Blather

'Twas early 2000 when factors (see early posts) brought me to Yahoo chat. Like many of us, I did the A/S/L thing. Something clicked with one gal, from about as far away on this planet as you can get, and we began chatting. We've been more than friends since.

Today, sitting in Fort Benning and waiting for my plane to Kuwait, I'm thinking about how I got here and seeing no plan at all.

Eight years ago, I was the typical guy- mortgage, marriage, children and a job. Now I'm divorced and going to Iraq. And my Aussie-style mate in all this has been a great gal, this one who happened to be in the chat room I didn't anticipate being in, for reasons I can't quite pin down, at a time in my life when I didn't need anyone beyond my (former) wife.

The wife's out of my life (except for the Never-Ending Divorce crap) but Sue is still here.

Those who have been unfortunate enough to go through a divorce will understand the turmoil. For those who haven't, suffice to say it's exceedingly painful. Sue's been with me through each little event, each uncomfortable step in the process of going from happily married to a condition that isn't quite " happily divorced," but resembles what cancer patients say. Thus, "I'm a divorce survivor."

And now I'm both confident and happy that Sue will be with me as I become a not-quite-soldier in Iraq.

Sue has been an element of joy, a loving woman who gives me a female's perspective on things, and who's shared parts of her life with me, too. When her granddaughter was born and came home, the first thing she did was to show me with her webcam what this bundle of joy looked like. Her daughter was a bit perturbed- What's this? Showing my new baby to some strange guy in California? But she also trusted her mother, so I guess everything has worked out OK.

And while I've not been entirely celibate since the divorce, we're OK with each other's exclusive arrangements with someone else. I think her husband is a great guy, and I've told her so. She knows about a warm and intelligent woman I am off-and-on involved with. For each of us, it's not "I'm better than that other person," it's "I'm happy for you."

Thus I find myself (almost) in the Army, waiting for a flight tomorrow to a different sort of lifestyle, reflecting on the one gal who's been with me through a lot. And I'm grateful she's in my life. Thanks, Sue. Ain't serendipity ... well, serendipitous?

Atlanta, Friday June 20, 2008

I woke up at the way-too-early hour of 03:55 so I could get to Oakland Airport in time to go through security and board my flight to Salt Lake City. Richie and Kimmie woke up soon after I did. The cats were confused because it was still night and we were awake. Schlanke was happy to get a whole handful of kitty greenies, but mussed up my blankets in trying to bury the few that she couldn’t eat.

I had showered and shaved only five hours before, so I just got dressed in my traveling clothes. A pair of slacks from my Thailand days, a Disney T-shirt, my Hawaiian shirt and the latest addition to my sartorial elegance, a pair of Big-5 Crocs clones. Took us about ten minutes to get out the door, which was fine, since there was no traffic at 04:10. Kimmie gave me a big hug before we got in their 4-Runner. We talked about things they could do without me- painting, yard work, etc. When we got to the airport, I got a big group hug from these two terrific kids and I went inside to check in. No problem with Delta’s check-in gal. I could have carried my one small bag, but I wanted to bring my home-made knife and my tiny Swiss Army knife, so I needed a check-in bag. I saw lots of other passengers with humongous wheelie bags, computer bags, purses, backpacks, and even Camelback backpacks. Made me feel downright semi-dressed.

The flight to Salt Lake City was 100%. They were asking for people to give up their seats and fly later. I couldn’t do that, so I didn’t volunteer. About that time, I regretted leaving my gum in the carry-on because my ears were popping. I took my glasses off and pulled my Web Nation baseball cap down over my eyes and tried to sleep. I took an El Paso on the free coffee.

In Salt Lake City, I had an hour until my next flight, so I bought a newspaper for fifty cents. Seemed like a very good price for something that you get from a “they have no alternative” airport monopoly. I guess the vendors make up for it with bottled water- two dollars for a half-liter.

