I'm sitting on my back deck watching clouds float over the mountains to the north of us. It is a beautiful Sunday afternoon after attending church. I do feel truly fortunate to live in such a wonderful area with such lovely views. We bought this house back in October and were not able to enjoy the deck or back yard before it got too cold and the snow flew. Now, the kids are playing with cars below us, the neighbors are sitting and chatting, and the birds are singing. It is still a bit chilly, but very manageable and very pleasant. I'm also using the opportunity to copy over Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight onto my iPod so I can listen to it on my way to work. That is one advantage of a 40 minute commute. Not that there are many.

Both my mother and father will write a letter detailing the events of the week to the family members that do not live nearby. I know that many of their letters contain the phrase, "As I thought about what to write about this week." As I see this blog as something similar I too had the opportunity to think back on this week and contemplate what to write. I hope that as this blog is accessible to me in many places and in many ways, I'm hoping that as things occur I'll be able to jot things down so I won't have to remember. But for this first week, it did take some contemplation. After some thought It occurred to me something I could share that grandfather might find worth writing down.

I learned this last week why you need to keep your grill clean. I enjoy barbecuing chicken and particularly enjoy putting the sauce on it after it's been on the grill for a while. I won't show you a picture of the grill in it's current state as I am a little ashamed that it is as bad as it is. I was planning on cleaning it yesterday, but the weather was bad and there were several other things that needed to be done. However, I will need to clean it before I can use it again because last week when I did use it we ate zombie chicken.

I lit the grill and laid some aluminium foil on it in an attempt to keep the chicken from adding to the mess and put the chicken on it, closed the lit and went inside. The problem was that the residue at the bottom of the grill had started on fire. I didn't think this would be a problem and had adjusted the propane accordingly. What I didn't know was that the smoke caused by the fire was really dirty smoke. When I came back to check on the chicken ten minutes later, I was met by a sight I can only refer to as zombie chicken. The meet was grey and flecked with black bits. the grill smelled of burned charcoal (no that is not redundant) and overall it just looked unwholesome. Need less to say, I turned the grill off and we put the rest of the chicken on a pan on the stove. In the end it all tasted good, but you can be sure that I will clean that thing before I cook on it again.