I’ve been known to have some crazy ideas from time to time. Like opening a restaurant that sells cheese skirts, or creating a product called Drumstick Bites – a dessert that takes the best part about Drumstick ice cream (the nougat of chocolate in the bottom of the cone) and selling just that, or befriending crows. What can I say? I’m a dreamer.
My latest idea is a little more down-to-earth, at least. Ever since buying our house a year ago, I’ve been obsessed with building my own backyard pizza oven. When I first broached the subject with Tara, she eyed me skeptically.
“With your own hands?” she asked.
“No, I thought I’d use somebody else’s,” I replied. “Of course with my own hands!”
“Sweetie,” she reminded me, “You’re terrible at assembling things.”
‘Tis true. When it comes to tools, I’m hapless. Yes, I know the difference between a regular and Phillips head screwdriver, but I do have to think about which is which for a few seconds. Actually assembling things is where my ineptitude shines. If you’ve ever seen me try to put together a simple IKEA bookshelf, you know it ain’t a pretty sight. I once assembled a charcoal grill with the wheels upside down. Don’t ask.
So, Tara was right to question my sudden burst of DIY confidence. Yet I kept telling her I was going to build us this awesome outdoor pizza oven, never mind the fact that we rarely even trouble ourselves to heat up frozen pizzas. This would be a game changer! I’d learn how to make fantastic wood-fired pizzas that would earn raves from dinner guests! I’d become so known for my pizza-making skills, I envisioned everyone in the neighborhood no longer referring to our house as “Dick’s old place,” but instead, Little Italy.
I even set a deadline for this project. Summer 2024! I announced my intentions to my parents, random people at bars, even a bored-looking grocery clerk one time (“DiGiornio? DiCheating! I’m a-gonna make my own someday!”)
OK, not really. I try to avoid chitchat with checkers as much as possible. But these thoughts were running through my mind, if that counts.
And then I Googled how to build an outdoor DIY pizza oven. Watched an eight-minute video tutorial from Family Handyman. Within 30 seconds, I realized I was never, ever going to build my own outdoor pizza oven. Between the wet saw, 3/16” tempered hardboard, fiberglass rebar, cultured stone, and refractory mortar – those were just a few of the required tools and supplies, never mind the actual physical labor – I knew this was one DIY project that was way over my head.
The dream isn’t completely dead. There’s always the Ooni Koda 16 gas-powered pizza oven, or if I really want to splurge, the Gozney dome. Both get great reviews and, most importantly of all, require virtually no assembly. Would buying one bring me the same satisfaction as building my own from scratch? Well, no. But thinking about all the trouble I could get into with masonry tools and concrete mix, we’re all better off this way, trust me.
I made the rookie mistake of thinking just because winter was over, that winter was over. This proved to be wrong when we awoke to 5″ of snow on the ground Friday morning, the third full day of spring.
In my defense, we’d had barely an inch of snow since Winter Storm Gerri walloped us in mid-January. With the grass turning green, the forsythia in bloom, daffodils pushing out of the earth, and a bunch of 60º and 70º days over the past two months, you can forgive me my assumptions. Hell, I’ve already been bitten by mosquitoes – more than once! I know that snow can, and does, fall in the upper Midwest in March and April – as it did last year – but it just seemed like the weather has been so abnormally warm and tornado-y, we were done for the season.
OK, fine. Lesson learned.
Cold as it was, we actually had a fire in the wood stove Friday evening. Good thing I split all those logs, huh? And for the third consecutive Friday, I watched an Ethan Hawke movie (Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and this time, Reality Bites). Which is totally random and nothing more than a coincidence really, but now I feel all this pressure to keep my weird Friday-night-Ethan-Hawke-film streak going. Guess I’d better figure out where to stream Before Midnight (because I’m a completist) and Dead Poets Society and Alive and Training Day. If you have any recommendations, hit me up.
So, this is it. My final week at TobacCo. Not even a full week; more like a baby week, as my last day is Wednesday. It’s the end of an(other) era!
I’d been worried about a lack of work last week, but then I was deluged with project tickets and suddenly had plenty to keep me busy. I attacked them with gusto, wanting to make sure I completed as many projects as possible before leaving. One of them even involved writing a job posting for my own position; my boss asked if I would feel weird about this, and I assured him, not in the least. After all, who knows my job better than me? The only problem is, I was perhaps too efficient in tackling all this work, because once again my plate is empty this morning. I’ll let the marketing team know during today’s meeting that they should act now or forever hold their peace.
I’ve been toying with the idea of a solo trip to Rapid City during my 11-day stretch between jobs, but that’s largely weather-dependent, and the forecast is still a toss-up. It’s conceivable that I could decide to go 12 hours before setting out. It’s just as probable that I spend my time in Wisconsin instead, exploring a few new-to-me places. Either way, I’m jazzed about having some time off!
Mark My Words 
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