The flight to Atlanta was long and boring. I got stuck in the middle seat between two uncommunicative guys. The crew tried to flog headsets so I could watch the movie. I did the crossword instead. From time to time, I glanced up at the movie- something about strange creatures and some endearing, middle-class children. If I get a chance, I may watch it on HBO soon.

Atlanta is a big airport. Took me 20 minutes to find the baggage claim area. I got my one small bag, called my son for the number of the contact here in Georgia, and gave him a call. Mike said to meet the guys at the Greyhound area on the lower level. I grabbed a Wendy’s burger and found the meeting place.

After an hour watching a gaggle of black Suburbans pick up folks who thought they were rock stars, I noticed a group of what looked like off-duty cops. (You have to have a bit of experience with cops to get a sense of what they look like.) Sure enough, that was the right group. We waited a bit for a large charter bus and then spent 90 minutes looking at rural Georgia until we got to Fort Benning. We went through some classic Army-style burocracy, getting our bed linens from a rolling rack and our pillows from a giant garbage bag. Bunk assignments were by alphabetical order. Or should that be “alphabedical” order? A quick shower and then a novelty- going to sleep without a TV in the room. My roomies were good- no snoring- but I didn’t sleep well. Woke up at 7AM, three hours earlier for this California kid, and began a day of processing. I’d forgotten how convoluted, arbitrary and superficially pointless the Army can be. This is strange, not quite military, not quite civilian employment. Our den mother is competent, which helps, but he has to touch all the military bases, some of which do not appear to have earthly locales.

We filled out many, many forms, each with LastName, FirstName, DateOfBirth and Social Security Number on them. For reasons only known to my employer and the Army, the other BEA guy and I did not have to do the physical performance stuff in Fredericksburg, VA. One of my roomies regaled me with tales of being loaded down with gear and having to drag one of the other deployees, a rather stout 250-pound guy, about 40 feet after running and climbing a two-story ladder, etc. Most telling was this fact: 49 people showed up and 34 passed.

An early breakfast because the chow hall closed at eight AM, then we waited two hours for our first formation. Formerly, a “formation” was a group of individuals standing in a formation. Around here, it’s more like a casual, outdoor meeting. Our den mother, Mike, led us to the one-acre tent where we filled out all the forms. About noon, he was done with us. As I was walking back to where our billets and chow hall were, we stopped. An Army bus was discharging passengers to the tent and we were supposed to ride the bus to the chow hall. Then, without warning, we were not supposed to ride the bus. So we walked.

The food was good- I elected the veal parmesan which was cooked well and some rice. I’m trying to avoid potatoes because of the carbs. I had some fruit for dessert and a glass of half-Diet Coke and half Mr. Pibb. We assembled on a basketball court and about two hundred of us route-stepped to a gym where we all sat down for a quick talk about finishing the forms (my group had none) and about how to complete the checklist regarding the computer-based training.

We went through the PowerPoint presentations quickly- terrorism, cultural awareness, sexual harassment, the Army’s morals, etc. Then we were done for today. Tomorrow morning at seven, we’ll meet and do more things. Mike briefed us – we’ll watch videos tomorrow morning, then we’ll see the Army’s medical and psychological folks, and by Friday we should be on a plane for Dubai.

Here's the baby walnut tree that the squirrels left me. There are three more in the front yard, but I haven't yet tried to move them. One is small, like this one, the other two are about knee-high and will require some (as the Wicked Witch of the East said) "deh-lee-cate" transplanting.











This morning there was an email from the Dallas HR guy. I fly to Atlanta via Salt Lake City on Friday, then on to Iraq after some time at Fort Benning. I have been trying to get as much done as I can before I leave. I spent the day in the backyard, moving garden tools into their new garden-shed home, trimming and raking and I even fixed the plum tree which had dropped a branch from too many plums. I put lots of trashy wood from the shed (the bad floor and roof) into a trash can; my big son knows it's there and will get it into the garbage cycle. Before the lawn got mowed, I found a gift from the squirrels- a six-inch walnut tree.



