Everything but the oink

I had the honor and pleasure to sit down and talk with celebrity whole-hog pitmaster Ed Mitchell for a writing project.

I was a little starstruck at first, but Ed Mitchell is one of the finest, most genuine human beings you could ever hope to meet. I asked him to explain to me, from his perspective, why North Carolinians are so passionate about barbecue.

"It's our culture," he explained. "When I was a boy, North Carolina had two things driving our economy. The legal one was tobacco, and the illegal one was moonshine."

I asked him about the legend of cooking his first hog at age 14.

"Let me tell you something," he said. "It doesn't really take all night to cook a hog. Back then, men didn't drink or cuss around women, so staying up all night with the hog was an excuse to drink moonshine all night."

He told me the story: He was too young to drink, but was allowed to go out with his father, uncles, cousins and grandfathers to "watch the pig" one night. Apparently, the grownups passed the jar of moonshine around a few times too many and fell asleep. Ed stayed up and made sure the fire didn't get too high.

After a few hours, the grownups started waking up and panicking about having done burned the pig. When they checked it, it was perfectly cooked.

"My daddy asked me if I had done it," Mr. Mitchell told me. "Then he looked at the pig, looked at me, and passed me the jar."

Swoon.

New Facebook features

Good lord, people. Everyone (including me) hates the new FB features. I will speak truth to power since everyone else is being so bashful.

Dear Mark,

I accepted a friend request from that kid I really don't remember from middle school. It hurts my feelings seeing him commenting freely on the statuses of people I don't know and never acknowledging my dazzling bon mots.

Seriously, dude. Not cool. I rely on FB to support my delusions of grandeur, not dash them.

Your fan-
Leigh Ann

Big plans, short attention spans

Mr. Sweetypants and I shot two hours of video in various places near and dear to us in London last time we were there. Our grand plan was to edit together short cuts of movement to represent the loneliness of human existence in a cold, overpopulated, urban environment, and we selected the perfect song before we even got on the plane.

We spent an entire evening patching together the first 15 seconds of our vacation video. Then I got tired and said, "Screw it, I just wanna publish it."

The raw footage at around the minute mark illustrates why Mr. Sweetypants and I are perfect for each other. We both think it's hysterical. I was performing Shakespeare loudly and poorly. Mr. Sweetypants yelled, "People coming!" And he continued to film as I tried to act cool.

I married the right person.

It's Friday, I'm an old

So we still have stuff to get out of the old house before it closes at the end of next month. I'm being a big girl and throwing stuff out so as not to create the same clutter here.

But I just found the book, "The Cure: 10 Imaginary Years" that I bought in London in 1988 during my semester abroad. My roommate Kathy and I travelled from London to Paris to Brugge to Amsterdam by train and I had two tapes to play on my knockoff Walkman from Shepherd's Bush: "Faith" and "Pornography."

"For God's sake, just try not to fling yourself off the train." Kathy said about my choice of music. Kathy and I went on to see our first two Cure shows together.

I don't need the book, or the clippings and ticket stubs from all the Cure shows I went to. But just like my Duran Duran albums I have nothing to play on, I just need those memories to be close to me.

It is 2011. And I really just had this conversation with a contractor.

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 7:17 PM, richard s wrote:

Leigh Ann, The guys will be there tomorrow to put the bench back together. I'll bring the refund check by on Saturday morning about 10-11. Not sure if Steve will be back by then or not.

When Steve does get back please let me know if he has any questions or
concerns.

Thanks Rich

Leigh Ann Frink to Steve, richard
show details 7:26 PM (1 minute ago)

I think Steve has full confidence in my ability to make decisions, as I've owned homes much longer than he has.

Adventures in compromise

Mr. Sweetypants and I recently moved out of the hipster dump I bought 10 years before we met.

The house was tiny and 63 years old. The fixer-upper charm had long since passed and we were tired of being terrified we'd both get food poisoning at the same time with just one small bathroom to share.

So, we bit the bullet. We found our perfect grownup house in the same neighborhood, went through rounds and rounds of post-bust bending over with our bank, giving up pounds of flesh and the rights to our potential offspring, and moved.

As the old house was only 740 square feet and I'd been in it since the mid-90s, we needed new furniture for the much-bigger Frinkenplowman residence. MSP and I have very different tastes in, well, everything. So we struck out furniture shopping with a plan: We made a list of deal-breakers each of us could not stand. For MSP, it was old-people busy; for me it was overstuffed and clunky.

We were in and out of the furniture store in just under an hour.

Yesterday, our fabulous dining room furniture was delivered. We didn't have a dining room in the old house and were ecstatic to have a place for six friends to sit and have dinner with us. But the plan was to leave out the insert and only use four of the six chairs for everday use, as the full set overwhelms the room.

The delivery guys set up the full set as is and left. No problem, they did a great job. I arranged it the way I wanted it, put the extra chairs in the corners like my Sainted Southern Mother directed me to and asked MSP to take the leaf out. He tugged on it from several directions and couldn't get it out.

MSP then crawled under the table and examined the bolts from underneath. He messed with them for a while before starting to complain about having to take the entire bloody table apart to remove the insert.

He was still under the table when I decided to go outside and enjoy a cigarette on the deck swing. He came out to retrieve his tool kit from the storage room and I said, "(Our friend) is coming over later, maybe he can help you." MSP replied, "Honey, I'm an engineer. If I can't figure it out, no one can."

I took that as my cue to just shut up. So I smoked another cigarette and listened to the English cursing escalate from the dining room.

Without a word, I tiptoed past MSP on my way back into the house. I came upstairs and logged onto the interweb. I looked up the manufacturer of the table and found their customer service number. As I was on hold, listening to "Dust in the Wind," MSP declared that he was too mad to mess with it and would figure something out later.

Friendly customer service guy picked up after MSP went into the bathroom. I explained the problem and asked if he could direct me to the assembly instructions on the Web. He told me there weren't any, but asked me what the problem was. I said we couldn't figure out how to remove the insert.

"Oh, that's easy," he told me. "Just look for the butterfly clips underneath and it'll pop out. If that doesn't work, I can have a technician come out next Friday or Saturday and show you how."

MSP walked out of the bathroom at that minute and I said, "Do you mind if I put you on the phone with my husband?"

Our table looks awesome.

That thing we do

So today:

The fire alarm at the place that pays me was tested for five... long... minutes at 8:35 a.m.

Steve and I are pretty sure the underwriters are just making up things to request at the last minute. (Seriously, borrowing money since the bust is a million times harder than it used to be.)

Steve, the underwriters, our realtor and I furiously emailied and faxed documents to be able to close Thursday morning.

All this was going on while I was trying to get all my work for current projects done so I can be out of the office for a week without missing deadlines.

The movers called and cancelled.

My Inspiring and Understanding Supervisor waved me into his office. I gritted my teeth and used every ounce of my Southern charm not to yell, "For the love of God, what do you want now?" But he writes my reviews for HR and is super awesome.

He said, "You have to see this video." And I really wanted to say, "I don't have time to watch videos."

He hit play. Seconds later as I watched, I did that thing my Sainted Southern Mother, sister and I do exactly the same way. I teared up, clutched for my pearls and made that gasping sound we make when something touches our hearts. (I can't spell it, but if you know us, you know the sound.)

So I sent it to both of them and told them it made me do that thing we do. They both replied that it totally made them do it.

Watch this good Southern boy create the awesomest wedding proposal ever.

It may be the sweetest thing ever. And I was in a much better mood after watching it. Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion.