Our RV Adventures

I’ve been wanting to do something about the steel wheels on our Jeep, pretty much the only cosmetic problem with it.

And yeah, I could mask them off, sand them, and paint them, but that’s a lot of work.

So I found a set of these ‘wheel skins’ on eBay, made especially for Jeep steel wheels. They’re very heavy, chrome-plated plastic and they snap on very easily, but have to be plied off. And the reviews are really good too.

So I went from this

to this.

Really nice.

Baby got new shoes.

About 1pm Jan and I headed out to have lunch at Los Ramirez once again, and it was probably the busiest we’ve seen them in the last year or so. At least 3/4’s full.

Then it was on up to the Home Depot for a couple of things for me, and a new plant for Jan. She wanted something in a pot that she could set out on the patio, so this is what she got.

It’s rated for Partial Sun since it only gets it from about 10 to 3 each day.

And somehow a new addition to our Flamingo population made it back home with us too.

Wouldn’t want all the rest to be lonely.

A little before 5pm I started prepping the baby back ribs for the overnight marinating. I had purchased two packs of Smithfield Baby Back Ribs like these last week.

Cut up into 3-4 rib pieces, it looked like this.

Next up, after patting the rib sections dry, I did the Shake N Bake thing with the rub mixture in a plastic bag, ending up with this first batch.

Actually the piece on the left is one of those solid meat chunks you sometimes find on the end of a rib. Really good.

After this, I put two rib sections in a vacuum bag, and then added 3 drops of Wright’s Liquid Smoke to each bag right before I vacuumed-sealed the bags. Or at least I mostly did. Some of the bags ended up with no drops because I forgot. So it will be interesting to if we notice any difference between the bags.

I used the Wright’s based on a number of online reviews, and the fact that it’s actually ‘liquid smoke’.  They burn hardwood in a sealed system, catching the moist smoke and then condensing the liquid down and then bottling it. And it certainly smells that way when you open the bottle.

By the time I got through bagging it all, this is what I had.

Tomorrow afternoon I’ll get everything set up in the immersion cooker and start it going for 24 hours.

Looking forward to some good eats on Monday.

Later in the afternoon I put out our flag for the 4th of July weekend.

Thought For The Day:

Be careful when you blindly follow the masses. Sometimes the M is silent.

I’ve now got a timeline laid out for our Rib Fiesta this weekend, starting Saturday with cutting up the rib racks into 4 rib sections, powdering them in the rub/brown sugar/salt mixture, placing them in vacuum bags, adding 3 drops of Wright’s Applewood Smoke, and then sealing them up.

Then I’ll marinate them in the fridge overnight before setting them up in the cooker Sunday afternoon for the 24 hour cooking cycle. To speed things up I’ll start off using hot water from the faucet, which at 130°, will give it a big jumpstart up to our 150° cooking temp, rather than starting at the normal 80°.

Then about 30 minutes before the 24 hours is up on Monday afternoon, I’ll fire up our Weber out on the patio, and the ribs will go on the grill for basting with sauce for a final char.

Hopefully they’ll look somewhat like this.

Going into work this morning, I saw a bumper sticker on a car talking about stopping crime. Which made me think about Crimestoppers.

Now days, they’re pretty much known for offering rewards for tips that lead to the arrest and conviction of criminals whose crimes are selected and highlighted in their online pages.

But back in the 1990-2000’s they were also known for the crime reenactments that showed all over television. They used actors from local colleges and theater groups for the criminal stand-ins, but they finally shut this down due to a problem.

People would recognize the actors on the street and report THEM to the police, getting them arrested, not the real criminals.

But anyway, back in about 2003, I had left Tech Services at the University of Houston-Clear Lake (UHCL) and now WebMaster for the School of Business there. And somehow I got roped into doing one of these.

Hopefully it wasn’t typecasting, but I was the guy picking up young girl hitchhikers and then raping and killing them. My victim du jour was a cute redheaded student that I had worked with on several projects befoer so I knew her pretty well.

The premise was that I would be driving along and then pick her. I then would reach over, lock the doors, put my hand on her leg, and say, “Nobody rides for free”. (And no, I didn’t write this script).

Then the camera would cut to her terrified face.

We ran over this a couple of times, working on camera angles, etc., before we did a take for real.

When we were rehearsing, I had always put my hand on her knee since she was wearing shorts. But when we did the take and I put my hand on her knee, and before the camera cut to her leg, I guess she wanted to make things a little more realistic, so she reached down and slid my hand up her bare leg almost to her crotch.

Startled, but trying to keep going, I leaned over, and in my best menacing voice, said my lines.

But it came out as, “Nobodwy Wides Fowr Fewre”, said in an Elmer Fudd squeak.

And the laughter went on for almost 10 minutes. Every time it tapered off, someone would look at my bright red face and it would all start over again.

It wasn’t too long after this, and maybe because of this, that all these video reenactments went away.

Unfortunately I was never able to get a copy of this, so I’m hoping it’s lost forever.

I mentioned a couple of months ago how the magnolia trees around here were blooming like crazy, more so than I remember in the past. And I wondered if the big freeze back in February had anything to do with it.

And now it seems that maybe the same thing is happening with the crepe myrtle around here.

Again, I don’t know if the freeze had anything to do with it, but I don’t remember them being like this before.
 

Thought For The Day:

Teach your kids about taxes… eat 30% of their ice cream.