managing stress in a fast-paced world

Sand Hill Road is currently having a power outage, the hot weather probably has something to do with it…

I guess $100 an hour for 17 hours in Vegas isn’t bad… I went to Vegas last weekend for a friends bachelor party. A group of 8 of us went, I actually got there about 2 hours before them and played blackjack until they arrived, won $200. The night was filled with limo rides and vip treatment at Sapphire, Prive, and Seamless. I guess at the peak of the night I spent like $400 in 30 minutes, but I did end up winning $400 total at the tables. I was actually hoping to win enough to pay for the flight, too bad I spent all the money I took with me and my winnings. On the bright side I didn’t touch an ATM or a credit card.

By 5:30am when it was time for me to head to the airport to go home, I had $40 left and couldn’t wait to leave. I’m too old to be partying in Vegas for 17 hours straight, by the time I go home I had $15 left and slept for the next 12 hours.

Maybe in another 10 years I’ll be up for doing something like this again.

A few weeks ago I was trying to use my Weber Q grill, it wasn’t happy… for a long time now only the front half of the rectangular burner would light. When I tried to use it, something was wrong, the grill was lukewarm and the flame was so low it would blowout sometimes.

Last night I took some simple green, couple of trash bags, a brush, a needle, a torch, a rag, and the hose to the grill. I read online somewhere that there is a safety valve on the Q and if you turn on the gas too quickly it boots into safe mode and limits the flow of propane. I opened the valve quickly and heard a “click” and the reproduced the problem. Open it slowly and it’s back to normal!

I scrubbed the outside and inside of the grill down, all the food droppings and stuff went into a bag and then a quick rinse with the hose and it was fairly clean. Next I poked all the clogged burner holes and tried to turn it all on again, no go. Eventually I used the torch and burned off all the oil and grease that had covered the burner and then poked the holes clean from the ash that remained. That did the trick, the burner lit all the way around!

Here’s where I got a little creative, I put the heat on high and a pan of water to steam clean the inside, it was pretty neat, alot more grease and grime came out the bottom and the grill was noticeably cleaner on the inside. I guess this is something I should do more often.