the smoker fired up and we cooked up all the meat that we had prepped the night before.  That pretty much killed the entire day, but it was fun.  He put the TV out on the back deck, so we watched college games, and cooked, and…  That was it.  After everything got cooked, we broke out the trusty food saver and got everything vacuum sealed too;  I’d say we are in pretty good shape for a party this Friday.

Sunday, well, I guess I wasted the entire day again.  As I’ve done the last several Sundays, I sat on the couch watching football games that I wasn’t even remotely interested in.  Occasionally I would glance out the window and think “Sure looks nice out there, I should probably do something.”  But I never did, just sat there and clicked through channels.  At least next Sunday is already spoken for with the BBQ, so it won’t be a totally wasted day.  (Depending on your definition of a wasted day, naturally.)  The highlight of the day was lunch I’d say;  Donette whipped up a five-way for us, with a few chili dogs for appetizers.  That made for a “unique” little diversion in the day, I suppose.

My long weekend is over, time to get back to work.  Bummer.  It was a good weekend though, I’m moderately rested up.  I did come to the critical decision that I’m quitting the sport of BBQ though, so if you have any new hobbies for me, feel free to offer up some ideas.  Needless to say the BBQ competition didn’t go so well.  They took my whole enthusiasm for the contests this time, I don’t think I will do another one.  I turned in my best brisket, a veritable masterpiece of beef in my opinion, and they chewed it up and spit it out.  Quite literally, from the scores they gave me.  @#()$%!!!!  I’m not going to let it bother me though.  I’m over it already actually.  @#%*^.  Zim did get a ribbon in turkey though, saving the team from total disgrace.  Our other entries just didn’t do well for some reason.  We did manage to eke out a slim victory over our arch-rivals, the Red Glove BBQ Team, but we’re not in much of a position to gloat over it.  I guess you could say we did just a little less terrible than them.

Since that effectively wasted my entire weekend, I have nothing else to relate.  However, I do have another fascinating tidbit of info.  This guy at work, who has several “unique” hobbies (even better than BBQ’ing) recently built a homemade chicken plucker.  “However would you do that,” you ask?   Well, you simply buy the best-selling book on the Internet, “Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker.”  I am thankful I was busy the weekend the chicken-slaughter went down, because he was looking for volunteers.  He did have the courtesy to video the event though, which was nice of him I thought.  Check it out:

Probably one of the top 10 amazing things I’ve ever seen.

Whew, it was a crisp ride in on the ol’ scooter this morning.  Dang near froze my ears off.  Hey, nobody said it was easy being green I guess.  And, it should pay off this afternoon when it’s 68 degrees and sunny;  Perfect scooter weather.  Let’s just hope it holds out all week, because I took the day off Thursday to go to the Royals game, and Friday I’ll be up in Kearney for the BBQ contest.

I think I’ll give that weekend around a C+,  and that only due to my generally positive disposition.  We started things off strong on Friday at the trusty Brooksider.  It was a nice evening to sit out on the deck and hang out, and we maximized the opportunity.  After that we went over to Carmens for a late dinner, which was delicious as always.  We haven’t been there in a long time, which I think made the food even better.  I don’t know why we waited so long between visits, but I imagine it has something to do with my rather frugal dining habits.  I estimated the tab roughly equaled three weeks of chicken-finger dinners across the street at the Brooksider, or two weeks of relleno dinners at Jalapenos, or 1.5 years of Cheezit lunches out of the machine at work.  Maybe I should have just enjoyed my linguine and not worried about it though.

Saturday the majority of the day was spent down at Operation Breakthrough, where some brainiac on the BBQ team had volunteered our services for the afternoon.  I just don’t think I’m cut out for do-gooding, I dunno.  I can’t even do any good around my own house, much less go help out some place else.  I’ve got two foot high saplings growing out my gutters, my windows that were installed three years ago still haven’t been painted, and the basement leaks like a sieve.  Yeah, I think I’ll go spend a day working on somebody elses place.  Sigh.  Anyway, our designated task was to move a small library from one end of the building to the other.  As with any other task, it proved to be a lot harder than it initially appeared, exacerbated by the fact that the air conditioning was broken.  The original estimate of three hours ended up turning into six, but for the most part we got the job some in some fashion.  There was a bit of confusion on the actual book moving part…  Apparently they were in some kind of order before we got ahold of them.  “Alphabatized,” I think was the term they used?  Whoops.  Oh well, there were only 10,000 books, how long could that take to straighten back out?

Sunday, for the most part, was spent watching football on the TV.  That proved to make for a pretty darn boring day though…  I might just be done wasting my Sundays in that fashion.  My fantasy team has already been decimated by injuries, the Chiefs are pathetic…  What’s to watch.  Maybe I’ll turn off the TV and paint the windows next week.  Or, maybe I’ll just be bored again and then complain about it;  Much more likely scenario.  Between the afternoon and evening games we did walk Gabe down to Foo’s for a frozen custard break, but that was about the sole accomplishment for the day.