Grill Deep Cleaning Time

 Last week, I finally got around to doing a really good deep cleaning of the grill my FIL gave us four years ago when we moved down here.

The reason is one part laziness and two parts, not doing it during the window when it’s not too hot and not too cold down here.  To be fair, I'm certain FIL never deep-cleaned it either. 

There was a lot of dirty, caked-up grease, charred food bits, ashes, and carbon.  

I watched a few YouTube videos on the best way to do this, and while most of them are fairly the same, there are some nuanced differences between content creators.

Some say it's okay to use an Easy Off-like product; others are purists and say to avoid chemicals.

I will note for next time that it is better to take the grill apart and work from the inside out instead of outside in, like in the videos.

Also, you are never going to get your grill to look like it did before you used it the first time, or even how it did the first month.  you have to decide how much effort you want to put into it and I decided six hours of scrubbing, scraping and brushing was sufficient to get me through another season.  I also opted to replace the rusted heat shields (or falvorizors as some call them).  

I will make an effort to deep clean more than once every four years, though.  Ideally, twice a year but since we don't really do as much grilling as we did back in Chicago, once a year might be enough.   

2025 Bears Predication Update: Second Quarter Results

The NFL season is about halfway over, and the Chicago Bears are a surprising 5-3, which is what I predicted them to be at this point of the season.  I'm 6 and 2 in my predictions.  The Bears could conceivably be 7-1 were it not for the meltdown in the season opener and the anemic offense against Baltimore.  They could also be a lot worse because three of those wins could have easily gone the other way.  Woulda, coulda, shoulda.

What's important is that after a 0-2 start, the Bears won four in a row, before choking against the Ravens.  Yesterday, they made it up with a nailbiter against the Bengals that should not have been that close.  

If the Bears can go .500 the rest of the season that would be 9-8 or even 10-7 which I think could earn them a Wild Card.  The division isn't off the table yet, but they probably need to win at least three of the four remaining division games and get a little help.  

For their next four games, I predicted the following:

Team        Record    Streak    Prediction

Giants              2-7        L-3            W

at Vikings        4-4        W-1            L

Pittsburgh        5-3        W-1            L

at Eagles          6-2        W-2             L

 

As always, I'm sticking with my predictions, but I'll be very happy to be wrong on two of these. These are not weak teams.  And the Giants won't want to lose a fourth game if they can help it.  The Bears' secondary has to get healthy fast.

It will depend on which Vikings team shows up in two weeks.  Hopefully it's the bad one.  

The Philadelphia teams are the strongest, but even they are showing some cracks in their armor. 

The Bears have played eight games, and I was able to watch 4 of them.  Three of the next four are Sunday nooners, with the Eagles game being on the Friday after Thanksgiving.  I should be in Illinois, headed toward Chicago, and be able to catch some of the game against the Steelers.  As for the Friday game, it's at 2 pm, which is prime in the middle of our last full day in town.  

Easy Come, Easy Go

Edit from the future:  This has been in my drafts for moths and I decide to just publish it as is.  It's too painful to try and proofread and see if I omitted anything of importance.  


A few Mondays back, I alluded to "some other news to share this week."  I am was employed again!  Alas, it didn't last and while I wrote up a draft about the adventure before my contract ended, I'm gonna whittle it done to the essentials.

It got off to a rough start because this hire didn't happen in the linear way most jobs do.  

I saw an ad for a help desk position in my industry.  I am hilariously overqualified for that position, but it was part-time nights covering the Pacific Coast Time Zone.  I figured they might give me a chance and whatever the pay scale, it would help pay for that bathroom remodel.  

My short-lived New Office

Instead, the recruiter at the consulting company (which I have interviewed with on two separate occasions since separation from Big Audit) reached out on Sept 18th about a position that is a little more within my wheelhouse.

