Friday Roundup #36

Remy went to doggy daycare two days in a row last week, which I suspect he thinks is roughly equivalent to winning a small lottery. He normally goes once a week. Two days back to back utterly exhausted him; he came home both nights and slept like a dropped coat. (Shoutout to The Barker Lounge in Alpharetta. He loves it there and they seem to love him, too!)

That was the stretch when Zach was in Portsmouth, NH, for work, and I’ll be honest with y’all: the whole week got away from me. Posts I meant to write didn’t get written. The Friday roundup didn’t happen at all. I’m not going to make a production out of it. Sometimes the week wins, the prescheduled posts carry you, and you pick back up on a Thursday like nothing happened.

And Wednesday was National Dog Day, which around here is less a holiday than an official acknowledgment of the existing power structure.

• Coming on the blog: Sunday is the first Creek House Wildlife post, about the owl who did not show up to be photographed, which tells you most of what you need to know about how that went. Monday I’m running a bonus post that should have gone out last week: the Kamado warranty came through on the cracked dome, and Kamado Joe replaced the ceramics for free, twelve years in. Tuesday is Sharon’s carrot cake. Wednesday is the install saga that followed, including the spring-hinge swap I was genuinely afraid of and the grill table that beat me.
• Also this week: Yesterday was National Peach Day, which landed right as Georgia peaches are winding down, so consider this the send-off. Tuesday was National Whiskey Sour Day and I let it go by without comment, which I regret; Sharon’s frozen whiskey sours are coming in December and they are worth the wait.
• Garden Update: The collard seeds are here. The beds are not. This year’s garden never happened, and what’s out there right now is mostly a cleanup project wearing a garden costume. So that’s next weekend’s job: clear it out, make it sowable, get the collards in the ground. If it works, the collards on the Thanksgiving table will be mine, which has been the whole point of this since about June.
• Hatch watch: I ordered in bulk again. The boxes are supposed to land next week, which means the weekend after that disappears into roasting and peeling and bagging, and the whole house smelling like the single best thing that has ever happened to it. The roasting-and-freezing post lands September 8, with a queso recipe attached, because you’re going to have chiles and you’re going to need something to do with them.
• What I’m Reading: Bruised Sole: The Unfiltered Story of The Hoof GP by Graeme Parker, with Robert Parker. [Wigtown Festival Bookshop | Kindle] Here is how this happened to me: I fell into a YouTube hole watching a Scottish cattle hoof trimmer work, and I have not climbed back out. Graeme Parker trims hooves in Dumfries and Galloway, down on the southern coast of Scotland, and somewhere between the work itself (strangely satisfying; I will not be defending this position) and the countryside he drives through to get to it, I was gone. The book is the story behind the channel. That first link is an independent bookshop in his own corner of Scotland; the shipping is silly and I do not care.
• What I’m Watching: Almost nothing, for most of this stretch. With Zach gone I listened more than I watched: playlists, music while I worked, and an unreasonable quantity of hoof trimming. Television became a together activity at some point without either of us deciding it should be, so a week alone turns into something else entirely. Now that he’s home we’re back on The Blacklist [IMDb | Rotten Tomatoes], season four, which we are working through at the pace of people who may never finish.
• What I’m Eating: Blackened tilapia tacos, which turned out well enough that they’ve gone straight into the queue. And a one-pan situation with Italian sausage, onions and peppers over polenta, which is the kind of dinner that looks like considerably more effort than it was. Recipes for both are coming.

What are y’all reading/watching/cooking/dealing with this week? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. Remy slept through most of Thursday. Two days of daycare is apparently a withdrawal against a finite account, and the bill came due.

P.P.S. The grill is still sitting on garden bricks. The rebuilt base is wider than the 2014 Classic and does not fit the old table, and I have not solved this. I’m not recommending anything, because I haven’t bought anything.

P.P.P.S. If you go looking for the hoof trimming videos, I want to be clear that I did warn you, and also that I am not sorry: The Hoof GP

Friday Roundup