T-Minus One Week

The end is near.......a week from today we will officially be tethered yet again  to what is the greatest criminal organization of modern times......the US Private Banking Industry. It's almost silly how much control these companies have over our lives from day one. Some kids now days are born having their labor and delivery bills paid for on a credit card... Scary Right?  You know the story....but anyway, here we go again.

I quit posting photos of the house on the other tab here because I have been locked out for nearly 4 weeks and the same photo only at different angles takes up valuable bandwidth. We are now in the mad scramble to try to get all of things prioritized and in line for next week. I am going to try to take off as little time as possible from work and we will see how this plays out. Lots of things happening...lots of money flowing out and not in....but this is life right?

Long week of work and I am very glad Friday is here.

Here is the latest photos from the outside.....almost done.

Onward and upward. Wish me luck this week as I can already feel myself loosing even more hair. On the topic of hair...in the last few months I have identified a few grey ones as well....jokes on them anyway cause they eventually will fall out.

Who really looks at this?

It appears that I have hit 3,000 views to this poorly written and grammatically incorrect page!!!!!  For the 5 people I know that look at this...you must have a lot of time on your hands and really need to do something better with your spare time. From this point I am going to charge $100 per view....send cash cause I don't want Uncle Sam finding out. Wish I would have thought of this before....I be up 300 large.

The American Dream

Its all coming to head....we are closing in on two weeks from the day I never thought would come. We are set to close on Friday September 27th!!! While this is very much exciting its also extremely stressful for some reason. First off a early morning meeting to address warranty concerns then off to the title company. From there its back to the house to wait for the movers...meet them at the storage lot. Back to the house....wait on the bed delivery and new living room furniture to show up. Its going to be a long, long day. Its going to be so worth it...and not to mention all the stuff that is at my moms and brothers. I have not seen my Trusty Weber Grill since May 5th.....its a bit sad really. Hard to imagine a summer without it!

Here is a Photo for a tug at the heartstrings.

Yesterday I was able to sneak in the house and poke around...its seems that they still have lots to do. It must be a mad rush at the closing laps as technically the house should be finished on the 24th in time for the walk through. We are still missing a window and a bit of siding, soffets and gutters. On the inside, the cabinets have gone in and counter tops are soon to follow. Trim is done....doors are being hung today. All the vanity's are in the bathrooms. Appliances are in the garage along with all the plumbing fixtures and lights. I am just amazed how things come together at the very end.

Truck is still in the shop for an unknown knock in the engine....the rental car I have sucks and the camper is out of commission due to the hub issue. Life is great.

New Camper Name....Fireball.

Finally we were ready to head out for a short trip up north with the camper. Weather was shaping up to be decent with the possibility of a few storms but that didn't matter. Its been a while since we spent some time together. As luck would have it, it was over before it started. Just literally before we were to turn and get on I-70 some nice guy pulls up and tells me “hey, your wheel is on fire!” I was able to pull through the intersection and grab the fire extinguisher that was in the door and put out the fire with no damage to the camper itself. It seems that the Bearing had seized and the friction of a few miles was enough to ignite the grease in the hub. I was able to pull the camper back down the service road to Bill Thomas RV sales and Service and there it sits. The group that installed the axle that failed obviously did something wrong and it appears they did not put a cotter pin back in the castle nut. I am going to give them a chance to make things right before I name who it was. As in any business, problem calls are just as much as an opportunity as a new sale. We will see what happens. Could have been much much worse. Had we gotten on the Hwy the wheel would have surely come off causing at minimum a TON of damage to the camper Valves, Plumbing, side skirts and thats the minumum. A 100lb chunk of rubber and metal bouncing down the road at 65mph would have surly caused a crash or at minimum an insurance claim. Scary right? 

As if it could not get any better...since we were not camping this weekend, I took the opportunity to take the truck in for a strange noise that was happening more frequently and it really does not sound good. They still have the truck and I think it will require an extensive repair. Great. 

So far this this weekend has cost a Trailer hub, Bearings, Axle, Seals, Brake Shoes, Brake Magnet, Brake Drum Camping Fees, 1 Fire Extinguisher, Rental Car Fees, Food purchased for camping trip and a little pride. Oh Well. Thats how it goes I guess. Sucks.

Labor Day Brisket and Bourbon

It's been a while since I have posted anything about BBQ. Part of the reason is that I have not done much cooking as all of my go to stuff is packed away in a locker and its just been plain hard to get the time anymore to do it. When you are living out of Moving boxes its easy to think about things other than BBQ. I have found a few things that have tried that are now in the regular rotation on the grill and I will try to give a summary of these things in a future post.

Today I tried something that I have never done...a whole packer brisket that has the point and the flat portions un trimmed. In the past I have only used the "Flats" and they tend to dry out over a long cook. Brisket by nature is a really shitty cut of meat. Its a tough muscle that has a lot of connective tissue contained inside. This cut lends itself very well to a low and slow approach with the long cook times necessary to break down and covert the fats out of the meat and render out.

The plan was to wake up early and fire up the Smoker....little did I know Sam came down wide awake at 3:15 am and Max woke up at 5am. I ended up falling back asleep and finally woke up around 8:30. At 1.5 hours per pound of brisket in the conventional way...no way it would be done in time for dinner.

If you have ever read anything cooking brisket every once and awile you run across a topic of high heat. This goes against evey rule in BBQ. You know what? Worked pretty darn good. I don't think it had as strong of a flavor if it had gone the traditional route of 15-20 hours in the smoker at 225F...but it was not dried out and for the most part very tender. Part of the process is wrapping it in a foil pan for 3 hours or so at 300 or better. I put the whole trimmed brisket on at about 9am at 230F until it hit 150 internal...then jumped the temp to 315F until the meat hit 170F. Then in the pan and foiled for about three hours until the avg. temp was between 195 and 200F at around 5:30am. Really you are looking for a tender product that either a temp probe or fork has little resistance in. I made up a brine of sorts....beef bullion cubes in about 2 cups of water and some Worstishire sauce. I let it rest in the fridge for a day prior. Rubbed the Meat with almost a entire bottle of HEB brisket rib only found in TEXAS.

I normally don't care for Beef as BBQ...but this was great. Having a little confidence in cooking a brisket at higher temps and shorter times will allow you to do bit more experimenting with spices and techniques because you don't wrap two full days into cooking it and when it comes out like a space rock....no big deal. 

Its worth mentioning that the BBQ Guru Temp controller did a great job of holding the selected temp at the higher elevations than I thought. The Duty cycle of the fan was at about 80% at anything over 300F.  

Lastly....Picked up a bottle of Costco brand Bourbon. I am pretty sure I have had this before at some point and for some reason but wanted to try it again. If you know anything about Bourbon you can tell by the info on the label what distillary it came from. It's a Jim Beam product and they produce a wide variety from the White classic Jim to Booker's and Knob Creek. This Costco Bourbon is somewhere just below a Knob in my best guess. Found this to be one of the few that I like on the rocks with a splash of water just like Knober. You can pick up a bottle for less than $20.00