Got My Straw Hat

All of my whining about the cold wet Spring here seems to have paid off. Albeit, a little tentatively, Summer finally arrived with a week of sunshine and temps over 70’s and no humidity. There was even one day of 90+.Whoo Hoo!!!. back to 60’s and seventies, but that works for me.

I got the approval of my building permit application a couple of months ago but because of the wet weather, I wasn’t able to do much with it. The last couple of weeks were dry so my reasons to just aimlessly putter around the property dried up too.

I hunkered down with some thick plywood and some old rusty rebar and built out the footer form for the cabin foundation. It was my first (and hopefully only) effort at this type of work. In my opinion, Concrete is really not fun. In fact, it sucks. Everything is heavy, cumbersome and dirty. And I haven’t even gotten to the concrete yet.

I was going to have to dust off some old brain cells to try and remember the simple geometry formulas to tell me how much concrete I was going to need to fill up the forms. I soon figured out that all that dust was going to require an excavator. so I just googled “concrete calculator”. It came up with 20 yards quicker than Lori Marcovitch moved 4 seats away when I sat next to her 10^th grade math. Oh, if she could see me now. But let’s not dwell and back to the matter at hand. From further googling 20 yards of concrete is 2 of those trucks with the big spinning barrels filled to their brim. That would be about 1200 bags of concrete from the Home Depot.

That is just for the footer. It doesn’t include the floor or the walls. When that is added all in, I am going to be getting some exercise this summer and a Christmas gift basket from the local Chiropractor.

I did try to get someone up here that actually does concrete for a living. But the discussions just faded like echoes in the mountains. I think the job is too small compared to the huge log mansion jobs getting bid on up and down the valley.

So after a couple of weeks of getting the forms set in place, rebar placed and tied together, I sit here the morning after my scheduled inspection wondering where the inspector went. I think building inspectors start out as cable TV installers because I was given a window of all day. For which, I dutifully waited around all day only to have no inspector show up. I checked this morning and my name didn’t even get rolled over to today’s schedule of inspection appointments. Heavy Sigh. Back to the scheduling website.

Just Starting

Ready for Inspection

It’s not like there is a big hurry to get the inspection done. I spoke to the concrete company in town. They reported that there is a worldwide shortage of concrete now, with very limited availability for the foreseeable future. The push for the inspection is to be ready in case of the unlikely event that a couple truck’s worth of concrete magically come available at the last minute.

While I wait for the inspector to not show up again and for concrete to come back on the market, there is still plenty of work to do. I guess summer is over because none of it while wearing a straw hat and rubber sandals. The big effort is to continue to hack away at 30 years of uncontrolled tree and brush growth. Slow going but I will surely get more value out of my future Chiropractor visits.

Just Starting on May 15th

Same spot so far. All the green complements of the Wet Spring

As far as entertainment, not much. When I changed cell phone companies last year, I decided to stay with my old phone. Mine was working fine and I was getting used to the crust of dust that coated it. It even got 5g service in the bigger cities. As I was working my way through “Barry” on HBOMax, my internet slowed to a crawl. I was barely able to get a Google search result to open or watch hours of free yard maintenance videos on Youtube.

Oh yeah, the phone, So the phone was pretty useless without web access so I had to upgrade to a newer phone. It was free as long as I stick with ATT for 3 years. As experience shows from the last three years, that will go by in a flash.

As drinking sabbatical went so well, I figured I should raise the bar and try another vice. Wasn’t so hard because I am running out of vices. The last big one, other than swearing was coffee. I just stopped one day and didn’t look back. It was easy. So easy, that about 3 weeks later, I was thinking maybe it wasn’t a vice after all. It could be that I only drink one 16oz mug of the cheapest coffee I can find. So maybe it’s so cheap because they forgot the caffeine or something. There were no headaches, no withdrawals at all. So I thought that was silly and started back up, mostly as a way to procrastinate the concrete preparations each morning.

Speaking of procrastination, I am cutting this one close. July 1^st is getting ready to say hello and my goal is at least one post a month. So time to let this one fly.