Steak

I love wireless. I am sitting out on my little patio, screen
dimmed, so as not to obstruct my view of the light of stars, planets, fireflies, and fireworks.

This makes typing hard as I cannot see the keyboard well and I am, perhaps, incapable of touch-typing. My dinner was an excellent marinated grilled steak with grilled vegetables. I make my steak marinade from Carlo Rossi Paisano wine, Worcestershire sauce, fresh ground black pepper, seasoned salt, sugar, and assorted other things, tonight a couple of cloves of crushed garlic, sometimes onion, sometimes concentrated frozen orange juice, often some liquid smoke, sometimes ground chili peppers. I also made my blue margaritas. I grilled, then sat at my tiny table on my small patio with candlelight and watched the twilight deepen. The fireflies lit shortly after sunset, near the ground and slowly moved up, finding their mates in the trees, and went dark as they consummated their little passions in the deepening night. Only a few lonely insects still flash, high in the air moving fast, looking for a mate.

A bat was flying overhead earlier, snatching its dinner from the air. I cannot hear this one. Perhaps it speaks at a higher pitch than those of the desert in Arizona, or perhaps my unusual high-end hearing has finally failed. I do not know. I heard the bats in the mountains in the Pacific Northwest as a teenager, and the ones in Scottsdale Arizona only a few years ago. In both cases I was the only human about who could hear them. This one was silent to my ears.

Earlier yet today I was mowing and putting the grass down as mulch in my vegetable garden. I stopped while doing so to pull yet another batch of thistles rising to 3 feet and threatening to flower. In the process I disturbed the hiding place of a baby rabbit. His instinct was to get undercover and freeze. Undercover was the recently pulled thistles, pulled from my older compost. So I went inside and grabbed my camera and harassed the poor little thing by photographing him. He and his relatives have forced me to put a rabbit fence around my vegetable garden, but they are appealing, and are welcome to my dandelions.

As it is the Fourth of July weekend, impatient people have started to set off their fireworks the night is full of bangs and booms and flashes. It is nothing like what it will be in two days, but still the noise is present near and far; Fireworks of this type are illegal here of course, as they are in out close neighboring state. But we have prominent fireworks manufacturers here, and many dealers. You can buy them easily at well advertised specialty stores. You just sign a document that states that you will take them out of state. It is all very foolish. The cop who lives two doors down buys and sets off many fireworks, and sometimes shoot off his gun unto the sky on the 4th and new years eve. Why have laws that so many break?

My charcoal still glows with a heart of red fire in the darkness. I roasted a couple of marshmallows in their heat. I am a patient marshmallow roaster. I like them golden brown and caramelized on the outside, liquid on the inside. No impatient burning for me. After the toasted marshmallows the flavor of my margarita was intensified, tart and limey.

I do not slow cook my steaks. I eat meat only rarely. I love salads and fruit and cheese. But I am in tune with my omnivorous biological nature. I love fish and chicken and red meat on occasion. I like my steaks thick, charred on the outside red in the middle, juicy and primal. I eat properly with steak knife and fork until the easily gotten meat is gone. Then, having no witnesses, I pick up the bones and tear remnants of flesh off with my teeth.... rich, tasty, MINE. If I were a cat I would growl.