Overview
As some may have heard, we’ll be hosting a BBQ Tweetup at our house this summer. It will be held on Saturday, July 31st at 2PM. Food will be served around 4PM. There will be a $5 cover for adults, because (good) meat is, well, expensive. The party will be held at my house in Goldsboro, PA
Update
50% of all proceeds will be donated to the American Bird Conservancy to assist in oil cleanup efforts in the Gulf of Mexico.
The Menu (What I’ll Be Providing)
- Pulled Pork
- Baby Back Ribs
- BBQ Chicken
- Corn on the Cob
- Rolls
- Cornbread Muffins
- Soda (limited quantities, extra requested[Coke, Sprite, Gingerale])
- Water
- Plates, Napkins, Plasticware
Update: My neighbor will be donating a 30 pack of Coors Light, a 24 pack of Yuengling, and a (2)24 packs of Corona.
If you’d like to add to the menu, you can bring a covered dish, desert, chips, soda, etc. Alcohol is more than welcome, but it is BYO.
The Afterparty
As the sun goes down, we’ll get a bonfire started and you’re welcome to stay as long as you’d like. We’ll have stuff to make s’mores if you’d like. If you’re coming from further away and wish to stay overnight, there will be an area where you can set up your tent and camp out as well as a few hotels 10-15 min away.
To RSVP
If you plan on attending, please email me at ryanduff [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know how many will be attending. Upon RSVP, I’ll send you the exact street address.
Other Misc Notes
- Seating will be limited, but I’ll try and get as many tables and chairs as I can. If you have folding chairs, please bring them. We’ll need some for the bonfire as well, if you plan on staying.
- I think I have a set of horseshoes, but if you have any other picnic games, feel free to bring them and we’ll find a place to set them up.
- Since BBQ is cooked low and slow, I’ll only be able to make so much of each meat within the time frame. If it looks like we’re not going to have enough, I’ll also plan on cooking some hamburgers and hot dogs. As it stands, I’ll be starting the pulled pork at 7:30PM Friday night so that I have time to cook the ribs and chicken and be done at 4PM Saturday…
- I could use a hand with prep and set up Saturday morning. If anybody would like to volunteer to help out in the kitchen, etc please let me know. As an incentive, there will be no cover charge if you volunteer and help out.
- There will be no rain date. I will have covered areas so hopefully the weather cooperates.
Guest List (local tweeps)
- @dziner
- @imthegirl
- @williamsba / @amber331 – Veggie tray, dip
- @onefinejay – watermelon, salad, dressing
- @hodgepodgery / @mdguzy – Spinach, strawberry, and pecan salad; baked beans
- @mpthomas1
- @privatestorm
- @jgillette
- @tyrannytierny
- @edgrohl
- @alobodig
- @phillip_copley – (2) 12 packs of soda
- @deuscain
- @sandrasarcasm – veggie burgers, cookies
- @rhoadesrage – chips, cheese dip
- @sarah_sherrif / @asg_warlord – chips, guacamole
- @bpolensky / @ljoreo
- @dahcheet – chips
- @mattheyfrey
- @technog33k
- @christinerobyn
- @rycoco
- @kulabk – pasta salad
- @dani_pa – pasta salad
- @kimparsell
- [neighbors / family] – brownies (2x), watermelon, pasta salad, fruit salad, potato salad, baked beans
Today is February 1st. Where are you as far as your New Years resolutions?
I’m not one to make a whole list of resolutions, but I have one major thing I wanted to accomplish this year. Form my consultancy and make it profitable by the end of the year. I’m still working on the website, but I have gotten my business cards done and handed some out. In return, I do have some clients and potential clients. I hoped to have my website done weeks ago, but due to other circumstances, that has been delayed. So, I am making progress, just not at the rate I would like.
With a baby on the way… April 1st if she decides to stay in until full term, I do need to get working on getting things done now. I also need to finish the nursery– sooner rather than later.
How have you been doing with your New Years resolutions? Are you on schedule, ahead of schedule, or behind schedule one month into 2010?
Just spent a few hours updating my GeekTool scripts and added some new ones to my desktop. Also snagged a new wallpaper from InterfaceLIFT Here’s the finished product (click for full size):
At the November Harrisburg Tweetup, a discussion started regarding cell phone carriers. As usual, it became an all out war. Why do people defend their phone carrier like its a religion and fight anybody that’s on a different carrier? Seriously!
People seem to have no problem spending hours defending their cell phone carrier. For what reason? Just because it works for you, why does it have to work for everybody else? I’m tired of people trying to shove their opinions down everybody else’s throat. I choose what works best for me, you choose what works best for you. If I have an issue with my phone carrier, I’ll change to a different one. If you have an issue with my phone carrier, bite your tongue and keep it to yourself. I’m tired of hearing about it.
Of course, the whole Verizon/AT&T dispute only makes things worse for everybody.
