Although I love to cook, all of the grills I have owned have been undersized, hibachi-like affairs, and I don’t grill out that often.

Our local AM radio station, WLIJ-AM, has had a trivia contest over the past several weeks. Our pagination techs, Mary and Carol, always have WLIJ on their radio, and sometimes I’ll turn it on the radio on my desk as well. The contest involved trivia questions read by Keith Cook between 2:30 and 3:30 each day. Each question answered correctly, up to a maximum of three, earned you an entry in the drawing.

We would often collaborate in the newsroom; one person would shout out the answer and two or three would begin dialing. You know that I have a massive collection of useless information, and it became a joke that when anyone from the newspaper got through, they’d tell Keith, “John Carney gave me the answer.”

Well, on Tuesday they drew five grand prize winners, and darned if I wasn’t one of them. I won a grill, a bag of charcoal and a cooler — but I won’t get the prizes until tomorrow, during a live remote WLIJ is doing from our flagship city park. I will be at the park taking photos of their first-ever disk golf tournament. (I wish I could enter the tournament, but I have to work later.) As soon as I get my prize, I’ll have to rush back to the newspaper, where production of the Sunday paper will already have started.

I don’t know exactly what kind of grill this is, but I assume it’s larger than any of the dinky little grills I’ve owned in the past. It may be the round, shallow, cover-less three-legged type of grill, but that would still be wonderful.

I wish I had it today; I have chicken thighs marinating in the fridge right now and bet they’d taste fantastic grilled.

I should get through at the paper by 3 or 4 tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow night, I’ll watch the fireworks from the home of my vacationing parents, which is a stone’s throw from the park and has a great view, without the crowds or parking problems. My brother and sister-in-law and the kids are going to a cookout at some friends of theirs, but they may stop by for the fireworks. I’m not sure when.

I may wait for Sunday to break in the new grill.