I feel obligated to write about the BBQ, even though as an event, I think it stands on its own. The people who came seemed to have a good time, and the people who couldn't come... well... maybe they had a good time, too.

First off, it was hot. Super hot. Outrageously hot. I wished we had enough room inside the house to hold everyone, but it all turned out ok.

About 45 minutes before the BBQ was to begin, the pig roast guy called to say that he'd had a little car trouble. Apparently, while driving to our house, one of the doors fell off of the company van. Fell off. Crazy. So that was our one thing that went wrong. Thankfully, things didn't get worse.

The best part of the day was that I got to see some people I don't get to see a lot. Of course, Pat visited from Washington, which is nice. Berta's sister Mary Ann and her husband were there. Stan and Johnny came. The guys from D&D came, and so did Tony from the PHP meetup. Of course the guys from Rock River Star wouldn't miss a BBQ with beer. Some neighbors even wandered down.

There were also a lot of people from Berta's office, and I feel bad I didn't get to spend more time with them. I did get to meet one of Berta's co-workers that she talks about all the time but never comes to any of their company events. So that was nice.

Everyone's kids had a great time. We pulled out the moonbounce, which was entertaining. Berta got a ton of little water pistols that were fun, but I think the water balloons were appreciated by everyone, adults included.

We did the pirate treasure map. I think it was a big success. The kids (and parents) had fun searching for the clues, and the map was a big hit. I think next time, I'll have to do one for the parents, too, with more sophisticated clues.

The food was great. Everyone brought great stuff. Good salads, dip, applesauce, and desserts. The pig went over well. The BBQ sauce... I really need to get some of that for later in the summer. It was good.

In the evening, I did some really lame "magic" tricks from this mentalism video I've been learning from. While waiting for Michael to sober up (fail!), we unwisely got out the fireballs to juggle. That was a crowd-pleasing end to the evening. Yes, if you left early, you missed the fire-juggling.

Apart from some lost kids shoes, I think the BBQ was a success. The cleanup wasn't too awful the next day. My only real regret for the whole day is that I didn't get any of the Bousum's sangria.

It's no secret that we like to grill food and that people like to eat food that we've grilled. That's why the slow and ultimate demise of our grill over the past year was a bit upsetting.

The grill didn't survive the move very well. I think it's also possible that something broke inside it, but every time we used it after the move it essentially caught on fire. The insides would flame long after the gas was off, and it would happen every time we cooked with it. The flames were high and uncontrollable, and we just couldn't use it any more.

At some point, the wildlife became aware of the fact that we weren't using the grill any more, and decided to make use of this sheltered space. When Berta cut down the tall grass surrounding the deck, the local birds made great efforts in moving a ton of it into the grill to start building their second home in its confines. Yes, they did this twice.

We do a cookout every year (or try to) for my birthday, and invite everyone over. This year, we hope to invite a brand new crowd -- Some old friends, some new neighbors, some co-workers, and some other friends we don't usually invite to these things for one reason or another. But in preparation for the big cookout this year, we needed a new grill.

We shopped around a bit. Part of the problem with selecting a grill is that you don't want something that is going to fall apart after a year or two. Not that our old grill was this way - it lasted about 8 years - but I'm simply under the impression that a grill is a piece of hardware that you should not have to replace but in a rare circumstance. We have friends with grills that are very old, and I don't see why we shouldn't have our grill for just as long.

We looked at a few different brand names that we knew would last long. We wanted a big grilling surface, and I specifically wanted some different options for cooking. A griddle was top on my list beyond the standard grilling, and a rotisserie followed shortly after that.

Many of the newer grill models have this "infrared" cooking business, where they essentially heat up some ceramic element, and the radiation from that element cooks the food. It's supposed to be more like cooking with charcoal. I think it's a gimmick.

In any case, we settled on this Perfect Flame model. It has three sections of grill that can be removed for cleaning, and it comes with a griddle section so that I can cook my veggies and eggs on the grill itself. There is one of those weird infrared side burners that is supposed to be good for roasting. (I wonder if I can cook corn on it.) And there is a burner for a rotisserie, but there the rotisserie parts themselves - including the spit and turner - are sold separately.

We've only cooked a couple of burgers on the grill so far, being that it's so new yet, but they turned out alright. I'm looking forward to tossing a steak or some salmon on there to see what we can do with it, and I hope that it serves use well for this year's cookout as well as many cookouts in the future.