This is where the plum tree broke a branch off. The black stuff is tree repair. I'm hoping the plum tree will survive this semi-major disaster.















I cleared the grass away and used a small shovel to transfer the baby tree to a one-gallon pot. The soil came away in a nice chunk, so I think the tree wasn't too disturbed.



Here's the east side of the yard. The lawn looks better mowed. It'll look better still when the rains come in the fall. Not sure what those flowers are growing there, but I'm glad they chose my yard to go wild in- they hide my compost pile. Note the smoker up against the house. It sleeps there because it rolls so easily out on the cement patio when my big son fires it up.





I turned the sprinklers on. The lawn has been looking a bit brown in places because I have had the timer shut off while I worked on the shed and it wasn't until today that the lawn was cleared enough to run the sprinklers.

Tonight I'll pack and get myself ready, as if I were leaving tomorrow.

Tomorrow I might do a few small chores- clean my room, organize my shoes, stuff like that. But my daughter and big son are supposed to be here in the afternoon. I want to say good-bye to them, and to see if we can commit to some sort of communication schedule. There's a lot going on there. My ex is involved in everything with my son. She keeps a white-knuckle grip on him. Ditto my daughter, though she might volunteer to be controlled a bit. It's hard for me to say if they just don't pay much attention to me because I'm boring, old, and out of touch with their younger lives or if they won't spend much time with me because my ex would interpret that as disloyalty to her. It's complicated and involves her control over my children.

I could write more about her influence, but most of what I have to say is speculation. Oh, sure, I speculate gladly and with sufficient bitterness toward my ex. But I don't feel like speculating right now.

My ambitious big son bought a ten-pack of four-foot florescent fixtures yesterday. Today he decided to change out the two two-foot fixtures above the kitchen sink for one four-foot. He asked me use my Japanese saw to remove the piece from the middle of the frame. Then he preferred that I do the free-hand routing to get the trim pieces to match the frame. He seems to think that I'm better at this eye-hand motor control business.

More next time.


Here's No-Foot aka Frigga. This one I've nicknamed "Schlanke" because she seems to have so little excess avoirdupois. She is quieter, more reserved. She's near the tangerine tree, surveying "her" yard.













Here's Fulla aka Four-Foot. I've nicknamed this one "Saftig" because she's smaller and pudgier than her sister. Here, she's balanced on the edge of a 2 x 4 fence holding the flowers behind the compost pile.

Here's the finished product. At the bottom is the re-worked BuckStove fireplace insert. On top is the gutted Dacor oven. At the top right is the former Dacor blower box converted to a firebox and now a secondary smoker. The trash can on the right contains fruitwood for smoking.












A few blog posts below, I put up some pix of the smoker my big son and I built from our Fancy-schmanzy Dacor stove that died. (The replacement is a plain-vanilla Magic Chef, but that's another rant.)

My big son wasn't happy with the firebox I devised. It worked, but not as well as he'd like. So he went to craigslist and found a free fireplace insert that someone in Oakland was trying to give away. We drove out to the house, brought it home and then we began to fix it up. The sheet-metal flanges that framed the Buck Stove insert got unscrewed and set aside. He put the doors in some Simple Green while I worked on converting the fireplace insert into a smoker firebox.


Here's the product of our test run: two nice, smoky pork roasts. My big son is getting the hang of keeping the fire going and maintaining an oven temp of 220-240 degrees.










The Buck Stove had some good features- the firebox was lined with cast firebrick; the top was 1/4" steel plate, the three layers of stove were 1/8" steel; the doors had a good seal; the whole thing was designed to hold a fire, enough to heat a house, so keeping a small, smokey fire wouldn't tax it at all.

