I believe it was the poet Longfellow who wrote, “Ere the season ends, I shall grill my steak under the cover of some kind of shelter, to keep the snow off my food.” Like the poet Longfellow, I too have a weird name. But that wasn’t going to stop me from constructing a shelter over my BBQ. I wouldn’t allow Mother Nature, Old Man Winter, Jack Frost or the Easter Bunny to stand in my way. I was committed, I was prepared, I was driven by that pioneer spirit that burns in all our breasts, thighs and wings.
Someone once said (perhaps it was Longfellow) that a plan is just a list of things that can go wrong. Well said Longfellow! My plan was more than a list of things that could go wrong, it was a list of things that did go wrong and then went even wronger. Much like the word “wronger” everything I was doing was incorrect and as poorly thought out as my grammar.
First, I made a list, which is never a good idea. The list was far too detailed to begin with. It began:
1. Write a list
2. Get a pencil
And so on. I didn’t even get to the shelter until the 17th item on my list. So I decided that a list was a terrible idea and no architect ever began a great project by rooting through my junk drawer looking for a pencil, holding up a bunch of elastic bands and asking, “Why do I keep these things? When will ever need a bunch of elastic bands? And what the hell is this? A single paper clip! Why would I feel the need to keep a single paper clip, hidden away in the back of the drawer under a grocery receipt from 2008? Why would I keep that? For tax purposes? Did I think that I could write off a bottle of ketchup? Or was I somehow dissatisfied with the ketchup and hoped to return it?” As you can see, building a shelter can be a long, drawn out process, fraught with many rhetorical questions.
As you may recall, the shelter had a flat roof, which would not work at all. So I took a few boards off, just to see if I could reconstruct a beautifully shaped gabled roof with the current layout. It wasn’t quite clear to me, so I took a few more boards off.
After much deliberation (a few days, possibly more than a week) I decided that the roof would have to be completely rebuilt so I took the remaining boards off. After it was off, I decided that without that strengthening support, the shelter was pretty wobbly. So I spent a few moments shaking the shelter, testing its structural integrity. We get a lot of snow here in the winter and I was concerned that all that snow could send my roof crashing down on my steak and by extension, my head. Using complex formulas, I calculated the weight per square foot of snow by climbing on top of the shelter and hanging off the end, impersonating a bunch of heavy snow. Y’know, just to see. It was then that my nosy neighbor called out to me from the other side of the fence, “Whacha doin’ there?”
I won’t record the conversation because obviously anyone who uses the word, “Whacha” is not going to offer any insightful contributions to a project of that magnitude. After 45 minutes of me not listening to his helpful advice which came in the form of, “Whacha wanna do is put that support beam on the top of the…” So that was one day wasted. I couldn’t very well go back to work after being told in no uncertain terms where to place a support beam and having absolutely no intention of following his directions. This was MY project after all.
The next day (or maybe it was a week later) I decided that the current layout of the walls wasn’t quite right so I decided to take down a few boards. Once those were put aside I pondered the walls again and took down a few more boards. My shelter had to be just perfect and I would brook no short cuts, no design errors, no single board out of place. So I took a few more boards off.
As I stood there looking at the gutted remains of the shelter, it occurred to me that the whole thing would need to be rebuilt. So I took a few more boards off. Before I knew it, I had no shelter and a big pile of lumber and the clouds overhead were threateningly black with snow. I quickly took a few more boards off.
With the shelter completely taken apart it occurred to me then that perhaps the most important aspect about having a BBQ that burns wood as fuel is that it requires wood. I also noted that I happened to have a big pile of wood that used to be my shelter. Using more complex mathematical formulas, I figured that if I just burned the shelter I could grill a lot of steaks. Sometimes, failure is a lot easier to stomach when said stomach is filled with steak.
Someone once said (perhaps it was Longfellow) that a plan is just a list of things that can go wrong. Well said Longfellow! My plan was more than a list of things that could go wrong, it was a list of things that did go wrong and then went even wronger. Much like the word “wronger” everything I was doing was incorrect and as poorly thought out as my grammar.
First, I made a list, which is never a good idea. The list was far too detailed to begin with. It began:
1. Write a list
2. Get a pencil
And so on. I didn’t even get to the shelter until the 17th item on my list. So I decided that a list was a terrible idea and no architect ever began a great project by rooting through my junk drawer looking for a pencil, holding up a bunch of elastic bands and asking, “Why do I keep these things? When will ever need a bunch of elastic bands? And what the hell is this? A single paper clip! Why would I feel the need to keep a single paper clip, hidden away in the back of the drawer under a grocery receipt from 2008? Why would I keep that? For tax purposes? Did I think that I could write off a bottle of ketchup? Or was I somehow dissatisfied with the ketchup and hoped to return it?” As you can see, building a shelter can be a long, drawn out process, fraught with many rhetorical questions.
As you may recall, the shelter had a flat roof, which would not work at all. So I took a few boards off, just to see if I could reconstruct a beautifully shaped gabled roof with the current layout. It wasn’t quite clear to me, so I took a few more boards off.
After much deliberation (a few days, possibly more than a week) I decided that the roof would have to be completely rebuilt so I took the remaining boards off. After it was off, I decided that without that strengthening support, the shelter was pretty wobbly. So I spent a few moments shaking the shelter, testing its structural integrity. We get a lot of snow here in the winter and I was concerned that all that snow could send my roof crashing down on my steak and by extension, my head. Using complex formulas, I calculated the weight per square foot of snow by climbing on top of the shelter and hanging off the end, impersonating a bunch of heavy snow. Y’know, just to see. It was then that my nosy neighbor called out to me from the other side of the fence, “Whacha doin’ there?”
I won’t record the conversation because obviously anyone who uses the word, “Whacha” is not going to offer any insightful contributions to a project of that magnitude. After 45 minutes of me not listening to his helpful advice which came in the form of, “Whacha wanna do is put that support beam on the top of the…” So that was one day wasted. I couldn’t very well go back to work after being told in no uncertain terms where to place a support beam and having absolutely no intention of following his directions. This was MY project after all.
The next day (or maybe it was a week later) I decided that the current layout of the walls wasn’t quite right so I decided to take down a few boards. Once those were put aside I pondered the walls again and took down a few more boards. My shelter had to be just perfect and I would brook no short cuts, no design errors, no single board out of place. So I took a few more boards off.
As I stood there looking at the gutted remains of the shelter, it occurred to me that the whole thing would need to be rebuilt. So I took a few more boards off. Before I knew it, I had no shelter and a big pile of lumber and the clouds overhead were threateningly black with snow. I quickly took a few more boards off.
With the shelter completely taken apart it occurred to me then that perhaps the most important aspect about having a BBQ that burns wood as fuel is that it requires wood. I also noted that I happened to have a big pile of wood that used to be my shelter. Using more complex mathematical formulas, I figured that if I just burned the shelter I could grill a lot of steaks. Sometimes, failure is a lot easier to stomach when said stomach is filled with steak.
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