Bucket

Every year Mike holds his annual festival of dysfunction and meat. Apparently the dysfunction happened during the first few years of the barbecue, long before Randy and I started dating and I began attending the barbecue each year. Mike used to invite a few of his ex-girlfriends and other friends who didn't get along and hilarity ensued (well, uncomfortable, awkward hilarity, but hilarity nonetheless from what I hear). There was not much dysfunction at this year's barbecue (sadly), but there was, however, a shit ton of meat. :)

Mike fired up the grill at about 11:30am, after most of the lawn furniture had been blown over by the rather strong gusts of wind. Does that qualify as dysfunction? No?

I've been trying to convince Mike to join MySpace or to do something similar in order to get a girlfriend in this area, so that soon she will be an ex-girlfriend and he can start inviting exes to his barbecue again. Unfortunately, this did not work as Mike adamently refuses to join MySpace despite the fact that he complains all the time about being single and lonely. So if any of you ladies out there are single, eat meat, and enjoy sarcasm and sci-fi (and can tolerate Dungeons and Dragons playing), please feel free to leave a note in the comments and I'll be happy to send along Mike's email address.

This was Brandie's first year at the barbecue, and she proudly displayed her own dysfunction, on a T-shirt I recently purchased for her that says "i ride short bus". But not only does Brandie ride the short bus, she DRIVES the short bus! And not only does she DRIVE the short bus, but she is a supervisor at a company that is in charge of many of the short buses in the area! :) Here she is with Emily the adorable Buinicky child. :)

And here is Brandie's husband, Dave, who you may remember from my high school reunion blog (he and I were in guitar class together). Next to him is Mike's friend Alana (she's married), and Mike himself. In the background is Mike's sister Brandy, who is going to be Mike's new roommate when Doug moves out in October. We're all very excited that we'll be seeing more of her starting this fall. And congratulations to Doug on his recent condo purchase!

Jenna's wearing makeup because she and Jason were on their way to Jason's mom's wedding that evening. The wedding that she scheduled on the day of Mike's barbecue (AFTER Mike had set the date of the barbecue, I might add) after having dated this particular gentleman for something like 13 years. Jason somehow managed to escape being photographed during the barbecue.

Jim and Maggie and Neil and Laura drove all the way from Rhode Island (where Mike went to college) to attend this year's festival of dysfunction. And they brought their little dogs with them as well. Well, Jeff and Maggie did anyway...

Neil brought pigs feet.

If that's not dysfunction, I don't know what is.

Ew. :D

Nobody actually ATE the pigs feet, mind you. Later my mom told me that I should have brought them home to give to my dad. My dad is gross, apparently. :D

Due to the gustiness of the wind and the insanely NOT humid day, it was actually a little chilly outside (compared to the 100 degree, 100% humidity weather we had previously been having). So Randy, who had showed up in shorts and a T-shirt, warmed his hands by the piping hot grill. :)

For those of you keeping track, I think this is maybe the THIRD picture of Randy that I have where he is smiling with his teeth showing. :D

Over the course of the day, we sampled (well, gorged ourselves, to be fair) MANY different varieties of carnivorous goodness (meat).

There were...

Hamburgers

Hot dogs

Sausage

Beef ribs

Pork ribs

Steak

Steak tips (from the Meat House of course)

Pigs feet (EW!)

Chicken

Not to mention all of the non-meat side dishes that were available!

Pictured: The ribs. The beastly ones are the beef ribs. There are actually only FOUR beef ribs there, and they were SO delicious. Mmm... meat... (sorry Barbara :D )

Brandie's adorable children (well, two of them anyway) visited briefly in the afternoon. Here's Indigo eating one of the scrumptious chocolate chip cookies that Mike's mom made for the barbecue. Indie has chocolate on her nose. It's really cute. :)

We had a really nice time sitting around and chit-chatting all morning, but in the afternoon it was time to get down to the most important part of the barbecue: EXTREME* BADMINTON!!!

*NOTE: Extreme badminton is not truly extreme unless Randy is playing.

Our teams consisted of Mike and Alana on one side, and Randy, me, and Beth on the other, with Mike's parents and sister playing intermittantly depending on who, say, had to take pictures of Randy's signature hop. :D But basically we all played badminton for a solid five hours straight. It was awesome.

And EXTREME!

I think our team won (okay, we weren't keeping track, but still) mainly because of the EXTREME effectiveness of Randy's hop. Without the hop, it was nearly impossible for any of us to hit the shuttlecock. It's all about the hop! :D

The best part was when Mike's dad was playing on our team and paused to inspect what he thought was a rock in the middle of the lawn on our side of the net. After further investigation he found out that it was not, in fact, a rock, but a FLOWER POT that had been buried in the ground. Only the top of the rim was sticking up and was barely visible. But those with bare feet knew it was there. Anyway, Mike's dad dug it up, took the earth out of it and plugged up the hole in the ground, and badminton resumed. :D

After badminton it was time for... more meat of course! And we were supposed to have cake to celebrate Jason's birthday, which was this past Monday (happy birthday, Jason!), but Jenna and Jason completely forgot about the cake and left for the wedding before we could have any. :(

Don't worry, we celebrated Jason's birthday later in the week at Ruby Tuesday's.

Here are Beth and Mike taking a rest after our marathon badminton game.

As you all know (and if you don't, you have some blog reading to catch up on :D), Shadow, Mike's legend of a cat, passed away not too long ago. Left to carry the torch is Mike's sister's cat, Casper (he's the big one in the picture). The student has become the teacher. And Teddy, the wee little kitten has become the new Shadow-in-training.

Teddy is definitely on the right road to becoming a fearsome terror of a cat. He's already fond of trying to attack people's faces and is EXTREMELY playful. :) Shadow would be very proud.

After I had been playing with Teddy for a while (with sufficient hand-covering, I might add), Randy pleaded, "Marissa, step away from the kitty. Step away! We are not getting another kitty!" So I reluctantly retreated to the couch. Two second later, Randy is playing with Teddy. Way to go Randy, trying to convince me that it's about making sure I don't want another cat when it's really that YOU want to play with the kitten! Bullshit! :D

All in all, the barbecue, though not very dysfunctional, was a rousing success. And I'm sure Mike had a horrible time eating all of the leftovers for the rest of the week. :D

Previous