Ratatouille

Still haven't seen the theatrical version, but caught the reality version tonight.

I love three day weekends. I had my lazy day yesterday, piddling around the house after my morning soccer game. Holy hell, I am in dire need of conditioning. I wish we played twice a week, as I forgot how different the cardio workout is when sprinting hard in short bursts. We won, thankfully, but I am not yet in the cardio shape to really make the impact and contribution I want.

Today was a little more productive in terms of work and house issues. I got the bad news I was expecting on the condo-wide assessment and it is just as ugly as I estimated. I think it will cause me to leave my job for a better paying gig, which sucks, as I am quite content with my salary and position. Seattle just hasn't caught up to the rest of the country in terms of competitive salaries, which is baffling, considering our extremely high cost of living. I am either going in-house or pursuing some options in CA. Sadly, it is more affordable for me to commute to CA on a CA salary than to stick around here.

Perhaps in denial of this, after running the lake, I went to Whole Paycheck. The bone-in ribeyes (my absolute favorite) were on sale, so I thought I would grill one up and eat the leftovers for the rest of the week. These bad boys were absolutely huge (which probably explained the sale price) and the butcher behind the counter gave me one that was almost two pounds. Jesus Brandon, I will be eating steak in every meal this week. Steak and egg scramble, steak salad, steak quesadillas.

I haven't grilled in a while and opened up the BBQ to fire it up. Holy fucking shit, there was a live rat on the grill! I shrieked like a little bitch, jumped back a few feet, hitting my elbow on the door and ran back in the condo, shaking like a leaf. From an encounter with a rat. I still don't know where it is as I sit out here on the deck, waiting for the two pounder to grill. That fucker should be good and grateful that I didn't light the thing automatically, with the lid down. That is my usual MO, but because I hadn't grilled in a while, I was going to clean the grill a bit. It is probably wrong that I found myself wondering what sound it would have made had I just lit the grill automatically, with the lid down.

I have seen rats exactly twice before, and always at the same time of year. A few years ago, I was standing at the deck door and saw one scurry across the ledge of my balcony. It took me nearly a month to go back out on the deck. The more recent time was about a month ago and it was much, much worse. It was a hot evening by Seattle standards and I was lounging on the couch with the deck doors open. It was really late and I had fallen asleep in the couch. I suddenly woke up and was about to get up to go to bed when I saw some movement that caught my eye. As I was half asleep, I thought my eyes might have been playing tricks on me, but no. A goddamn rat had come in the condo and my goddamn dog (who barks at passing dogs across the street) slept through the whole thing. I watched the vermin scurry across my hardwood floors, only to do a 180 and run out to the deck. Filthy little fucker.

I have no proof, but I firmly believe that was the same fucker on my grill. If it is still somewhere in the BBQ, I hope it is positively dripping in fat drippings. I hope it dies from overeating the renderings.\\

Unrelated: I am excited to watch the Justin Timberlake special on HBO. Pathetic.