memorial day project

as i'm writing this, bush menor is AGAIN invading our little piece of heaven in new mexico. he is AGAIN at our faux-independent mayor's house and AGAIN is here to lunch with the faithful at $1000 a pop (or $5000 for a photo op, just like last time). it is to raise money for darren white's congressional bid. all i know is i can't drive around my neighborhood for all the secret service. bastards. i hope he's not considering making this a second home or anything--that would suck. my parents live across the way from the older bushes, which really doesn't add anything to this discussion at all. anyway, hopefully no one will die during this visit, unlike last time.

on to more productive things...
since our grill died right smack in the middle of our end-of-the-year party for gus' class, my and rich's project for this memorial day was to completely disassemble the thing and figure out what was going on. rich was the one who garnered up the courage to actually pull the thing out of the stucco housing and take it apart; i fixed it up and put it back together. and it was no easy task--the grill itself is about 50 years old, and the company that made it hasn't manufactured parts for it for about 25 years now. the business (charmglow) was purchased by home depot, then by someone else, but the grills they make now bear no resemblance whatsoever to what we have. enter the internet! it is amazing what you can find online. i ordered replacement parts for almost the entire thing--can't get the cute little control panel box anymore--and we even got it working for now. very satisfying work!

poor, yucky, dead grill

this is the cute control panel that hasn't been made for a quarter century

this is the gas line--kinda scary looking and note that perpetual wet spot behind the pipes

i cleaned up the line and poured a graded layer of concrete so the water would finally flow away from the gas pipes...

...and voilà! can i tell you how much i love rustoleum high heat spray paint? (i still need to repair the stucco.)