Mmmmm bacon... Deep. Fried. Bacon.

Em's sister was in town for a couple of weeks recently - we decided we'd go check out a place I'd seen on the internet that serves "Chicken Fried Bacon".

Explanation for the foreigners: Americans like fried chicken. This is chicken heavily coated in a batter made with egg and seasoned flour and deep fried. A popular Southern dish is chicken fried steak - this is a tough steak that has been tenderized and coated with the same egg then seasoned flour before also being deep fried. This is served with a cream gravy heavily seasoned with black pepper.

Enter Sodolaks - the guy that runs Sodolak's was looking for a new appetizer and he hit upon the idea of chicken fried bacon - it's exactly what says it is - streaky bacon coated in seasoned flour and deep fried. Served with cream gravy for dipping.

Wow!

Here's a bad photo of our actual appetizer:

It was actually pretty good - crunchy bacony goodness. Dipped in cream :-)

The best part for me was actually the whole experience - it's in the middle of nowhere, staffed with the nicest people you'll ever meet and the clientele was pretty varied - tourists (us), locals, college kids from nearby Texas A&M and a few real life cowboys complete with boots and spurs.

Here's the video that got me interested in going:

Once you get over the fact that it's a dish that propels you towards the inevitable heart attack, it all makes sense - nice people, cool location and deep fried pork. That's good living!

Dear Pool Builder: Don't upset the redhead

So we're still here and we're still waiting for our pool to be finished. We've lost an entire week for no good reason beyond the builder messed up.

Em is getting a little more than upset with them and it's starting to show.

At some point today I think she's going to pull a Gary Busey and threaten to rip out the builders endocrine system :-)




If I were him, I'd get the Pebbletec guy here soon.

A bit more progress

On Saturday the stone guys turned up again and finished off the stonework... now we're just waiting for the pool itself to be finished.

The stone looks really nice!

Here's how the patio now looks capped with flagstone:

And here's the patio area as a whole - the umbrella is in one of the umbrella holders we had installed in the concrete when it was poured:

And at the other end of the pool we have a couple of sun loungers and another brolly:

And a close-up:
They are SO comfortable! We went out yesterday afternoon (84 degrees F on the last weekend in October - the weather doesn't always suck here!) with a glass of rose (yes, more pink drinks) and lazed around in the sun... lovely!

Someone with too much time on their hands

This is good...


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More progress

We are now starting to see some more progress - there are now more things finished than there are things left to do... cool :-)

Here is the beginnings of the deck - you can see the forms (wooden pieces) and rebar (reinforcement bars):


They brought the concrete from the truck by wheel barrow(!), poured it into the forms, then sprinkled on the pea gravel, pushed the gravel into the concrete and then let it set up for a bit. Then they spray it down and brush off the concrete to expose the gravel:

Here I am standing in the shallow end with the deck all finished:

Here's a view back toward the house - you can see the new location of the A/C hidden around the corner a bit more and you can see the patio that will have flagstone on it:
Finally here is one of someone who can't wait for that spa to be filled with hot water!:

Bit more progress

We're still here... waiting for the pool!




We've had a couple of weeks where progress has been a bit slow. Since the last post we had the plumbing all finished, the electricians installed almost everything and then found they had the older version of the control panel when I had asked for the latest version (because it will control the lights better :-))... quite impressive - they found the error and uninstalled the panel and waited for the new one to arrive. Given there is nothing in the contract about software version I am happy with that.


So that was one day we lost due to my fussiness.

Then we lost 2 days waiting for the inspector (but we passed first time, yay!).


Then it rained.


Then the coping guys took FOUR DAYS to install the coping and tile on the pool. Then we lost a day for no apparent reason which got us to this week. The decking is next and we had two beautiful days Monday and Tuesday but no crew... and now it's raining and the yard is one giant mudpit so no decking until next week at the earliest :-(


But here are some pics anyway:

Starting to take shape - you can hardly see the color due to the stone dust from them cutting the pieces to size:

The whole pool done - you can see the tile too - the water line will be halfway up the bottom row of tiles:

Here's the spa with the tiered spillway:

Gunite

They came today and poured the gunite for the pool... now it's really coming along...

They put up blue sheeting to keep the overspray from going all over the place:



Here you can see them shooting the gunite onto the back wall of the pool - the guy on the top left has the nozzle:

Now they're forming the spa bench and sunshelf:

Here's the finished article:

We could not be happier with the result - the pool looks great, the spa is perfectly positioned and it all works just the way we imagined, if not better.

Today is plumbing, tomorrow is wiring and then we'll be looking for the flagstone and tile guys.