Let the weekend begin!!!

Thursday night, before going to sleep, I took a small steak out of the freezer and put it in the sink to thaw. So, this morning, before going to work, I made a simple marinade for it using chopped onions, garlic, soy sauce, olive oil, two dashes of hot sauce, sprigs of fresh thyme and the juice of a lemon. I whisked it all together and put it and the steak in a big baggie, then put that in the fridge and went to work.

After lunch, B___ and I went to World Market, because Jake had told me they were closing the store and some things were 50% off. Bummer, dude! I love that store! It's like a low-end Pier One, with strange stuff from all over the world. I was hoping to get a cast-iron hibachi I'd seen before, but there was none left. Still, I managed to spend $45 on a new pepper grinder, a French-press coffee maker and a worn, old-looking, seated Buddha statue for the way-in-the-back garden.

I had some errands to run after work (one of which was to stop at Westborn for some fresh, home-grown Michigan sweet corn - the season's almost over, ya know!) and didn't get home until almost 6:00 PM. Jake and Carla were there, loading up "stuff," so I helped Jake carry out their TV and put it in the back seat of their car. I told him it wouldn't fit, and then had to look appropriately sheepish when it did. Damn German engineering! Volkswagens are bigger than they look!

Weirdness Alert!!! Carla mentioned she wanted to take her imported Italian tomatoes back. She had put four cans in my pantry when they moved in, but tonight, when she went to get them, there was only one! We all sat and ran through a month's worth of dishes where we might have used them, but could come up with nothing calling for tomatoes. It's that damn de-materializing again!!! I swear this place is some sort of black hole, vortex, space portal thingie and, somewhere in an alternative universe, some alien assh*le is eating Carla's imported tomatoes!

They left and I put the corn in my stock pot with water to soak for a bit, massaged the marinade into the steak for a bit (there's a joke about massaging your meat in there, but Food Network chef Paula Deen has already beat it to death!), then went out back to move five more wheel barrows of mulch. Something weird is going on with this pile of woodchips, too. It was getting quite small, now it seems to have grown! Either that or I am getting sick and tired of moving wood chips! Where is that Japanese gardener when I need him?

Fired up the cowboy charcoal in the grille. It's getting dark a little earlier than it used to, so I turned on my outside lights and put the corn on. I turned my oven on warm, so I could pull off ears of corn that were done, but keep them all the same temperature at the end (it dawned on me later that, since there is only me and I can only eat the last two or three done, the oven trick is overkill. But, it's not a bad tip if you are having a BBQ with, like, people there!) Threw the steak on when the corn was finished. Cooked medium rare, it was steak perfection! And, the three ears of Michigan sweet corn with butter and salt didn't hurt, either.

Since I am a swinging bachelor and it's Friday night, I should be telling you about the bars, the music, the drinks and the girls (those busty young animals, who continually throw themselves at me) but, this is my Blog and while I might omit things, I do not lie here. So, this wild and crazy, swinging bachelor watched a couple of TV shows after dinner and then went to bed around 10:00 PM.

<sigh>