hal tweets ·1:04 PM
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
2009,
17:48 GMT
Hal’s Back: And He Almost Burned the House Down :comments
Posted by Hal
Okay people, I’m back in action after a couple of days of relative radio silence. So, I’m hoping to get several vlogs up in the next two days as well as a couple more blog posts about my general adventures.
In the meantime, today and tomorrow you can expect the cameras to be live at least from 9–5 pm (before family gets home). I’ll be trying to check the chat too, so if you want to talk, now’s your chance. Your last chance, in fact, since the peepcam goes permanently dark as of end of day Friday. That’s right, W. has had quite enough. She’s a remarkably patient woman.
Also one last special event: tomorrow David Sax, the king of smoked meat and author of the upcoming book Save the Deli, will be joining me for a special lunchtime chat. Look for that to start around 1pm. And bring your questions about all things kishka, knish, and kugel.
So now on to the story: Yesterday I cooked tandoori paneer, veggies and chicken on the barbecue. There were some left over woodchips in a bowl of water from a week ago or so. I threw them into the built in smoker and turned that burner on too.
But everything was pretty much cooked before any smoke showed up. Long story short: we ate dinner (E. admired the beauty of my tandoori but declined to taste it) and then cleaned up and got E. into bed.
A digression — E’s been quite a bit more defiant lately (no doubt having a lot to do with all the back and forth that’s been going on in terms of my travel) and W. has finally agreed with me that we need to be stricter and follow through with our threats of punishment. Last night, for instance, she was pretty much refusing to listen to anything we said, just playing and ignoring us. I had to finally grab her and carry her up the stairs to get her into the bath. Not because she doesn’t like baths, just because she refused to cooperate. Anyway, I had a talk with her and explained that if I have to say everything 3 times I was going to start getting really frustrated and take away things like treats, extra stories, etc. She pretended not to be listening, pulling her head under the covers, but I already noticed an improvement this morning. Another aside: I saw all the kids from daycare heading over to one of the park wading pools this morning. It was so cute seeing E. and her little cronies clutching hands and walking over to the park. She waved at me but wasn’t at all concerned that I was just passing through.
Anyway, back to the story. I went out, rechecked that all the burners were off. It was getting dark, the bbq had cooled off, so I put the cover on. Did some work in the basement. I started to smell smoke. It actually smelt kinda good. Did some more work. Smelled more smoke. Went upstairs and asked W. what she could smell. W. has an uncanny sense of smell. It’s like some kind of extra-sensory perception. She has the smelling powers of a, i dunno, insert animal with amazing sense of smell here. Anyway, she also smelled smoke. We searched the whole house, and even called the neighbor to make sure he hadn’t fallen asleep while cooking something (which had happened once before).
We couldn’t find anything. The smoke smell was strong though. I decided to do one more check. I checked the basement and every room in the house. I checked out front and then out back. I paused in front of the bbq. The cover was on and there was no heat when I put my hand on the top of the bbq. I was about to move on, when I caught a powerful whiff of wood smoke. Just in case, I pulled the cover off. I found myself engulfed in smoke. The wood in the smoker was smoldering even though the smoker burner had been turned off hours ago! W. was all over that. She’s got a thing about fire. I mean everybody’s got a thing about fire, but it’s really one of her major phobias. I was thoroughly lectured. Even though the risk of fire was minimal — actually nonexistent. Plus I was sober, so there was no reason to bring up my propensity for boozing. Again. Ha! Kidding people.
So lesson learned, fire disaster averted, smoke smell quickly dissipated.
The tandoori was fantastic. So it was all worth it.
I had to finally grab her and carry her up the stairs to get her into the bath. Not because she doesn’t like baths, just because she refused to cooperate.sober living
By sober living on 2010 03 03
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By Pocahontas on 2010 05 21
How to preserve and select ham ?
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By moncler on 2010 07 11
The Bloggist
Hey, I’m Hal Niedzviecki. I’m a writer/thinker who lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with my wife and daughter. Up till now I’ve always considered myself a private person. But at the same time I’m fascinated by people who effortlessly open themselves up to the whole world. So I’ve… more...
Indie comics in 80s LA, a homage featuring Groening, Panter, Hernandez bros…. http://bit.ly/b1FcGM
Issue 47 (spring) is now completely ‘unlocked’ on the NEW Broken Pencil website. Web TV, Liz Worth on punk TO & more http://bit.ly/bXvQuP
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