Murphy's Law and the Grill

Hi, dear blog readers. Well, after eating grilled food all summer with Mike's parents, we decided it's time to retire the rust old smoky joe in the corner of our patio and upgrade to a gas grill. Thus, yesterday after work, I proceeded to nose around town since the "season" of grills is coming to a close. I found a decent grill on clearance. I figured I'd save Mike the trouble and frustration of assembling it. As I read the directions, I was relieved to see the estimated assembly time was supposed to take only 30 minutes.

So, after unpacking the box, I eagerly dove into building the contraption. Now, this is my first attempt building one of these, you see. Generally speaking, I like household challenges.

I had no idea that building a grill is a little like me trying to golf. It just brings out the worst depravity in my human nature. This coupled with bad directions, I was ready to trash it by the time I was done: I spent almost 4 hours putting it together, wedging myself into all sorts of contorted positions under the side panels.

I wonder if the manufacturers don't intentionally mislabel parts, especially the ones in the very beginning of the assembly process, in order to get a good laugh after the situation? After putting everything together two or three times, and with Mike's help holding things up for me and shining a flashlight on my stubborn project so that I could finish putting things together, we got it done with no bad temper outbursts of frustration (although I guess I was a little grouchy by the end of the evening).

The sausages we finally had at 9:30 last night were great! Now that things are in working order, hopefully this grill will last us a long time so we won't have to do it again anytime soon.