Does anyone know

if you can get e-coli or whatever from slicing your finger open while trying to put a skewer in raw chicken?

What I was trying to do was roast a chicken on my charcoal grill. I have no business doing this but my husband is on the road coming home from south Georgia and I felt like trying something new. My friend in West Virginia did this while I was visiting and the chicken was delicious. I thought I was paying enough attention, but possibly-NOT.

First of all, I was distracted by all of the different brands of charcoal at the grocery store and decided to try something called Greenwise 100% Wood Charcoal. Doesn't "100% natural" sound like a good thing? However, it doesn't look like charcoal; it looks like black pieces of lumber. When I was in college, my friends stopped asking me to get them their cigarettes from the machines in the basement if I was going there to do laundry. (Yes, there were cigarette vending machines in dorms back then. It was a long time ago.) I would get distracted by all of the labels and end up buying something other than what they had requested. "Give these a try," I would say. I learned then that smokers are very faithful to their brand, and I have just learned that I should have stuck with the normal charcoal briquettes.

I don't know if I put enough charcoal in or if the fire is hot enough to even roast marshmallows, let alone cook a chicken. It sure doesn't feel like it. And as I dumped the hot coals out of the chimney we use to start the charcoal, the pieces fell apart. I don't know if I'm supposed to leave the vents opened or closed, or if it's ok to open the lid to check and make sure everything is still cooking along. So basically, I don't know anything except that my finger hurts.

Tonight we are going to a restaurant where the local democrats have rented two rooms with televisions so that we can watch Barack Obama's speech. I honestly thought that there were only ten or twelve of us out here, so this is a nice surprise. And if this chicken doesn't roast, well, there's my fallback plan---dinner out.