I measured everything, then we took a ride to Alco in San Leandro. We got some industrial-strength wheels, one of which would carry more weight than the whole thing weighs. And we got some rectangular tubing, about ten inches internal area. (The old smoker box was plumbed with four-inch flex aluminum tubing, about ten square inches there, too.) My son, who hadn't welded in ten years, laid two pieces of this tubing together and ran some very nice welds along them, making twenty square inches of flue.

I fabbed a plate so the two welded tubes would sit in the stove flue and stick up about six inches. We drilled and screwed the plate-and-tube assembly to the top of the stove.

The next step was tricky, but it worked out very well. We lifted the old Dacor oven and laid it on top of the plate assembly. I traced the outline with a marker. Then we flipped the oven over; my son suggested I drill the corners first. I used my skilsaw with a metal-cutting blade to plunge-cut the long sides and my air-powered rotary cutter to cut the short ends. When we set the oven over the plate, everything fit perfectly the first time! Woo hooo!!




Here's my big son checking the progress of those roasts.

This is the result of him getting the smoking bug from watching Alton Brown.








I was a big disappointed that the firebox I'd worked on so long was going to be discarded. But my big son thought he could use the same box and flex aluminum tubing to make a secondary, lukewarm cooler; that's what he did.

Father's Day dinner was pork with baked beans, coleslaw, corn on the cob and lemonade. Happily, my daughter brought my small son and we all ate a terrific meal.

Just before dinner, my small son and I fabbed a tool for the smoker- a sort of S-shaped piece of steel on a piece of cherry tree for a handle. Now there's a good push-pull gizmo for my son to use on the oven racks.

I just came in from trying to wade through the leaves in the front yard and haven't had a nap yet; sleep will come early for me tonight.

The stress: I did not, not, NOT want to go to court. But the results weren’t as bad as I had feared, so I'm happy. However, I have a new stress- I'm leaving my home in a week and I might not be back for awhile. So while the money stress is better, I'm becoming more stressed over leaving my home. You have no idea how happy I am here- I have my garden, my garage of tools, and I do things that are useful. Today I fixed the latch on the door to Richie's Buck Stove firebox which was rusted so badly it wouldn't turn. I cut it off with my Sawzall then drilled it out. Three times. Each time the drill got bumpier and choppier but I finally got the hole smooth and I replaced the crappy part with a bolt. I eyeballed the right angle for the latch and welded it back on while the door was on the floor of my garage. Now the whole thing works better than before, plus the latch is much stronger. Richie and I rolled the whole shebang around to the side of the house on its wheels, parking the smoker on the cement patio.

Kimmie and I worked in the garden while Richie (very much like a little boy with a new toy) fired it up, putting in this wood and that charcoal, opening the vent and checking the temperature. That wonderful big son of mine even put the old firebox on top as a secondary, lukewarm smoker. He played with his new toy all afternoon. Kimmie dug out some of the too-close tomato plants while I prepared some of the garden for her to put them into. Now we've got lots of new tomato plants in the ground, plus we have pumpkins and a couple of cantaloupes. We got a lot done in the back yard. When the hot afternoon began to cool off a bit, we sat in the patio chairs and talked; we played "stick" with the cats. Before the entire afternoon got frittered away, I replaced a broken piece of sprinkler hose so the front yard gets its drip irrigation now. And then I swept up the area where Richie had cleaned the Buck Stove, leaving quite a bit of sand and ash and a few bits of steel that were left over from repairing the stove.

I'm tired, sweaty, grungy, but I'm happy. Heck, even the cats were fun today: While we were outside, they followed us everywhere; we talked with 'em, played with 'em, even watched 'em sneak under the porch, where Sam the Feral Cat lives.

Work, sweat, grime, dirt, and a lot of happiness. That’s been my day today.

Richie said I should pack, at least for the first time. I've got this large gym bag with a few pockets on the outside. This bag became my carry-on when 9-11 took me to North Dakota. I'll check the gym bag because I want my knife and I can't carry it on the plane any more. I used to fly with a gun but now I can't even have my knife.

I put up a piece on my blog about going to court yesterday. My finances won't be so bad. She'll have a lot more money by herself than we had while I was working but I'll have some, too, so maybe my future won’t be so glum. There's a pic of my anvil and hammer there; 'tis an "environmental portrait."

Today's Friday. I don't know if Pense or Schaffe will be here for Sunday but I'm OK. I have my own mini-family- Richie and Kimmie and the cats. If my daughter and small son come for Father’s Day, that’ll be great. If they don’t, that’ll be acceptable. Ditto the following Tuesday, my birthday.

The dream: Let me tell you something. A lot of years ago, before Bonnie and I went to Germany with a 2-year-old Richie, I had a strange dream. I told her about it then, and we'd forgotten about it, but it's still there in the back of my mind. I dreamt that I was someplace that felt not quite like Europe. Something was going on. I looked up a street that was a big boulevard, sort of. The grey, dusty road sloped uphill a bit- two blocks away was about three feet higher than where we were standing. Something was going on. I did something, then I swung around this big, chest-high cement block, about three meters square with a statue on top of it. I sat on the ground. I reached my hand up to my ear, and felt something wet. I immediately looked at it; there was blood on my hand. I had a feeling of surprise, because I didn't feel any pain and if something caused me to bleed, I should be feeling some pain. Then I woke up. I don't know what else happened in the dream. The items I recall well are the street, the cement thing and waking up as soon as I saw blood on my hand.

What I saw clearly was the base for a statue, maybe not quite three meters on a side, but big enough to provide plenty of protection from small-arms fire. Statues are usually on big blocks of something like cement. Something was happening, and I ducked behind the cement for protection. A bit scary, this dream. I think there was someone with me but I don't have a name or face, just the feeling that I wasn't alone- like I was part of a team or something, maybe just one or two guys.

Waking up straight after- that meant that I was afraid, so in order to get away from the fear, I took myself somewhere less fearful, to being awake.

There was a time when I'd have avoided going somewhere that my dream told me could be dangerous to me. But not anymore. I'm not as afraid as I was before. Since then, I’ve considered this all-too-real dream a few times. This was before Bonnie, Richie and I went to Germany. There was another time when we went to Romania- I was antsy because Romania wasn't quite Europe, but I came back fine. Then we went to Thailand. I wasn't as concerned because when I got there, Thailand really didn't feel like the not-quite-Europe of my dream. A large impact on me was the feeling of something like Europe, but not quite like Europe. I had similar almost-subconscious reservations each time I've been back across the Atlantic- to Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, once again to Romania and then to Rotterdam.

I'll be fine.

I've got lots to look forward to- my house, my future, heck, maybe even finding my way to a nice vacation in Brisbane. Yep, I'll be fine. I may get tired, sick, sleepy, lonely, yadda yadda. But I'm not going to let a dream make me afraid any more.

On the right is the anvil my big son bought for me a few years ago. You don't go to your friendly, neighborhood anvil storer, so the one he found had quite a bit of damage- the sides were chipped and broken. I heated it with my acetylene torch, then cranked up the heat on my Lincoln AC welder and built up the sides with good rod from Airgas. I ground the edges close to where I wanted them with my little 4-1/2" Makita grinder and finished with my old Craftsman belt sander. The tired, re-tuned anvil turned out pretty good.

I had the ball-peen hammer head laying around in my toolbox for a decade or two before I got around to shaping a piece of tree limb from my back yard into a slightly longer-than-store-bought hammer handle. Note the last few inches that still have bark on the handle. The stump under the anvil came from a heavy branch of my avocado tree.

What does this picture have to do with the Never-Ending Divorce? Well, after I got back from family court today, I changed clothes and began to fix the door to the Buck Stove that my son got from Craigslist. But before I began, I walked by this stump-anvil-hammer piece of domestic and intensely personal art and was overwhelmed by a sense of self-imaging gestalt.