It's a remote position, a W2 contract for at least 3 weeks, possibly longer. "This is a medical family matter, taking my senior person out of town to help with care. The situation is still developing, and it's difficult to determine the exact timeframe."

at face value, a 3 week gig at the standard rate would have knocked off about 25% of the bathroom remodel cost so I was open.  We talked on the 19th and I honestly cannot remember the exact details, but I told her my standard availability for interviews is 9-12 CST M-F with a day's notice.  I do this because, since most go nowhere, it's a waste of a shower and shave for an interview in the middle of the day.

She called back a bit later and said they would like to speak to me in 20 minutes.  I'm like, NO.  Then her boss BRAD called and said I was overthinking it, just have a conversation with their client.

I honestly cannot remember a thing from that call other than it was very pleasant and the client said he liked what he heard.  In fact, he mentioned that there was a permanent position and that the contract could lead to it.  The consulting agency immediately jumped in to protect their finder's fee and we left it at Boss and Client would work out specifics.

This seemed like a good situation.  Short term I can earn money to pay off bathroom renovation.  Long term this would be a path back to Chicago because they have an office there and I would have to move to a state they had an office for those good old tax compliance issues.

Unfortunately, what was supposed to be an immediate hire got delayed because Consulting Agency is very fly-by-night and they use a terrible background checking service.  It also took client a long  time to send me equipment and instead of a laptop (like everyone else sends) they sent me 2 sweet monitors, two sets of keyboards and mouses, and a very small desktop.  

I'm not sure what exactly happened.  I was onboarded by Consulting Agency but they wouldn't pay me for that time (realistically about 2 hours of my time).  Then they only wanted me to bill for the time I actually had something to do with the client, which was an average of 2 hours per day.  I objected and said my time is valuable and if I'm tethered to a computer, I deserve compensation for that.

Last Tuesday BRAD wanted to have a Teams meeting.  Here-to-fore, all our conversations were simply on the phone.  I asked if I should be concerned and he said "I do all calls on Teams, I like to see people".  Glaring Red Flag that I missed.  We had trouble connecting but once we did, he mentioned that he looked at my timesheets that I had saved but didn't submit and asked if I now had work.  I said there was still idle time but it had improved.

He said something about getting in front of something to course correct but he didn't elaborate.  I told him that the people I was working with are aware that I had idle time and were okay with my charging my time although obviously it was a Client decision so I told him to see if Big Client was okay with it.

That night I had sent a LinkedIn connection request to the people I'm working with.  The person who was out on Medical Leave accepted.  

Next day I get a call from Consulting Agency that Client reached out and said that things weren't working out for them so they were terminating my contract.  

The person who accepted my LinkedIn connection apparently has severed it.

And what sucks is I have to put this on my resume and LinkedIn profile to show that I have been hireable, yet at the same time I have to explain it IF I get an interview.

Because we live in a world where people are supposed to work from almost Cradle to Grave.  Gaps in your resume signal to employers that you are either a problem employee or, worse, that you don't actually need a job.  Employers hate an employee who could just walk away from a job.  

 

Happy Halloween and October round out

A few things happened this month that I should have written about in real time but was busy with the things.  Or being lazy.  

Firstly, the weather finally became more bearable. In fact, early last week, I was able to turn off the AC.  Now it's cold in the mornings and warm in the afternoons and early evenings and chilly overnight.  I did put the heat on low a couple days ago but was able to turn it off again as it is oscillating back to warmer temperatures.

Secondly, a few Mondays back, I alluded to "some other news to share this week."  I am was employed again!  Alas, it didn't last and while I wrote up a draft about the adventure before my contract ended, I'm gonna whittle it done to the essentials.

And lastly, a couple of weeks ago we were in St Louis for Fall Break.  Fall Break down here occurs the week before Columbus/Indigenous Persons Day.  We left on Wednesday around 1 pm and got to the hotel just around 5:30 pm with one bathroom break.  We brought along our pseudo-3rd child, and the kids rotated sleeping on an air mattress.  Actually, Natasha found that it was so comfortable that she ended up sleeping on it most of the trip.

We visited the City Museum on Thursday and spent most of the day there.  City Museum is a great place to burn kids energy but you have to have a system because you will get separated from them.  Oh and the food is high-priced and terrible.  Best to pack a cooler and tailgate in the parking lot.