In my visit to St. Marteen on Friday, I got a chance to take a taxi to the infamous Maho Beach located at the end of the runway for Princess Juliana International Airport. In the 45 minutes we were there, we saw US Air, Air France, and American Airlines fly overhead as well as a bunch of smaller planes. Yes, the pictures are real. Yes, the planes are that close.
If you ever visit St. Marteen, take the time to visit Maho Beach. Its an experience not to miss!
Last week I tweeted a few times because it kept raining day after day. Today, when a heavy line of storms moved through the area, we didn’t get a drop. I watched the radar loop and as the storm moved East/South-East, a line opened up parallel to the direction of movement. It was like a “dry channel” of air that sat over top of us. The storm just “split” before it got to us and then merged once it was past.
Its not the first time this has happened. Its happened plenty of times before during summer thunderstorms. I’m not sure if there’s some geographical formation that’s causing storms to “split” around us or what. Maybe its just my close proximity to Three Mile Island…
So lately I’ve been caught up with some other projects. I’ve been trying to develop a new site which should be launching in the near future. I have a domain name and twitter account, which will be released in the near future. I’ll also release some other details as time gets close.
Besides that, it’s just been my normal workload keeping up with my garden outdoors. Speaking of which, I need to go weed it tomorrow.
The only other thing I have which has been keeping me away from what I’d rather be doing is maintaining a friend’s yard while he’s selling his house. It’s about 3/4 of an acre that needs to be cut one to two times a week until the growth slows down. I spent a few hours on that today when I would have rather been working on my new site. Oh well, he sweetened the deal with the $1000 he has invested in a commercial grade mower, blower, and trimmer. I get to keep all of those in return for mowing his grass for a few months.
I went to Lowes tonight to pick up a few things. After pricing things at the garden center, then walking to the far end of the store to pick up some rebar, I headed back to the garden center. I got everything I needed there, well, almost everything.
I needed a few landscape timbers, but the ones there were moldy. They weren’t just growing mold spots, they were growing mold worse than a loaf of stale bread. I found two associates standing around talking and asked if they could bring down one of the packs of new landscape timbers that looked really nice and was promptly told no and there were more by the contractor desk… at the other end of the store. The one associate was even sitting on a forklift and could have gotten them down in about 2 minutes. As I walked away, I heard the one associate on the forklift tell the other associate that they had to sell through them and they weren’t going to put any more out until they did. Frankly, they looked like last year’s stock and had been sitting out all winter.
The other associate walked back over to me and told me that before I walk to the other end of the store, that the ones in the new bundles were moldy too. I asked him to show me where, because all the ones I was looking at weren’t moldy. Besides, its treated lumber… it shouldn’t be growing mold.
Rather annoyed, I walked the cart to the front of the garden section and left it there as I walked across the front of the store to the contractor desk. There were no landscape timbers there. After walking back through lumber and finding another associate, he pointed me to what I was looking for… in the back corner of the store. The timbers there looked half decent, and weren’t growing anything. I walked back to my cart, completing my second lap around the store. At this point, after the way I was treated, I was in no mood to grab my cart and make a third lap since my car was parked in front of the garden center and I would have had to walk back there to check out anyway.
I guess I’ll be stopping at Home Depot some other day after work this week. This is not the typical service I receive at Lowes and was quite shocked at how the associate had no desire to even help a customer out. I was half tempted to leave my cart and just walk out of the store.
Spring is back and in full swing. Sorry for a lack of updates the past two weeks. I’ve been busy outside getting my garden prepped every chance I get. If its decent after work, I’m often out until it gets dark. I took this week off to try and get some more stuff done but the weather didn’t cooperate much.
So far I’ve been able to get two rows of each of my cold weather crops started, last Thursday and yesterday. I’ve also tested the soil and added some fertilizer as well as sulfur to adjust the pH back down to a normal level. Tests showed alkaline around 8.0 and my target is 6.5-7. Hopefully the sulfur I put down today will get washed in with the rain tonight and bring the soil back in line. I’ll have to test again in a few more weeks.
I also got my cold frames outside and moved my seedlings into them. I had started my seedlings inside almost 2 weeks ago and they’re starting to get big. I’ll be trimming them down to one plant in each pot soon. I’m hoping the sunlight will help them grow. Unfortunately, I still need to cover the cold frames with blankets one or two more times according to the latest 10 day forecast.
As usual, its now Friday of my week off and I havent’ accomplished much around the house. I have a few projects to do this weekend and hopefully I’ll be able to cross off one or two major things on my to-do list before I return to work next Monday.
So my 6 month old Lab puppy and I have been going at it recently. So much, that I feel like I’ve been in a street fight.
Saturday he nailed me in the jaw. It was all swollen and bruised. Sunday he nailed me square in the nose and gave me a nosebleed. Today he hit me in the mouth and gave me a bloody lip… One that’s been bleeding for the past hour. Seriously, when is it goign to stop?