I worked on the Buck Stove doors with only half my mind. The other half was still re-winding the events of this afternoon. Family court is stressful. I made an offer to my ex-wife about child support and spousal support that wouldn't leave me broke from the job I'll take in Iraq. Nothing is yet 100% certain, but the possibility is getting better that I'll go to Georgia next week, then on to Iraq.

My attorney said that it's unusual for a wife to get twice the spousal support that the court ordered, but such is the case- I go to Iraq and carry two guns, she gets twice the money plus she gets to spend the extra money that I have to give her for child support. And she gets to keep her share of my retirement and the SSA that my son gets because I retired. All in all, she'll have $4500 each month and won't have to work for a living. The sardonic bounce leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but I'm glad that it won't be worse.

California believes that divorce isn't final; divorce just keeps on lingering, like a fart in a space suit. Don't like that comparison? Yeah, neither do I. But California believes that, because I was married for a long time, she merits support for the rest of her life. And if I stick my neck out in Iraq, she's entitled to more money from me. Sure, I merit support from her, but the operative yet missing element here is any sort of productive income on her part. She hasn't worked since 2001, so my chances of getting support from her are slim to none.

Though this Never-Ending Divorce keeps benefiting her, I can bask in the consolation that it's not worse.

Good environmental photo of me up there- my anvil, my hammer, even my stump. When the next year is over, I'll polish up the anvil and hammer.

A feuilleton is a short, illustrative essay. That isn't quite a piece of plagiarism from Merriam Webster, though it should be. This will be a feuilleton about our cats, both mostly domesticated and mostly feral.

News from the Grove Way Cat Gazette: Sam the Feral Cat has been making more of an appearance and has been less skittish.

He had a couple of run-ins of the ... um ... reproductive kind with Fulla aka Four-Foot. She fights and screams, he tries to ... um ... well, you know what boy cats try to do with girl cats, don't you? He can't help himself, she's so "saftig." He thinks of himself as Sir Mixalot. (If you don't know this reference, that's all right. My big son had to explain the reference to me; I'm hoping some younger folks will catch on.)

Richie has threatened to trap him and take him to get ... um ... "modified surgically." I talked to Sam, telling him that he'll be OK as long as I'm around. I won't let Richie do that. But if I'm not around, he's on his own. Richie seems to have a paternal approach to our two girl cats. Me, I think cats aren't people, so if one cat catches another, that's the way things go. Of course, it could be something more than mere reproductive impulse; Sam's behavior might be some sort of territorial imperative. That might make things different. But this takes us to the misty, ethereal world of cat psychology.

So, are we on the cusp of trapping him? No. Kimmie has been doing her "cat whisperer" thing. She got him to eat right outside our glass doors. That's the good part. Of course, our two cats are watching him like a hawk from inside the glass doors. Yesterday, Fulla watched him and growled. For five minutes all we heard was "Grrrrrrr" in a very low pitch. I think she's not happy with him, but as long as we're around, she's not quite as unhappy.



Here's Sam the Feral Cat, through the glass doors. He's nibbling the other cats' kibble out of their bowl. When he was younger last summer, he was striped all over. Now he's got some stripes on his shoulders and hips, but his body is kinda buff-colored. He's a small tom but bigger than either of our other cats. Does he look like a randy rascal? Look behind those eyes- there's initiative and feline intent that's incomprehensible to us thumbed folk.


This morning he ate for awhile right outside the door. Then he went under the deck. After a minute, Frigga/No-Foot went outside and sniffed the carpet where he was sitting and sniffed the bowl he ate from. He didn't go far, just under the deck. Kimmie opened the door and talked to him from just outside the glass doors and he just watched her from under the deck. Then he went around the side of the house by the low-quat trees. The two girls went outside, Fulla on the deck by the smoker and Friga down by the firewood on the patio. Sam came back and Fulla went on Full Alert. Friga watched him, but she seems less afraid. We believe she's less afraid of Sam because she's larger, thinner and faster. So if Sam tried to chase her, she'd just tell him, "How do you like my ass from waa-aay back there?" and zoom away. Poor Fulla is smaller and chubbier, so Sam might have better luck chasing and catching her. Or "he just likes 'em saftig," as Richie opines.




