Hiking and New Toys, Yay!

Neither Dan nor I felt up to cooking on Friday so we decided to seek dinner out. We stopped by Gurnee Mills to check out the tripods at Micomp that stormdog had mentioned (alas, they only had the floor model left, and that was rather beat up), then got some dinner at the taquiera at one of the food courts (they make delicious quesadillas!). After dinner, and as the mall was closing, we headed across the street and bought our first new toy of the weekend.

I had had my eye on a couple of charcoal grills on Amazon, but while the prices were reasonable (and the reviews excellent), the shipping was half again the price of the grill! Then I happened to look online and see that Menards had the grill I wanted on sale, which is how we came into possession of this lovely new toy:

This is the Char-Griller Smokin’ Pro grill, with a side firebox that you use to smoke large quantities of meat in the main grilling chamber. Amazingly, this was half the price of a top-of-the-line Weber grill, and has a heck of a lot more cooking surface area. I spent late Sunday afternoon putting the whole thing together; it only took about two hours, which is better than I thought it would be. The finished grill is heavy and damned solid. I’m going to have lots of fun with this!

On Saturday, I joined linnaeus, siriuswolfstar, simbalion, darkvolf, and rustitobuck on a trip up to Kettle Moraine State Forest Southern Unit where we hiked various parts of the Scuppernong Trail (PDF link), a total of about four and a half miles. The weather was perfect – upper 60’s or so – and the sky was cloudless. It was a gorgeous day to spend walking amid the tall pines and hardwoods, and I had a fantastic time (for all that I still ache 🙂 While we were gone, takaza went to the store and once we got home (and were joined by roho, genet, and midwestcougar) he cooked up an extremely tasty dinner of fajitas. Booze did flow and we had fun chatting, but everyone wound up having to leave on the early side and by 9:30 it was just me and Dan again (which was also quite nice! I loves my husband, y’see, and I’m keeping him!).

On Sunday we enjoyed a nice, lazy morning. I finished entering the twenty or so CD’s I had burned the day before into our iTunes library, though I probably have another twenty to go. After we had some lunch, we headed back to Gurnee Mills to buy the other new toys of the weekend.

I have had a Sprint V1000 (aka Samsung SPH-A620) cell phone for the last three years and it was getting a bit beat up. At the same time, the Treo that Dan had gotten from ovrclokd, while very much appreciated, was showing its age with a bit of erratic behavior. This, coupled with a sale that Sprint was having, led us to pick up two of these:

Yep, it’s the Motorola Q. I’m still learning how to use and customize it, but it seems like a pretty sharp little device. Look for an upcoming entry talking about what kind of add-ons and customizations I’ve been exploring for it.

And now it’s Monday and I’m back at work, and my back is sore as heck. Man, I wish we had a nice, deep bathtub suitable for soaking. Ah well. Plans for this week include dinner with Dan’s mom on Wednesday and Anthrocon and FRAC planning as well.

Time to walk across campus and enjoy the fine weather out there! Hope everyone has a great week.

10 thoughts on “Hiking and New Toys, Yay!

  1. woodychitwn

    *Droolz on your grillz*

    VERY nice!

    And half a dozen people I know have gotten that phone within the last 2 months! Apparently it’s very popular!

    So… When’s the next BBQ?!?

    1. woofwoofarf Post author

      Aw hell yeah. I made up a recipe of that and it’s paradise in a bottle, I tell ya. I know we’ll miss y’all Memorial Day weekend but I can assure you we’ll be doing some more BBQ-based partying as the summer goes on!

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