July 05, 2001
Well, the family reunion has been fun, and we capped it off with a fine barbecue-and-fireworks event on the fourth. It would have been perfect except for the engine failure and the vomiting.I don't know what went wrong with my father-in-law's van--that's going to be a project for today, I'm afraid. And I'm not going to go in to the vomiting except to say that I had nothing to do with it, and it was confined to three individuals, two of whom had the good grace to display the extent of their illness BEFORE the caravan left for the picnic.
Anyway, the barbecue was great. We splurged a bit, and grilled pork loin, chicken breast, and shrimp (the secret to shrimp-on-the-barbie: peel 'em, and as soon as they hit the grill, baste 'em in butter. And pull them off when they're all the way pink--don't let them get brown, or you've wasted your money), along with a bunch of other shish-kabobable goodies like green peppers and mushrooms. My long-time friend Kevin brought some home-made barbecue sauce (that's usually the job of my other long-time friend Chalain, but he didn't want to make the late-night commute back to SLC following the fireworks, and chose to stay in his own town for the day) and as usual people started insisting on having things to eat just to serve as vehicles to get the barbecue sauce into their mouths.
For those of you for whom yesterday was not a holiday, I hope you get some summer barbecuing in real soon. For those of you for whom this is the dead of winter, I envy the possibility of cool weather. And for those of you in the throes of something vomitous, my heart goes out to you. Aim for the bucket, or something that can be thrown in the wash. I hate cleaning carpets.