Here are our two formerly feral cats. On the left is the saftig Four-Foot aka Fulla. On the right, getting some attention from her sister, is the schlanke Frigga aka No-Foot. Frigga likes the attention until she says, "That's enough!" Then she hisses and the two of them get into some feline fisticuffs.





We don't know if Sam will ever come inside and spend the night with us. He eats our cat food but he doesn't let us get too close. And "too close" is his determination. Sometimes it's five feet, sometimes it's 20 feet. He is a very skittish, mostly feral cat. I give him some flea pills, broken up between two spoons like you do with babies and pills, and mixed with some canned cat food. I'd like to take him to a vet for a full set of shots, but I don't know how to get close enough to touch him. I'm not sure that "trap and release" will sit well with his very independent attitude. If I can keep him from having too many fleas and if I can feed him a few days per week, I'll be satisfied with this not-quite-domesticated approach. Some pets are tied to their owners' laps by an invisible umbilical; Sam isn't my "pet," so if he has a distant relationship with me, that's enough for now. We each have a life outside being a pet and an owner. Heck, I can't say that I "own" him at all. And he isn't anyone's "pet."


Here's my little big son playing Stick with Fulla aka Four-Foot, the focus of Sam's romantic attentions. Stick is a game Schaffe plays with her because she's a lot of fun to play with. You take a five-foot piece of tree, strip the leaves off and drag it on the ground. Something in Four-Foot's predatory DNA makes her want to "attack" the end, catch it and bite it. She's crouching, waiting for the precise instant to make a four-legged jump and capture that perpetually elusive Stick.

Her sister, Frigga aka No-Foot, also plays, but there seem to be unspoken rules between them. Only one at a time "attacks," even though both are out there. I think for Frigga, playing Stick is as much a spectator sport as it is a participant sport.

I had laid the roofing on the shed and was fixing some lunch when the voicemail told me that I'd passed the background. When can I leave?

I emailed with the response that I have a family court date on June 12, nine days from today, that I can't get out of. After that, we'll see how it goes. There is an all-day trial in August, but maybe we can resolve everything in June. I don't really want to hassle her, I just want this Never-Ending Divorce to be over.

Yep, "Never-Ending" seems a bit harsh, but here's how I see it- 14 months ago, I got the final decree, 16 months after I filed. And I still have family court issues, lawyer fees, and the inevitable hassles associated with custody. I didn't even ask for my son to be on my tax return.

But this shouldn't devolve into a rant about the divorce industry (avoid it if you can), this is just a heads-up that I may find myself in Iraq soon. That should be grist for my blog's mill, no?

This involves a dusty home-improvement project, a defective high-zoot appliance and a television show's nudge.

A couple of decades ago, I built a microwave cart for our condo's kitchen. When we moved here, I brought the cart, but because the kitchen had a different place for the microwave, I've been using the microwave cart to hold barbecue tools out on the deck, not the best use of this sturdy piece of kitchen furniture.

The fancy-schmancy Dacor "restaurant" stove that came with the house kept dying. Richie rebuilt the burners, replaced the oven heating element, and still that stove kept failing us. A few weeks ago, we were down to two burners and broil only when we got a no-frills basic-white Magic Chef, the Ford Pinto of stoves. The Dacor was on its way to a $50 grave at the local waste management.

My big son the Mechanical Engineer and certified genius likes to cook. He watches Alton Brown and got me to watching this guy's antics. AB is great because he gets me grinning with parodies and humor, all the while teaching me stuff I never knew I was interested in, like why the butt part is lower on the animal than the shoulder, yadda yadda.

