First week - I was fairly dazed and stunned for the whole week, as those of you who remember the last letter can attest. Began the awkward process of telling people by composing the last letter, which went out to basically everybody I know. I told my mom on the phone, and everyone else found out via the letter. (Well, honestly, would you have really wanted a phone call from me with that kind of news?)
Second week - I decided that I didn't want to wear my wedding ring anymore. And with the simple gesture of washing it, drying it, and putting it in a little plastic jewelry display box (Margaret is a jeweler, after all), I took my first baby steps toward moving on. It took an entire month to get used to not having the ring on. And for a solid month, I had increasingly minor panic attacks every time I washed my hands, because I had always been paranoid about it slipping off in the sink. Margaret asked me if I wanted her to do anything to the ring, like melt it down or turn in into a pendant or something. No, just having it in its little plastic box feels right.
Well, the responses to the last letter started pouring in, and I got more feedback and support than I ever thought possible. For those of you that took the time to write back, I really do appreciate it. I didn't acknowledge the responses right away because the whole subject was still pretty raw for me. But I got divorce stories from casual acquaintances, friends I hadn't heard from in years, people whose wedding I DJ'ed (the irony is not lost on me), and all my co-workers (more than half of whom are divorced), who were all amazingly candid with me. I feel like I'm in some kind of secret club now.
I should also formally apologize for not acknowledging your responses when they came in. It may seem like the words flowed easily for me in the last letter, but after I got it all on paper, I had no desire to keep talking about my situation with anybody at all. I just needed a little time to myself, so to speak, and I didn't send out a single e-mail for over a month. I'm certainly grateful for all your letters, and I thank all of you for your support.
Third week - We talked to Bill, our accountant. He has kids a little younger than us, and we've always felt comfortable with him. (He was the one who helped us squirrel away a little savings while I was working in the heady telecom days. I told him that we wanted to "hunker down for the apocalypse", not knowing that I'd be out of work for 14 months, but sensing that something was about to give. Great guy.) He told us how we can divide things up. Basically, we assign a dollar value to all our assets, and move the assets around until her dollar value equals my dollar value. Easy. And not having any significant assets going into the marriage simplified everything - Margaret's entitled to half of everything, plain and simple. (It goes without saying that having kids would complicate the whole divorce process a millionfold.)
Fourth week - We both agreed to split things evenly, like Bill said, but we were still a little clunky on the process. Certain things were off the table (my car stays with me, her car stays with her, my DJ/music stuff stays with me, her tools/jewelry stuff stays with her, etc.), but we still needed a little help. We agreed that I would call a mediator, and he'd sit down with us and actually go through the dividing process. I found one here in town, and we agreed to set up a meeting a few weeks off, because he'd be on vacation.
Fifth week - Nothing happened. Waited for the mediator to come back from vacation.
Oh, I did buy a new set of pots and pans. Margaret got all the old stuff (which was nice stuff, mind you), I got to pick what I want. And I can now whole-heartedly endorse a 10-piece stainless steel set on Sam's Club's website. About one-third to one-fourth the price of the "show-off" set at Williams-Sonoma, and a more solid feel to the pieces. I'm thrilled, and Margaret's happy to get our old set.
Sixth week - The mediator had me prepare an itemized list of everything - bank accounts with amounts and account numbers, legal description of the house, net monthly incomes and detailed budgets, and so on. Then found out that there was a small miscommunication between the mediator and me, and he thought he'd be representing me as my attorney. Margaret had her own attorney (that's how the whole process got started), but I felt that I didn't need one. After all, we know what we have, we agree that she gets half, and neither Margaret nor I saw the need to duke it out in court. You can get through the whole divorce process without an attorney (it's called "pro se" - I learned a new word!), so I basically fired the mediator and told him to bill me for the work he'd done thus far. I do work at a law firm, and I wasn't too worried about getting taken.
We also had our house appraised. A real appraisal costs real money, and neither one of us wanted to waste any money, so we called Jan, the original realtor who sold us the house. She loved us back then, and said that she'd be happy to give us an estimate. She stopped by, looked around, and in all of ten minutes, gave us a reasonable estimate that we could both live with. The house was a good news/bad news situation. Good news - it's worth a LOT, compared to what we bought it for in 1997. It's gone up in value 70% in less than seven years! Bad news - since I planned to buy out Margaret's half of the house, it was gonna hurt real bad...
Seventh week - Since I now had everything documented to the dollar, I put it all in Excel. Is there nothing Excel can't do? I've used it to assemble and document mechanical budgets for computer hard drive air bearings, and to visually simulate an alignment procedure for telecommunications laser diodes, and now - to put together my divorce settlement. Amazing.
Less than an hour later, I had it all on paper. I keep the house, my car, my IRAs, and my checking account, and she gets everything else. Our "apocalypse" savings, my 401(k), our stocks (including the desiccated remains of my fantastic Pinnacle Micro investment), all signed over to Margaret. She'll be doing very nicely once she gets settled.
And actually, I can't complain either. Suddenly, all my equity is in a house that's a little less affordable than I thought it was, but it seems to be a solid investment. And it's only got eight years left on the mortgage until it's paid off.
