Scattered Thoughts . . .

W e had some friends and Sheila's dad over yesterday to christen our new grill.  The weather was great and it was nice to catch up with some old friends that we haven't seen since before the pandemic. I started the day by preparing some shish-ka-bob skewers.  Cutting up five filet mignons, red onion, an assortment of peppers and fresh mushrooms was time consuming and a bit painful with my broken cut-off thumb.  Skewering everything took a bit longer and was bit more painful than anticipated too.  I left the potatoes and cherry tomatoes whole on their own skewers.   Usually, people assemble the skewers with all ingredients on each skewer so that each person can simply eat a whole skewer of grilled shish-ka-bob.  I don't like doing that though.  Each of these ingredients requires a different amount of time on the grill so I prefer to separate them by the amount of time required on the grill.  The meat and potatoes require the most time... ...

W e had a really nice birthday barbeque celebration in the backyard this past weekend.  Although it was a bit smoky from the Canadian wildfires, the weather was actually quite nice for a change! The company was good.  The food was good.  The drinks were cold.  There were plenty of games to play.  The rain stopped just long enough for us to set up the yard on Friday, have a great time together on Saturday and then clean up before it started raining again.   Looking at these photos, it seems to me that everyone had a good time! As always, the kids congregated on the sailboat most of the day.  At one point, four of the grandchildren were on the sailboat at the same time (photo above).  I have no idea how they all fit in that rather small cockpit!  In hindsight, when I saw that the four of them were on the sailboat together, I should have had Liza place 10 day old Sophia into Lukey or Kenzie's arms too so I could get a photo of all the gran...

W e always have our first barbeque of the season on the weekend that falls around July 1st which happens to be my birthday.  This year, we had this barbeque on July 1st.  If anyone is wondering, I turned 61 years old this year.  Unfortunately, most days, I feel like I'm 81 and I have difficulty and a lot of pain trying to get around and I even look the part due to being hunched over and having difficulty standing.  Contrary to how I feel on these days, my birth certificate claims I am 61 years old this year.   We had a very dry spring to the point where everything in the yard was dying and turning brown but the past two weeks were filled with day after day of solid rain until the day before our scheduled barbeque.  The rain stopped just in time for me to mow the lawn, do some much needed landscaping and set up the backyard for our barbeque.  It was sunny, hot and humid with a bit of smoke from Canadian wildfires hanging in the air.  My h...