when is menu.lst read in grub process

[Damon Register]

After a while of Googling, reading grub documentation and struggling
to understand some of grub, I am still stuck.  I have found in my own
life that understanding how something works is very important in
dealing with problems when they occur.  AT this point I don't have
any specific problems with grub, I just want to better understand the
grub process.  I suspect I am not the only one who has these kinds of
questions and I am hoping that this might be used to add some things
to the grub faq http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-legacy-faq.en.html

1. am I correct in understanding that menu.lst and grub.conf are really
   the same thing?  Did menu.lst evolve into grub.conf?

2. what is a high level overview of the sequence for a simple boot
   sequence?  Am I correct in understanding that it goes something
   like this?
   a. stage1 is in the MBR and is the first thing seen at startup
   b. stage1 contains a pointer to stage2 which is in the filesystem

3. Just where does the menu.lst fit into the grub sequence?  At what
   point is it read?

4. is any part of the menu.lst read and inserted into either stage1
   or stage2 during the installation of grub?

5. are there any changes to menu.lst that require a re-installation
   of grub?

6. at http://www.freeos.com/articles/3482/ I read

   While LILO requires the physical location of the kernel on your
   drive, GRUB does not. Even the latest filesystem ReiserFS is
   supported. This means that you don't have to re-install GRUB every
   time you make a change to the config file or install a new kernel.

   Is that true?  Does that mean the answer to my question 5 is no?

Damon Register