T-Minus One Day And Counting

Trying To Stay Cool Here Boss...


OK, ok, Ok OKAY...I admit it...

I can't leave "Good Enough" alone...things went like this since I started construction yesterday on the "Jamaican Me Cajun Green Butt Chili Shack."

My chili cooking partner John and I met for breakfast at the local Huddle House, an Island "Institution" since a place called "Poor Richard's" closed down about a dozen years ago, ran to Ace Hardware and bought funky pastel colored blue and yellow and pink paint, did the local Island lumber yard for sticks of wood and slabs of foam sheeting, and by 11 AM I was making sawdust on the back deck of the restaurant.

My friend Jamie, the head chef over there at Blackwater Grill, already had 80 pounds of Boston Butt cooked down to where it was falling apart, and the resulting 8 GALLONS of stock from the cooking was cooled and skimmed and de-greased so I was confident that what I was looking at was basically a construction project for Thursday and Friday before putting the Chili Shack and the final "Green Butt" Chili concoction together on site at the "Rotary Red Hot Chili Cookoff" on Saturday morning.

Then as is usual, me having spent months drawing hand sketches and twenty five pages of AutoCAD drawings, once again I couldn't help starting to improvise here and there with some things that caused me to end up using up an hour and one half of unplanned time thinking about and revising my sketches, and then in the end cutting up and running out of lumber before I had the entire framework put together.

And we ended up not smearing a single ounce of paint on anything by the end of the day either.

At least Pat and the Turbo Pup got to act like they were on VACATION, but all I did was look at the marsh behind the restaurant deck and stumble around tripping over my power cords in full blown panic mode by 3 PM.

So any way, after spending time re-planning and regrouping I'm getting an early start this morning by going BACK to Ace Hardware for a few items and BACK to the Lumber Yard for some more boards.

Then after giving me a head start making more sawdust John and Pat are showing up about 11 AM to begin smearing the base coat of paint on the parts of the structure I have finished.

Then this afternoon I will come back across everything with a roller or paint brush doing details and highlights and generally trying to make things look like an old weathered beach bar/"Tiki Hut."

And even though the process will possibly take most of the day, I know that we'll be finished and can proudly use whatever we have as a finished product Saturday morning, because most of the teams just set up a portable canopy tent and hang up a sign and slop chili around for three or four hours.

I MIGHT actually make it to the beach for a few minutes over the next two days, but then again I MIGHT NOT.

After all, I came down here this week to cook chili, and everything else is a bonus.

How do you say that in Latin?

Vedi, Veni Vici?

Virgil Freakin' Crazi?

OK, I give up...I'm taking ideas if you have any...