On Friday we did apple picking along with seeing the Arch, which was closed because of the government shutdown.  On Saturday we did Grant's Farm.  Every night was spent back at the hotel for pool time.  I was also able to met with Jewel on Saturday for dinner.  

Stray observations.  I'm glad I didn't cancel my participation in this trip for what turned out to be 8 days of employment with nothing to do (story to come later).  If I could do this over, I would have met Jewel for dinner earlier in the trip.  We had good food at the restaurant she found and the leftovers would have made good lunches.  Instead, we ended up dumping them because we were leaving and didn't have good options to keep them cold.

I think we did a lot and had fun but we overloaded the kids' batteries.  While kids are resilient, they didn't have enough time to recover from Day One to fully enjoy Day Two and then Day Three.

Grants Farm is a fine place to visit, especially in October when it is decorated for Halloween.  But be warned:  While admission is free, everything there is to do comes at a cost, some outrageously high.  I will say the food at the Bauernhof Courtyard is decent proportions at reasonable post-pandemic prices.  

3rd Child was also starting to get on my nerves.  She is better behaved than my douche nuggets, but her "grandparents" spoil her, and it was bleeding over into our trip.  Case in point, we ordered lunch, which came with a side.  She said she didn't want a side, so I said "Since it comes with one, order something and someone else can eat it".  She was about to order a side no one wanted, but I put an end to that.

All in all, it was a lovely trip but if we do it again we have to do things in a different order and allow more recovery time.  

Chicago Baseball in October: Over and Done

After losing two games against the Brewers, the Chicago Cubs did a rare thing since the playoff format changed some time ago: they forced a Game 5.  I did not expect that to happen and actually had a reasonable belief they might be able to pull it off.

Alas, they did not.  Milwaukee won and moved on.  But I'm grateful that the Cubs gave us fans 8 more games beyond the regular season.   Next Year.

Meanwhile, I was able to watch the Bears on MNF and they similarly beat the Commanders to how the Commanders beat them last year.

I'm beyond annoyed that I cannot watch this week's game against the New Orleans Saints.  New Orleans is closer to Olive Branch/Memphis than either Philadelphia or Minneapolis.  But the networks are forcing us to watch that game.

Bathroom Renovation Project Finished

The long renovation project is completed.  Demolition began on July 28th, and the final touches were completed on September 17th.  There was some idle time in between because it took longer than anticipated to receive the tile, the vanity, the shower door, and other items.  Some of that was supple chain issues.  Some of it was our own, sitting on our butt instead of making a decision.

Nightingale basically let me manage this project though I did consult her for most of the aesthetics.  I wanted a kick ass shower with a pleasing bathroom attached to it and I believe we achieved that.  We scoped two extra items:  first, we moved the toilet to where the old shower was and made it a de facto water closet (no door, but still).  And I had them install some updated lighting in the living room.  All in this project came to about $25K.

The hardest part of this, besides the money, was the decision-making.  Moving the shower to the old tub and the toilet to the old shower was easy.  But where do you want towel racks?  Where do you want new outlets?  Where do you want shower heads?  It can be nerve-racking because some of these decisions are irreversible.  

As far as contractors go, the crew at All Around Renovation were great.  They cleaned up every day (as best one can during demo and construction) and they did their best to keep me apprised of things like when they were turning off the water.  The fact that my frady cat Elsa didn't shy away from them tells you that they are good people.  

That's not to say things were flawless.  my contractor was rather annoyed that we didn't have our tile and everything else picked out when the project began.  Not the worst scenario by far.  You can see the before pictures here.

Chicago Baseball in October: Wild Card Done and Won

The Cubs managed to win the series 2-1.  The latest MLB playoff format had every wild card game occur at the ballpark of the team with the best record.  This meant all 3 games were at Wrigley Field.  And I got to watch all three of them.  

Now they move on to the Divisional Round against the Brewers.  This is a best of five format, with the first two games at Brewers, then the next two at Cubs, and the last, if needed, is back at American Family Field.  

Since the Cubs seem to be doing a good game, bad game pattern, they need to win this first one.