Margaret agreed to my Excel masterpiece, then I faxed it over to her attorney with instructions to draw it up as our settlement. A few days later, it showed up in the mail, I signed it, Margaret signed it, we mailed it back, and about a week after that, the judge signed it. Poof - we're divorced. No more attorney, nothing else to sign, no more court dates, nothing. I divorce thee I divorce thee I divorce thee. (Then I throw a sandal at Margaret, and we're done!)
Eighth week - We'll be meeting again with Bill, our accountant. He'll help us sign over what needs to be signed over, and that's it. Some minor paperwork, some removal of names from shared accounts and documents, and we are decoupled.
Eight weeks, start to finish, and no court appearances at all for either one of us. And I probably could have cut that in half if I hadn't screwed up the mediator thing. Maybe next time...
So the next phase is getting Margaret and her stuff on the road back to Denver. She'd been packing steadily, and I watched with delight as the house got depopulated on a daily basis, but that seems to have stalled. Apparently, Margaret filled up her mini-storage locker. A short-term glitch, to be sure, and we're both confident that she'll be out by the end of April at latest. It looks like she may move into one of her brother's houses in Denver (he buys 'em cheap, fixes 'em up, and resells 'em). She's mentioned one house in particular that he's not allowed to sell for some time (capital gains tax penalty), and that'd be a nice smooth transition for her. It doesn't seem like she's intentionally dragging her feet - she doesn't want to be here anymore, and I really don't want her around anymore.
In other news, my first TV appearance went very well. They shot maybe 20 minutes of footage, but used only about eight seconds of my interview on a local piece that KARE11 did on The '80s. Had you seen it, you would now know that "Purple Rain" completely dominated the airwaves for six months in 1984, and that I could do Rubik's Cube in one minute and nineteen seconds in eighth grade. I'm just thankful that I wasn't backlit.
My friend Kris noticed that Boston Market's "Ham Carver" sandwich is seasonal. Seasonal? Like strawberries? Is there a ham harvest at some point? Kris also noticed that at one point, Burger King had removed the simple cheeseburger from its menu. You couldn't order a plain cheeseburger. Oh, they'll cater to the fancy-schmancy bacon cheeseburger-eaters, but what about the simple, honest, hard-working non-bacon cheeseburger-eaters? Who looks out for the little guy? Makes me sick.
One of Margaret's watches died recently. She did not appreciate my rousing rendition of "Ding Dong, The Watch Is Dead".
We recently had a problem with static on our phone line. This had also happened a number of years ago, and back then I traced the problem to a jack that we'd installed on a cinder block wall in the basement. Basement wall damp, terminals corrode, bad news. We'd also run into a heap-o-hurt when we had a dial-up connection on our computer at home. Grounding problem, 60 Hz hum, you name it. I eventually got a cable modem just to get rid of the phone problems caused by the dial-up. And at one point, we had a second line for Margaret's jewelry business, which never rang once.
So the lesson I took away from my previous experience is that the problem is always inside your house somewhere. And since we'd just replaced a phone upstairs, in addition to painting the kitchen and moving around the wall phone there, I assumed that I goofed somewhere. Fair enough. The symptom we noticed is that the first few seconds of a phone conversation were almost completely inaudible, then less static after a minute or two, and the static would be almost completely gone after about five minutes. Talk longer than five minutes, and just about no static at all. I dunno why, but it was reproducible.
This is a particularly frustrating symptom, because during the course of rewiring a jack, you can be on the line for a few minutes, and voila, no more static, problem solved, put away the screwdriver. The next day, though, back to static. So over the course of two days, I bought two different jacks for two different phones in the house. I installed one of them, and before I could install the second, I just gave up and called the phone company. Guy came out the next day, determined in ten minutes that the problem wasn't in my home wiring, or in the line that comes into the house (I couldn't diagnose that one myself.) Nope - the problem was somewhere up the block and it took him about three hours to fix. At no cost to me, either. And I found out that the Radio Shack clerks are non-plussed when you try to return a phone jack that you bought at Home Depot. (Woops - my fault.)
The town of Bloomington was doing some road work on an intersection near the house. Not a particularly busy road, but one that was all beat up and needed widening and sidewalks. So, a big project, with new power poles, and some of the fancy right-turn islands so you can turn without a green light. Nice. Except that one day I noticed that there was a new power pole planted in the pavement on one of the right-turn lanes. Curb ends, two or three inches of drive-able pavement, then a pole. They even put a little red cone in front of it, so you wouldn't drive into the POLE IN THE ROAD! How can this possibly happen? In all my years of pavement observations, not once have I ever seen a pole deliberately placed IN the road. About two months later, it wasn't there anymore, so either the pole was moved, or the lane was moved. I guess it really doesn't matter which...
If you're thinking of cutting your hair so it's a quarter of an inch long (like mine), or if your hair has departed of its own accord (also like mine), I can confirm that washing your head with a steaming hot washcloth feels great. Those of you not currently enjoying hairlessness will have to take my word for it.
