This post may get a bit lengthy, since I still haven’t mentioned much about the birthday party; I’ll do my best to keep it interesting.
First though, Happy Birthday to Dave Hampton! (Maybe if I try really hard to mention him enough I’ll end up on his “Links of Great Blogness” 
)
Starting with the party, which really had no definite beginning so I’ll actually start in the early morning when we (My household and the Neighbors Cody and Becca) had a garage sale and smoked ribs on the smoker that Angelo at work gave me (Thanks!). I sold a total of 3 things, but actually ended up coming out ahead by quite a bit. I sold one of my two mountain bikes for $35, a DVD player for $5 and Nicks Wheels and Tires for $150 ($50 of which I got to keep). But of much more importance the smoked ribs turned out awesome.
The ribs were a fairly simple recipe, I rubbed some beef ribs with the McCormick Hickory Spice Rub the day before, fired up the smoker with beer in the basting bowl and some hickory wood chips for smoke. Smoked for about 3.5 hours at around 220 degrees, and tada! Delicious ribs.
After we finished the garage sale we cleaned everything up and started preparing for the party, we got Cody’s audio equipment setup and the band was sound checked around 6. Becca, Ricko and her boyfriend as well as Becca’s Sister went out and bought snack foods and did a great job of putting together a whole slew of munchies so a big Thanks to all of them!
The party itself went great, the band sounded a million times better live than in the recording that I have a few posts below. In such a small space as my living room was the vocals had to be turned way up to be heard over the drums, so in the recordings below its pretty much all vocals. Oh well, everybody who was there knows what they sounded like.
I was surprisingly not hung-over on Sunday, the benefit of sticking to mostly beer so cleanup of the house went rather smoothly, and my parents came down so we could go out and see The Da Vinci Code, and later Chadd joined us to go out to dinner at Outback. In all it was probably the best birthday one could wish for.
This weekend (which was a 4 day weekend for me!) was equally as good. Mike and Jenn went up to Humboldt for the weekend, and Nick wasn’t home much so for the most part I had the house to myself. I went to two of The Usuals shows, one at The Distillery in Sacramento which was good, but not their best show (more the venue’s fault than their own) and the second at the Owl Club in Old Roseville which is the best one I’ve seen yet.
I also successfully went the entire weekend eating Smoked/BBQ’d meat for dinner every night. Did some experimenting, some of it turned out great, some needed a little extra help. Smoked New York (with a peanut butter sauce) Friday night, BBQ’d chicken Saturday, smoked chicken Sunday, and smoked ribs last night.
In other news though, I got my TV and installed it. I found a stand that just about perfectly fit in the opening I have. I say just about because it required a little bit of modification to actually get it to fit. I ended up buying a Skill Saw, and cutting off 1/4″ on both sides of the stand to get it in. It looks awesome though, almost like the nook was built for the TV instead of the other way around. I got antsy about having some kind of source that would do the monitor justice, so I bought an Xbox 360 (the Premium box, not the core set). Had to buy a wireless adapter too for it, but downloading HD trailers and playing games look incredible. So if you have a 360, check my gamertag, and add me as a friend.
And lastly, another purchase I made this weekend (I went a little nuts 
) was of a set of patio furniture that I just couldn’t pass up the price. It was marked down 20%, and then I got another 10% off of that because I signed up for the Home Depot Credit Card. So the final price (after tax) was under $400 for 6 chairs and a large glass toped table. (Click the image for a slightly larger view).
