Charcoal

When one runs out of hardwood charcoal, just make some more.

and the answer is "yes, i did forget that i had forgotten to get more charcoal".

with all of this forgetting i knew that i would just have to make our own. a very simple process.

i need to say here that i did have enough charcoal to fill up about 1/5th of a chimney (this is a nice cheat that makes it very easy to get everything started and kept going). 

on top of the little bit of bagged charcoal, in the chimney, i packed in sticks of varying size (1/2" to 1"). on top of those packed in sticks i laid a few larger pieces. when the fire had consumed most of the wood, i knew i had a ready to use heat source. i poured the stick/embers onto some small twigs and a few more larger ones (these were for the smoke effect).  

this added about another 20 minutes but fortunately we had started early.