After about a month Joe started to adjust to his new home and roommates, his cats eventually came out of hiding and settled in to their new environment. John the convict was a gourmet chief. Joe and Adam were enjoying the best cooked meals they ever had. John had a deliberate approach in his preparation of every meal. Soups were gently stirred to perfection as he slowly added fresh vegetables and meat. He carefully molded dough in his working hands and then would craft freshly baked pot pies full of sliced meat and vegetables. John was skillful in his trade and took pride in creating masterpieces. Joe enjoyed watching him prepare their meals—almost as much as he enjoyed eating them. The problem; he always made way too much food. There were only three men living in Adam’s house but John would make enough for five. And cleaning up the mess each night became an epic event. John and Adam already had some semblance of potbellies. Joe was about six-feet tall and weighed 175 pounds. He was petrified of getting fat. Even though he ran almost 30 miles a week he was putting on weight. In spite of his nervous energy and high-octane furnace, Joe could not burn all the calories he was taking in from John’s gourmet cooking. But the food was so damn good.

Adam and John would spend a lot of time watching TV in the living room. Joe finally reclaimed the section of the house that was originally intended for him just inside the garage area. John reluctantly handed over the garage-door-opener because Joe still had most of his stuff in the garage. Now Joe had the setup that Adam had promised him before John muddied the waters, with Adam’s help. Joe tapped into Adams Internet access and hooked up his wife’s old computer. It was a painfully slow dial-up but Joe was a patient man. While Adam and John were watching old episodes of All in the Family, Joe was being introduced to the enormity of the Internet. It was overwhelming. Too much information! Everything was right there in front of him. He heard about the Internet and how Al Gore had invented it. Too bad Joe did not believe politicians. Right now, he was having trouble believing in himself. The pain of his divorce reinvented itself every day. Some days he took steps forward only to discover later he was right back where he started—with no wife and an uncertain future.