On Your Mark...Get Set...

STIR!!!!!!!


In less than three hours from now we'll be running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to get our Chili Shack tossed up into position and getting a fire lit under about 14 gallons of chili components in a giant pot.

I managed to get about five hours sleep last night and then had to jump up and get started with some final details--what I call "homework"--which have to be finished in time to grab a shower and run out the door.

It only took about six hours yesterday to completely re-style and re-paint the Jamaican "Green Butt" Chili Shack components back into something resembling a weathered board structure sitting on stilts over the water in a Louisiana swamp.

The final details here at home this morning involve painting a giant cartoonish alligator and a big turtle and some other caricature fish and water "creachsters" and stuff on a couple of foam panels which will be used to close off the open area under our serving tables--an area painted to look like a dock or front porch on the building.

I was really pleased with the choice spot we received in the random draw for positions in the Red Hot Chili Festival site at the "Captains meeting" yesterday afternoon.  We're right in the middle of the horseshoe shaped layout so people will see our booth from every direction and being in the middle rather than on the end of one leg like we were the past two years will hopefully help us get better exposure among the 19 other teams.

So any way...time to get back to drawing and painting reptiles and amphibians I guess...

Hope Y'all have at least half as lovely a day as I plan on having.

Regards Y'all...