Jerm's Insanity

When you’ve sick (ie: sneezy, light headed, etc…) attic work is not recommended.

…dom to do very little.

No, I don’t have a pet snake. Imagine my surprise when i went to water my spider plant and encountered this little guy:

Mind you, this is inside my dwelling. On the window sill that houses my plants, next to the door that i use a couple of times per day. Not exactly the place i expected to see a 2′ snake. And this isn’t the first time. This same little bugger, or one looking just like him, was sitting right on the ledge startled me back in April when i walked through the door one day. That would explain the shed snake skin i had found mounths earlier in the same spot. The whole ledge is a stone wall that separates inside form out and is largely sub-terranian on the other side. I kicked him out both times, but he seems to like that plant :-/

Seeing the fruits of one’s labor is a a wonderful thing. It’s an important thing as well — without it, what would be the point of the labor? You’d be left with stagnation, slavery, or a bunch of very pissed off people outside the Boss’s door. Many of them would undoubtedly have pitchforks. This is why i stay out of management.

My point is that the journey of rejuvination on which we’ve embarked our future dwelling has, up until recently, been largely destructive. Step by step along the way we’ve seen parts of our collosal purchase cut, chopped, bashed, disassebled and outright demolished. I’m sure this process is old-hat among the seasoned home reconditioner, but for the neophytes behind this blog it’s been a tremendous effort to keep a fix on the light at the end of rennovation tunnel and keep our inner pitchfork-branding-hordes outside the gates.

Until early last week.

Two weekends ago I finished the digging of the holes. There was then a government mandated waiting period to get someone to inspect my holes. He said that my holes were OK, but he wanted some re-bar in them. So, we stuck 3 pieces of re-bar into each of my holes and the pouring of the concrete commenced. WOOHOO!! We were officially (read: mostly) done damaging the house and finally started improving it! (*NOTE: it could be successfully argued that our first step of ripping down the paneling was a marked improvement to the house, but that was weeks ago)

Also fabulous, during the waiting period, we got very much of the interior furring out of the walls done.

Yes boys and girls and those not quite sure, progress is a wonderful thing. They say getting there is half the fun and it’s finally starting to feel true.

This explains a lot

For the past two weeks i’ve been living somewhat of a double life: Mild-mannered unshod IT hunk by day, and Teamster by night, and evening, and weekend. Here is where i would normally make some wisecrack about how the teamster reference doesn’t apply because i was working far too hard, but i think now i kind-of get it. You know when there’s a road crew and you see one guy jack-hammering and 3 guys standing around drinking coffee, and you think, “gotta love mt tax dollars going to 1 guy working and 3 guys standing around drinking coffe?” I don’t think that any more. I have been schooled. I have seen the light, and the darkness that lies there.

Who Knew

It seems that jack-hammering, and chainsawing and digging, and augering are all hard work. Like, “Oh-my-god-this-validates-my-decision-to-be-an-IT-geek-for-a-living. Thank-“Bob”-i-was-clever-enough-to-not-have-to-do-this every-fucking-day-of-my-working-life” hard work. One gets dirty. One gets tired. One gets blisters even with gloves on.

The Guys drinking coffe aren’t thinking, “boy ove got it good, i’m drinking coffee while that poor fool is working.” They’re thinking, “Oh hell, I’m next up on the jack-hammer.”

There is a bright side, though. All of this is going into the history books. I was fortunate enough to be working during some of the recent days of thermal record-breaking. woohoo!