old ways or new?

I don't know about you, but I've noticed some things aren't as easy to do as they used to be.  Take whistling for example.  Not that I ever whistled a whole lot, but I used to manage to get out something recognizable.  I'm blaming muscles that have gone south, because my pucker isn't what it used to be. 
I tried whistling a tune for Elise the other day, and it wouldn't come out.   Don't know of anything to do about it, except maybe practice and see if that helps tone some mouth muscles.

For some situations though, there is help, and it's a smart person to recognize a need and take advantage of whatever assistance is out there.  And yes, I do consider myself smart!  I bought this handy little grabber a few weeks ago.  I don't expect to use it constantly, but there have been a couple of occasions where it's done the reaching instead of me.  Just this morning I dropped a gadget behind the sewing machine cabinet.  Rather than move the whole cabinet so I could get to the gadget, I reached for my handy dandy grabber, and had the little thing back in my hand in the blink of an eye.  Not even two shakes of a lamb's tail.  My kids have given me a bit of teasing about it, but I guess they figure that's their job.  The grandkids like using it too.

Anyhow, on to other things.

I decided I wanted to grill a steak tonite, partly because it gave me an excuse to use my charcoal chimney for the first time.  You've probably seen them.  Rather than put the charcoals in the Weber grill and soak them in lighter fluid, causing a big "whoosh" of flames, you stuff a bit of newspaper in the bottom of the chimney, and put the charcoals in top.  Light the papers, and about 15 or 20 minutes later the charcoals are ready to spread and start cooking.  No lighter fluid, no singed hair from the huge flame. 

I don't know that there would have been enough charcoal from one chimney to cook for a lot of people, but for singles or small gatherings, it should do fine.  I probably should have planned this a bit better and thrown on a chicken breast or two, maybe even a pork chop, instead of my lone steak, but se le vie.  (I may be smart, but didn't take any French classes to know how to spell that.)  Ah well.

In a very short time, dinner was served.  Mmmm.  Lot of food there, but there was enough left over to cover another meal, so it's all good.

Hope to have pictures next week of dirt in my planting beds.  It's scheduled for Tuesday...assuming I can verify I have someone to spread it.  I talked to a fellow in the neighborhood the other day, thinking possibly they had a landscaping/lawn mowing business, which it turns out he doesn't, but he does have a son about 22 who needs some work.  Hope I can talk to Junior tomorrow to make sure he's agreeable to doing it, if not I'll be scrambling to find someone else.

Have a good week everyone.