Mrs. Dog just officially became Smarter than me. I know that's going to be hard for many to believe. But it's true.

She recently completed her goal of achieving a bachelor's degree before the age of 50. And she beat it with time to spare.

So we had a cookout with friends and family over to celebrate. Except we scheduled it months ago and little did we know it'd be on the hottest day of the year. It reached 103 at our House yesterday which caused some change of plans.

I spent days prepping the patio for an outdoor gathering. But in reality it would have been cruel and unusual punishment to make our guests sit out there for a meal no matter how shady or good the food was.

I was up at 2:30am to start smoking an 8.5lb Picnic Cut Pork Butt (shoulder). And let me tell you it was 89 degrees at 3:00am yesterday. I was sweating by the moonlight as I tried to stabilize the temp on my Smoker to 225-235. Minding that smoker from 3:25 in the morning to 3:45 in the afternoon was brutal. But the pulled pork it yielded was worth it.

In my "down time" I made a huge pile of Mississippi Delta Coleslaw which surprisingly ended up being the star of the day. I had prepared a batch of Picnic Beans on Friday too. But by the time came to bake the beans on Saturday, we had already made the decision to move the party inside. So guess what? I ended up out on the patio cooking the beans on the Grill so we didn't add extra oven heat to the inside of he house. Must've been easy on the grill getting to 325 when the air outside was already at 103!

While the grill was hot I put some sweet Peppers Stuffed with cream cheese and chives, and jalapeno peppers stuffed with cream cheese and garlic on the grill for appetizers. And yes, of course we smoked both Moink (beef) and Boink (bison) balls for a couple hours on the smoker too.

Whipped up a Watermelon-Vadalia Onion salad while Mrs. Dog made a punch bowl full of her famous Mountain White Spritzers (Linganore Mountain White wine + 7Up + blueberries, strawberries, blackberries and red raspberries).

We toasted Mrs. Dog's education and pigged out on pig served with raw onions and 6 different BBQ sauces. Chocolate cake and blackberry pie was served as dessert and topped of with some fine Port wine we brought back from Portugal last year.

At this point Mrs. Dog reminded me that she is now smarter than me. To which I responded that she is so smart she is morphing into Albert Einstein right before my very eyes! In fact, I said, "I can see your moustache coming in better already."

And that is proof of why she is smarter than me.