Birthday Long Weekend Day 2: Birthday Party

In the morning, Jethrien gave me my birthday presents: A PS4 Pro, and copies of Final Fantasy XV, Final Fantasy Type-0, and World of Final Fantasy. I set up the system and played some of the latter, which is “Final Fantasy Pokémon that you stack on your head” at first glance. I’m expecting a whimsical experience.

I had pizza bagels for lunch, because birthdays are a time for weird indulgences.

Meanwhile, I also got the smoker going for my party in the evening. I did a smoked pork carnitas, which marinated in orange juice, lime juice, salt, garlic and chipotle overnight, then smoked for 10 hours in oak smoke. It could have smoked even longer, but it came out very nicely. I also did a smoked steak proof-of-concept with a fajitas recipe out of my smoker cookbook, which was tasty but tough, as I did it with a London broil. (Apparently, I balk at paying $10.50/pound for skirt steak when I can buy prime rib for $7/pound or London broil for $5/pound.) I did the whole thing as a taco spread with yellow rice, black beans, salsa, guacamole and the like. Mithrigil made a fruit salsa, and Jethrien made me a rainbow cake with chocobo decorations.

The party wasn’t the biggest we’ve ever thrown, but 16 people is respectable and everyone seemed to have a good time. I have found and purchased a bottle of Nassau Royale Liquor (a delightfully sweet rum that we’d had in the Bahamas years ago) and was encouraging people to try it; and also got ginger beer, a perennial favorite for mixing.

Sparticleman brought his 3-year-old daughter to the party, and she was apparently very concerned about the cake and making sure she would get to have some. She apparently has been checking in repeatedly that there would, in fact, be cake and that they would stay long enough to eat it. (There was, she did.)

Birthday Long Weekend Day 3: Adventures in Farmingdale

I got to sleep until after 9am, which is a birthday blessing all by itself. The rain and a cold front had rolled in, so while the previous two days were 90 degrees and very humid (ARR apparently spent much of them in my parents’ backyard and pool), it was suddenly 65 degrees out and raining miserably. Not that this mattered for out mostly-indoor plans, and ARR was apparently already so worn out he took a nap.

My sister’s fiancé was in town with her, so my mom put us all to work, moving all of the furniture out of the living room to replace the rug and rug pad with the new ones she’s had sitting in the dining room for two months. Bill’s presence made that much easier, given that I’m pretty sure my dad and I couldn’t move the marble-topped table without one or both of us hurting ourselves.

We saw Deadpool 2, which was not quite as good as the first one—they repeated a bunch of jokes, they leaned on some overused tropes, and some of the shock value of how good the first one was had worn off. Still fun, and I did like that the after-credits scenes addressed the cheap plot device that is fridging.

My mom made the now-traditional seafood feast, with some of the biggest damn king crab legs I’ve ever seen. Also part of the dinner were shrimp, pesto pasta, corn on the cob, broccoli, green beans and watermelon salad. Then came the rainbow cookies and the newly-modified version of my favorite birthday cake. (It’s a three-layer chocolate cake filled with raspberry jam, with chocolate icing and whipped cream all around the sides. The modified version uses marshmallow frosting around the sides to make it ARR-safe.)

My sister had some cooking-themed gifts for me, including a fun looking BBQ sauce and rub, vegetable roasting spice mixes, and cedar grilling wraps, the latter of which I’m hoping to try out this week.