Back on the horse

On Friday, I was firing up the old grill for a brat. The propane grill has one of those handy dandy ignitor buttons for easy flame on.

Except when it doesn't work. The gas hissed like a serpent (and not the fun Eden kind) while I frantically pressed and repressed the button until I took up the spare ignitor to light it by hand.

A mini-fireball, while not big enough to torch the house, is just the right size to scare the shit out of me and burn off all the hair on my right hand and forearm.

The smell of burning feathers was hard to get out of my nose.*

Fortunately, the burn wasn't as bad as it could have been and the pain never got much worse than a bad sunburn (without the blisters).

Yesterday the brats were calling me, but I wasn't enthusiastic about grilling. I had almost talked myself into frying when I realized if I didn't go out and fire up the grill, I might as well give up any thought of cooking out for the rest of the summer.

After too much back and forth (grill- panfry- grill- panfry- don't make this into a phobia- I'm not making it into a phobia; it's too hot to cook outside- you know you're chicken- who are you calling chicken?- bawk, bawk, bawwwkkk), I grilled my brat.

It goes to show that there's nothing equal to flesh charred in the great outdoors and there's no molehill that can't be made into Everest.


*The smell of burning hair is such an infrequent and wrong odor. I was immediately transported back to the time I went with my best friend** to get his brand. He wanted support, and I wanted to see what getting a brand was like. The moment the brander (who was also an awesome piercer) touched metal to skin, the air was redolent with burning feathers and a kind of broiled pork smell. It was insane that I was smelling my best friend cook.

**This best friend was my piercing buddy. We both got our tongues and eyebrows done at the same time. He was harder core than me: at the height of his piercings, he had plugs, septum, brow, tongue, both nipples, a beautiful Prince Albert, his sac, and taint. I was little league compared to him.

Although I will say that due to an obscene amount of Jaeger, a photographer buddy, my friend's Prince Albert, my tongue piercing, and a very long thin piece of metal (of unknown purpose until we discovered it would slide through my tongue and his PA quite nicely)- a naughty photograph that pretty much captures our hedonistic friendship is floating around somewhere.