One of AB's projects involved a smoker. In a pastiche of Junkyard Wars and that goofy cooking challenge show, Iron Chef, AB's challenge was to MacGyver-cobble a smoker out of a couple of wall lockers, cardboard boxes, an iron, yadda yadda. Amid chuckles at sophisticated humor, I learned how to make your own bacon and how to cook in a smoker.

Well, we love bacon, and my son is a really good cook, so we decided to try our Junkyard Wars hand at assembling a smoker. Could we have gone to the store and gotten one? Sure, but both Richie and I are both ecological enough and cheap enough that making one seemed like a good thing. OK, he's frugal; I'm penurious.




On the left is a shot of the back of the stove. There was a hole in the box where the light bulb uas. This is what we used to duct the hot smoke in.

This is the microwave cart on the right. I've removed one structural element that once held a shelf at chin height.







Brainstorming, we decided to re-use the old Dacor stove. The oven was an enameled steel box designed to withstand temperatures of 450+ degrees and came with stainless steel racks, just the ideal environment for making your own bacon, beef jerky, etc. After we disassembled the burner section from the oven section, we were stumped: what to use for a firebox? Alton brown used half of a wall locker with an iron in the bottom. I dug out this old 30-gallon steel drum. Good, but it would need some modification to use it as a pedestal, and then we might have the issue of tip-over-ness. (Yeah, that's not a word, but you get my drift.)




This is the oven box on its side. The mechanism on the right is the door closing latch. Latching the door shut is a good thing- it helps keep the heat in.






On the right is the steel box holding the blower motor and which supported the entire stove off the floor.





However, my son pointed out that the microwave cart might make a suitable frame for the smoker. And he was right. I cut a couple of pieces of bed frame to fit and put them on the inside. The oven fit perfectly.


On the left is the back of the firebox. Note the recycled dryer ducting coming out of the box and the nice aluminum flex tubing.

On the right is the firebox opened up. The holes are from a part of a recycled barbecue.


All that was left was a firebox. Again we considered the steel drum. Then an old tool box, but Richie was loathe to destroy something useful and iconic, like a tool box. We even considered sawing a helium can in half. We looked at an old ammo can, but while the metal was sturdy, the volume wasn't enough to sustain much of a fire.

The old Dacor had a rather large blower underneath. The box holding the blower was also the main support for the entire stove, so I thought, "Why not use the support, too?" The box had a few holes associated with air coming in and going out, but it was still sturdy and fairly large. So I covered up the rectangular holes and made one new one, for the $8 flexible aluminum tubing going from the firebox to the smoking chamber. We recycled an old rusted-out barbecue for the sliding air dampers and a couple of four-inch clothes dryer ducting adapters.



Here are the main components- the cart, the oven that'll be the smoke chamber and the blower box that will be the firebox.

On the right is my son's thermometer, stuck in the hole that Dacor used for the thermocouple. Just above is the ceramic stack that was the standard heat vent for the oven.







Here's my gravity-powered latch for the firebox door. That's a small bolt welded to the back piece of steel. A hole in that bar stock makes it swivel. A larger bolt welded to the end is the weight that makes it rotate to vertical, effecting the latching action.








I think we're about $10 into this smoker. We fired up some charcoal this evening to see how it works. The firebox has a few leaks and I need to fab a latch of some sort to keep the door closed. But my son put a thermometer into the hole in the oven where the Dacor folks had routed a thermocouple, and found we could achieve 220 degrees with a medium fire; with a low fire, 165 was quite possible.

Now we've got to find a butcher shop that will sell us pork bellies so we can make our own bacon. And maybe we can find a meat grinder and some casings so we can make our own sausages. With a bit of practice, we might cook a couple of chickens or even a turkey in this smoker.

Richie's asked me if I'll name this smoker. And I might. Anthropomorphism demands a name for this guy.

Post script: The steel burner units included a quasi-barbecue one that I will modify into a small, portable charcoal grill for my trailer. I've got a good steel box and a good-quality stainless-steel grate. That'll be another post, one day.