You should already be laughing. Because it's true. But here's how it didn't start...
Casa de Dry Tortugas housed the Stano family this past week and in response to our "hospitality", they gifted us a fire pit. Thanks, Stanos!!
According to Webster:
hospitality |ˌhäspiˈtalitē| (noun) the friendly and generous reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers.
According to Jaimie:
hospitality: a) when you expose a friend's parents to a grossly inappropriate movie featuring porn, masturbation, sex, genitalia, feces, autoerotic asphyxiation and so forth; b) when you come home at 4:00 in the morning on New Years Eve and bump into every wall in your home and speak in 6 foot voices so that your guests are roused from their sweet slumber.
While the Stanos have safely returned to their home state of Michigan, the fire pit remains safely on my back porch. It's 53 degrees outside on this fine evening so we decided to test out this pit of ours.
Attempt #1: Bobby purchased logs in advance and I picked up a copy of the Austin Chronicle that I never read, and it met its undue demise for attempt #1. While the Chronicle caught fire, the logs taunted us. We poured some vodka on it because it seemed like a good idea. Bobby remarks "Homeless people can do it! This is ridiculous."
Attempt #2: Bobby went to the corner store to get lighter fluid. Now we're cooking with oil (so we thought). The rest of the Chronicle was sacrificed along with 2 paint stirrers I planned to use to touch up the walls and several pairs of chopsticks from old Chinese take-out. The tip of one of the logs thought about catching fire. The cats sat at our back window and were mesmerized by the dancing flame which slowly petered out to a burning chopstick. In defiance, I mounted a 'mallow on another chopstick and forced it into the minuscule orange element. Nothing doing.
Attempt #3: I turned on the gas stove and made four toasted marshmallows effortlessly. Success.
Moral of the story: Buy a house with a fireplace. We couldn't have started a fire if we were in standing in one.
Also, Bryan didn't help. By that we mean, he and Bobby tried together and they (we) were still unsuccessful. The man cave loses its man cave card tonight.
This is not our fire.
