Buying a barbeque as Shannon and Kimberly's wedding present was Dave's idea. We noticed that Matt mentioned that they were registered, whilst Shannon had explicitly told us that he wasn't registered and wasn't expecting wedding presents, although some people were getting them presents anyway. Dave came up with the suggestion that we gamers could chip in for a nice barbeque.

Like all ideas, this took a while to develop even though we only had two weeks before the wedding. Dave sent out an email and we discussed it a bit, made sure that Shannon was ok with the concept of barbeques (without giving away what we were planning). But it still took over a week before we had decided to definitely get a barbeque.

So the question was what barbeque to get. With about seven people chipping in, and Donald and I willing to cover a large portion of the cost of a nice bbq, I wanted to get a Hasty Bake, sort of like what Pick had gotten from his parents. On the Hasty Bake web site, the only dealer in California is Barbeques Galore in Walnut Creek. Today we drove there to look at the Hasty Bake models, and other models.

Once we got there though we found out that the people there have never heard of Hasty Bake. Not a huge problem as it turned out because Dave really wanted a gas barbeque and Hasty Bake only has charcoal barbeques. So we looked around a bit at the barbeques ranging from a couple hundred dollars to over $6000 for a huge built-in barbeque. Eventually one of the sales people ran us through several models describing each.

The model that I liked was this big steel barbeque. Gas powered, it has a main cooking section with four burners, a secondary cooking section with two burners. Each section having its own lid with a window and temperature gauge. A built in open air burner for cooking something in a pot rounds out the package. The underside are has two doors for accessing storage space and the drip pans. (Strangely enough, most of the medium sized barbeques had steel panels to hide the underside, which makes it inconvenient to use the underside for storage). The model had brass burners and grillwork and was all in all a good complete package for $2000.

I wasn't sure if Donald would be willing to pay $800, though $500 was fine with him. I didn't want to push it so I let Dave talk me into a more realistic barbeque. We bought a Turbo, 4 burner gas powered barbeque. It has a black hood and finish, sort of a hard plastic material. We upgraded the burners and grill to stainless steel. Also added a side burner for stovetop cooking. Add in a barbeque kit, apron, temperature gauge, assembly and deliver charges and (later) cookbook and chain with lock and it all came out to about $1750. A worthy gift that should last a lifetime, with proper care and maintenance.

Unfortunately we can't get this delivered until Tuesday after the wedding. So Dave makes up a bookmark with a picture of a very similar barbeque and a little note saying that the barbeque will be delivered Tuesday. Naturally Shannon and Kimberly will be off honeymooning in Ireland so someone is going to have to be at their house to receive the beast.

After buying the barbeque we went to California Pizza Kitchen, which is one of those weird California restaurants. They make dishes that would normally go with potatoes or rice or pasta but instead are served on a pizza crust. I had a Chicken Alfredo and Dave had the Havana Chicken. It's actually pretty good. If you look at the menu it's very Californian, sort of an international healthy version of various dishes.