When the heat finally got here, it came with a vengeance.  We still haven’t flipped on the a/c though;  We’ll see how long that lasts.  Something tells me it will be running when I get home this evening, which from the look of the forecast will be just fine.

That was a long weekend, and I’m a bit worse for the wear because of it.  I had the day off Friday, so Martin and I headed up to St. Joe around noon to participate in the Apple Blossom BBQ contest.  That event just might be my favorite competition of the season, at least when the weather cooperates, which it did this year.  This year brought a slight twist for the Triple Fat Back team;  We had so many guys interested in cooking that we fielded two completely separate teams.  We figured since we can’t seem to do worth a darn in the actual contest, we might as well hold our own little mini-competition.  It worked out great, I enjoyed it thoroughly.  The fun began when the event organizer was checking us in, and our “second team” found out that Martin had registered them under, shall we say, a less-than-flattering team name.  (Even less flattering than “Triple Fat Back.”)  Team Number Two, as we shall refer to them here on the family oriented website, was less than amused with their given moniker, which of course delighted us to no end.  On the downside, it apparently enraged them so much that they got down to business and beat us in the competition.  Beat us rather handily actually;  With the exception of pork they bested us in every category, plus overall.  Martin and I did best for the Triple Fat Back team with an almost-respectable 18th out of 49, but Team Number Two came in eighth, for what would be the only ribbon of the weekend between the two teams.  It was a good time all the same, and we can just chalk up the results to beginners luck.

I got home from that debacle Saturday night to find an empty house, as Donette was out with a bunch of girls for the evening.  I was in an exhausted haze, but I did manage to scrape the two days worth of smoke, dirt, and grease off me before hitting the bed sometime around eight.  I guess I’m getting too old for the all-nighters, I was shot.  I would have gladly slept all day Sunday too, but unfortunately the chores were beckoning.  I got the way-too-tall grass mowed, which actually took a pretty significant amount of time, and hopefully finally fixed the gutters on the garage which have been sadly sagging for the better part of the last decade.  Meanwhile, I started up the smoker and threw on a 12 lb. turkey too.  Yeah, just can’t get enough BBQ.  After two days straight of it, the smell of the smoke almost made me convulse, but the turkey was thawed and needed cooked so it had to be done.  In the midst of all that, we took a little break and headed up to 75th Street for a small Mother’s Day lunch.  A quick check of my family tree shows Donette is actually not my Mother at all, but she had been none-too-subtly hinting all day that she expected some type of recognition so a tasty lunch served the purpose.