I got through the winter season without getting a cold, for the first time in recent memory. I attribute that to some of the advice they gave during flu season: Drink lots of water, and wash your hands a lot. Well, right after I started working here last October, I discovered the fridge in our break room, with a water dispenser and an ice maker in the door. Once I found the collection of large, inviting glasses, I was hooked. Mindful of a friend's kidney stone problems (not that I have any myself), I started drinking about 64 ounces of water every work day, spread out over the whole day. I slosh, therefore I am. And with the constant trips to the men's room caused by drinking 64 ounces of water, I end up washing my hands about once an hour. Problem solved. Now I'll live forever.
Work is going well. I had a recent dream about writers' block, though, and I found it a bit disconcerting. From these letters, it may seem like I would never be short on words, but there are days when they just don't flow. And no words means no $. Great - I can add writers' block to the ever-present list of nightmare topics, like the exam is about to start waaaaaay across campus and I can't remember my locker combination and my pencil is in my locker!!! AAAAAAA!!!! Well, it's scary to ME. Or, my record is about to end and I don't have another one cued up! AAAAAAA!!!!! Again, scary to ME. I get that dream a lot, actually.
So many of you probably have no idea what a patent engineer like me does every day. So I've attached an example of an actual patent for you - U.S. Patent Number 6,368,227, titled "Method of swinging on a swing". This is a real patent, and it issued in 2002. It's an extremely simplistic example of what I write every day, but it's written correctly and in the proper style. (That's what makes it so hilarious to me.) It was written up by a Patent Attorney that worked for 3M right here in St. Paul, and as I understand it, this was a birthday gift to his son, Steven. This particular case is legendary among us patent people.The last page just kills me: "The patent is hereby amended as indicated below. As a result of reexamination, it has been determined that: Claims 1, 2, 3 and 4 are cancelled." There were only four claims to begin with, so after reexamination, this patent essentially went POOF and disappeared.
I'd certainly mentioned the unbridled joy of New Pants Week, from about three years ago. It's been a tough act to follow, but I think I have a worthy successor: Nu Shooz Week! I am the new best friend of the Rockport store at the Outlet Mall outside of town. If I have learned nothing else in life, I can say with certainty that one should never skimp by buying the cheapo brands of paper towels, orange juice, razor blades, or men's shoes. This may be accepted as fact.
We've had a long-standing tradition at the Gerber house, which will most likely come to an end once Margaret leaves. At Margaret's insistence, we've been keeping a corner of the backyard designated as a compost pile. If old fruit gets squishy, we toss it onto the compost pile. Well it didn't take me long to figure out that if I stand on my back steps and hurl the aged fruit over the garage, I can get it to land fairly close to the compost pile. And with that monumental discovery, the tradition began. I would wait with excitement as a bag of apples sat and sat and sat, well past the point of, "I'm not eating THOSE." Then, on a glorious day, preferably free of precipitation, the fruit tossing! O blessed event! Apples were my favorite, with a weight about equal to a baseball. (Did I ever tell you my little league pitching story? It's brief: My first day as pitcher. I looked great in warm-ups. Good speed, good accuracy. I was my own personal Goose Gossage, if they ever let him start a game. Come game time - BIG problem. The pitcher before me left a giant trench where you're supposed to put your left foot at the end of your delivery. EGAD! No landing strip! The inning started, and I threw 32 balls in a row, every one of them squarely over the plate, and every one 12 inches too low. Walked eight consecutive batters before they took me out. We lost, of course, and I've never pitched another baseball to this day. Softball doesn't count.) So apples were the best. The little tangerines were super-light, so I could get incredible height with them. Unfortunately, my downfall was half a watermelon. Watermelons, I should point out, are kinda heavy. Well, despite my mighty toss, the watermelon landed squarely on the garage roof and sat there for about two days. And because the next door neighbors were getting married and having the ceremony in their backyard, I thought I should climb up on the roof and take the watermelon down, lest it end up in their wedding photos. And now, it's all coming to an end for two good reasons - (1) I don't care about the compost pile; that's why I pay people to cart away my trash every week, and (2) I probably won't buy more fruit than I can eat. End of an era, I tell ya.
And finally, the band is calling it quits after a final gig next week. We played a few gigs under the name "It Figures", which nobody really liked. Many of you offered suggestions and comments, and I will list a few that didn't make the last letter:
The Kickbacks
Moronic Pentameter
H Bar [who wouldn't love a band named after Planck's constant?]
The Roxx
Papercut
DAMFINO [a truly arcane reference to a boat in a Buster Keaton movie, pronounced DAM-F-I-NO]
Booksmart
Faux Pas
Gin and Juice Boxes
We Ran
That '80s Band
The LXXX's
And there was a great deal of affection for the name "Au Gratin" from last time. A few of us from the band may continue to play together, but it probably won't be the usual boogie-blues covers we've been playing. (Lynyrd Skynyrd, BTO, Stevie Ray Vaughan, etc.) I'll keep you posted.
(From the Former Mrs. Crap:)
In the words of Torgo, from MST3K's "Manos: The Hands of Fate": "Watch me go. Vroom."
And with that, wish us luck as we enter the final stage - Margaret moves out.
Ron & Margaret
