Happy Memorial Day

Hope you are having a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!

We celebrated the holiday on Sunday with a BBQ/Bash fest.

Will and I barbecued some incredible tri tip and these killer baby back ribs with a homemade cherry cola BBQ sauce. They were so good. I've never been much of a grill master, but since we have had the back yard cleaned up I like grilling our food a lot more. I like a charcoal grill for the flavor and my mom bought me a chimney starter so I don't have to use lighter fluid, which I hated using. I bought natural 'gourmet' charcoal and we tried some indirect grilling for the tri tip and it came out so delicious, all smoky and wonderful yet still cooked through enough for the well done meat lovers (only my mom was upset that we didn't burn it like I usually do - apparently she likes the charred part) And those ribs were so good. We tweaked the sauce recipe I found and it was so finger licking yummy, we had to restrain ourselves.

I made some potato salad and a BBQ pasta salad (I tried one like it at Fresh & Easy and thought I could make it even better, so I did. It had pasta and black beans and corn and other veggies in a BBQ sauce based dressing. It sounds weird but it was delicious, trust me!) and we made corn on the cob. Then we topped it off with my latest cupcake flavor, Hot Tamale (a cinnamon red hot candy cupcake with bits of hot tamale candy throughout with a vanilla buttercream. Yum) Oh my heck was it all good.

Then we played the new version of "Boom Blox" (our formerly favorite Wii game) "Boom Blox Bash Party". It was a smashing (forgive the pun) good time. It was such an awesome day with my family. I hope your holiday was just as good.

Here are some pictures (my brother was playing with my new camera) of the day.


Val and Will, just chillin'. Val wants to finish her book today. Isn't that a lovely holiday, just kicking back with a good book?


Will and The Graminator, playing Wii. Okay, The Graminator mostly watched, because she prefers Wii bowling.


Screenshot of the new "Boom Blox Blast Party." it was a blast (and isn't the picture cool? I love my new camera! And my brother loves my new camera! I think he took more pictures than I have.)


Apparently we wore the dogs out. They were pooped pooches. All that running in and out of the house, then begging for bits of BBQ. It's exhausting!


Capped off with a cupcake. What a sweet way to end a sweet day. I love inventing new flavors!

Okay, I know it's a holiday, but I have to finish work on my website. It goes into beta test the end of this week. I may select a few Loyal Readers to help me test the site, so watch your inbox. Have a great day!

Go Tesco!!!!

Tesco has announced ten more stores for it's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets. Happy news. One of the new stores announced will be eight blocks from my house. Happy, Happy, Happy News!!!!! These stores are clean, well stocked, well priced and staffed by some darn nice people. I love Fresh and Easy and had read that they might be scaling back so I am so happy to hear that they are doing so well that they are expanding operations. And I hope that everyone will check them out (if you haven't already). The British are coming! (And it's a good thing this time!)

Back on Track

Okay, so I have been home a week now and I think I'm finally back on track. It's tough to be gone so long and it was really tough not to write anything for that long and then get back into the swing. I am only two weeks away from the deadline for the Nicholl Fellowship which means I only have a week really to get "Arnie" in ship shape. The deadline for the Disney Fellowship appears to be June first so I have only six weeks to write a spec television script. Hey, I work best under pressure, right?

I wrote several new sketches for Smidgits this week, including collaborating on a new movie spoof called "Brick Morgan" which will shoot in two weeks and my homage to the ninja genre called "Blind Date with a Ninja" that should shoot in three weeks depending on the availability of the Ninja. It felt really good to write and have my stuff read by the cast and crew. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I also came up with two new movie ideas. I'm firing on multiple cylinders now!

For those that were wondering, my mom and grandma survived my New Mexico adventure, although the freezer is bare as apparently they ate lots of TV dinners while I was gone. I did all of the cooking last week as my mother has been working lots of hours at the bread store (who knew the discount bread biz was so demanding!) I'm still planning this weeks menu but I thank gosh I'm back in the land of Fresh & Easy. And my B.J. gave me a hug and welcomed me back, isn't that nice? I just love that store. Please support your local Fresh & Easy, I want them to do well.

If anyone is interested, I'm hoping to catch "CJ7" at the movies this week. It's the new film from Steven Chow of Kung Fu Hustle fame. Love him, think this one looks pretty good. If you want to go with me, let me know. Hope to see some of my loyal readers soon. Love to you all and now it's time to get a writin'! Love to you all.

Lists

My friend had been doing lists on her blog and since I'm kinda tired today, I though I'd cheat and copy her idea.

List of things I thought about yesterday

1. Java has to go to the vet, how much is that going to cost me?
2. I love the library, I got like a ton of books for free. Of course, I do have to give them back.
3. How can they charge $180.00 to fix the fuel door on my mom's car? It's like a 5 minute job. Dealerships rip you off.
4. Election results
5. Why people are so mean to each other on "Big Brother"? If I was on that show I'd cry all the time.
6. Ooh, they released the second season of the old Hardy Boys show on DVD.
7. How incredibly lame am I that I care that they released the second season of the old Hardy Boys show on DVD?
8. Well, I must not be the only lame person who watched that show as a kid, right? Right? It's not on DVD for just me, right?
9. If you mix Mike's Hard Lemonade with Mike's Hard Limeade, will it resemble a margarita in flavor?
10. I love Del Taco's "3 for 99 vents" Taco Tuesdays.
11. I love my Mom, she's a truly great person. I wish I had enough money to make all of her worries go away. Tacos and a fake margarita aren't enough to show her how much I appreciate her. New toilets would be a start. And a new fence. And getting her house painted. Bet that costs more than 99 cents.
12. If I shop at Fresh & Easy every day, is that an obsession? How many days a week can I shop there without becoming 'that weird lady who is in here every day'?
13. What am I going to make for dinner on Thursday?