Memorial Weekend Sojourn

We have just returned from a long Memorial Weekend where we drove a 20 foot U-Haul truck loaded with furniture down to my sister in Sacramento.

It wasn't the way we wanted to spend our holiday weekend but it needed to get done. We've been paying to store all this stuff since Mom died last June.

So I rented a truck, got it loaded and drove it down last Saturday. We made it as far as Klamath Falls, OR and then stopped for the night. That was about eight hours of driving through some pretty intense rain at times.

The next day, Sunday, we drove the remaining five hours to Pilot Hill, a small town in the mountains outside of Sacramento where Stacey and Craig live.

We arrived about 2:30 and slowly unloaded the truck. We then drove it to a nearby hardware store that was a U-Haul dealer and dropped it off.

We had Monday to lay about and do not much of anything and then flew out on Tuesday. The whole thing went smoothly but we are glad to be home.    

Two Big Projects

The forecast for today calls for no rain, which turns out to be very beneficial for my plans for the day. I have two big projects and I will be performing each one at the same time.

Project one is to finish this flower bed. I believe I have all the ancillary equipment and material to get it done today.

My second project is to slow cook some meat.

I bought half of a corned beef brisket, the flat rather than the point. I am going to use the same slow cooking method I have used before on a full sized brisket using a charcoal snake. I will light one end of the snake and it should provide enough heat to last around six or seven hours. I'm not sure how long this smaller cut of brisket will take but I'm going to start it now.

7:05AM: I prepared the charcoal snake yesterday so all I had to do was get a few briquets of charcoal going and place them at the start of the snake.

7:35AM: The brisket is in the Weber. Here we go.

I am using my new bluetooth meat thermometer, the Meater! You can see it sticking in the right side of the brisket.

I bought the Meater specifically for this purpose. I've used it a couple of times but this is the event I've been waiting for.

It connects to my iPad and shows me all kinds of information. I am waiting for it now to get up to heat and give me an estimated cooking time. In the meantime, I'm going to have some french toast.

8:11AM: Okay breakfast has been had and the dishes have been cleaned up and put away.

While preparing breakfast, I had a visitor.

The Meater has set itself and I'm a little surprised by the data.

This is supposed to take a few hours. Meater says fifty-five minutes. I went out and shut down the lower vent. I was hoping to keep the heat around 275°. I'm well into the 300's. I opened it up to take a look which is a no no. But I was hoping that pulling the lid off would cool it down a bit and let me make sure that the lower vent was closed. It didn't appear to make a difference as far as the cooking time goes. 

Well, on to the garden.

9:37AM: The Flower Box project is going much faster than I thought it would.

I have the first layer down and my measurements for the length of boards I needed are spot on. I can't afford to screw up a single cut. So far, so good. I'm going to cut the second layer just like I did the first layer. Then I'll be able to screw everything together and back fill. Then, I just have to level the dirt and roto-till.

The Brisket project has evened itself out.

 I came in to check the temp and the thermometer had lost it's connection. 

When I got it back, it was a little more in line with what I was expecting for cooking time. It helped to shut down the lower vent. I have opened it just a crack and the temperature in the barbecue is rising. It's already back up to 303°.

10:45AM: I just pulled the brisket from the grill and wrapped it in aluminum foil. It took 3 hours and fifteen minutes to cook it to 170°. Now I have reset it to cook to 205°. I'm waiting now for Meater to give me an new estimate.

I opened up the vents so that it will raise the temp. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

11:10AM: It only took 25 minutes to get to my finish temperature. So this recipe is all screwed up when using a smaller cut of meat. It was designed for a full brisket weighing around 12 to 15 pounds. It remains to be seen if it will be any good. The brisket is currently sitting in an ice chest and I'm waiting for it to cool to 160°.

I am done with the border to the flowerbed and am backfilling the dirt. Then I will break out my little roto-tiller and mix some good dirt in with the crap that's there and get it all evened out.

11:53AM: It's not even noon and I am finished with the two projects that I thought would take all day. The brisket is still cooling and it expect it will take another hour before it gets down to 160°. I think I am going to go buy a couple bags of manure to mix it and maybe some tomato plants as well.

It didn't take very long for the brisket to cool to 160°. While this recipe didn't work exactly right as far as the time goes, it still worked.

The meat is tender and tasty. I consider this a success.

 

631 Update

Time for some updates to catch up on wazzup.

Here is our skunk. She has no name yet but we have decided her pronouns are her, she, and shmelly. I just don't know what to do with her. I could trap her and relocate her out to the country as I have done in the past. I'm thinking I have waited too long and soon there will be little puppy skunks running around. I don't want to trap her if she has already had her shmelly litter.

Yesterday was one of the first nice days of this Spring. We have yet to have a 70° day this Spring. I think we hit the high 60's yesterday. We took advantage of the nice weather to toil in the yard. Susan finished painting the light fixture for the TV Room and I worked on my Halloween Paper Mache Pumpkins.

Then we moved out front and cleaned up the flower beds. They are all nice and clean and ready to accept some flowery vegetation. When that will happen is anyone's guess.

Since Susan finished her overhaul of our light fixture, I took the time today to get it installed. Formerly, it was a shiny gold finish. She bought some spray paint that gave it a mottled brass texture and it looks fantastic.

We bought new shades for it a while back that cost $120.00 plus tax. I think they look great...like they cost #150.00, so we made a little money there.   

SkyFest 2022

 All kinds of traditions are returning. We had Bloomsday earlier this month, we will have the Lilac Parade in a week and today we had SkyFest.

SkyFest is an event at nearby Fairchild Air Force Base. The base is open to the public and there are lots of aircraft to see and aerial demonstrations of all kinds. The stars this year were the Thunderbirds, the Air Forces elite formation flying squadron.

We didn't want to go out to the base and face the throngs of people but we settled on driving out to Airways Heights and watching from the parking lot of a grocery store, along with several other people who had the same idea.

The show was really awesome. Those jets are loud and they are fast. I took over 200 pictures and these were among my best.

Maybe next year we'll go all the way and attend on base. I'm going to need a chair. Maybe a walker.