Subject: A Turning of Seasons
Date: Mon, 14 Sep 92 16:56:38 -0700
From: li@inigo.Data-IO.COM

This last week had just about everything... sigh... actually, it's an
accumilation of several months.

Last May John began the process for applying for a building permit to put
an addition onto our house.  It was a relatively 'small' addition, just an
extra 10 feet to our 15 foot wide livingroom, small enough to make the
permit getting fairly straightfoward and relatively fast.  John didn't
actually GET the permit until July.  :)  Pretty fast for a government
agency, ne?

August was entirely booked.  John did manage to get a contractor out to
mold and pour the foundation.  On the Friday of that particular week, the
concrete truck was supposed to arrive.  It was neatly an hour and half
late.  The contractor had given the concrete company a NE instead of a SE,
and the poor driver was looking for us on the other side of town.  The
driver called into tell central that he couldn't find us.  Central said,
come on in.  The driver said, 'I think I'll try SE, first, and THEN give
up...' Lucky for us he decided to do as he did.  He told John and the
contractor that all the concrete truck drivers were going on strike the
next morning....

Grin.

John and his dad did little things for the weekends leading up to Labor
Day.  One weekend they moved the laundry room door over by three feet,
another weekend they built the floor for the addition, and they cleaned up
after each set until the place was pretty much the same as before.  Not
bad, I thought.  I wonder if the big push for building most of the
structure is going to be like this?  It wasn't... :)

Labor Day weekend was spent from about 8am 'til 9 pm at night working on
the addition.  The first day we managed to put up the outside wall, prop
up the wall that was already there, and then cut out the hole in the wall
that was where the new roof was going to tie into the existing structure.
We quit at about 9pm, when the artichoke heart cassarole I'd baked was
done and John and his dad were thinking about *starting* to put a 200
pound 12x6 beam 12" into the air.

The next morning was spent putting the beam up along with the two
supporting beams.  We built two 'ladders' about two feet from each end,
the legs were built out of 2x12's and the runs were bits and pieces of 2x4
that we'd gotten from other things.  We started on the sawhorses, then up
about 2 feet at a time until we were about 8 feet off the ground.  Then
John's dad pulled out a hydrolic jack and up it went...  The 6x6 support
beams were slammed into place with a maul and some thinking, and then we
took down the supports.  Yow.  The afternoon was spent shaping and putting
up the main rafters.  When it started getting dark, we put up a big sheet
of plastic, and hoped it wouldn't rain.

It didn't rain.  It did, however, get down to 38 degrees that night.
Shiver.  I didn't get up until 10am on Monday, and John had gone off to
Henry Bacons to get a bunch of stuff that we didn't have.  Basically, they
tore off the old roof that the new roof was going to be merging with,
built the joining rafters and then started putting in all the detailing
that was needed to make everything rock solid.

After it started getting dark, we put plastic up along the top of the
roof, and let it hang down the new rafters, because there was supposed to
be rain that night.  Instead of just rain, the wind started blowing....

Around 3am John was woken by a huge blast of wind.  He wandered down in
his robe and started swearing, he was still swearing when he came back
up.  The plastic had blown *all* the way over the opposite roof, so that
the entire construction area and our livingroom (with all the stuff in it)
was exposed if it rained.  It was blowing so hard that even with two of
us, we couldn't go up and have even a chance of pulling the tarp back in
place. He told me to wake him up if I heard rain.  I woke up around 6am
and poked John in the side with an elbow.  "It's raining."  "Oh, shit..."
A steady, solid rain, too.  We both wandered downstairs to see just how
much damage there was and just stood there, blinking, for a while.

The wind and the weight of the rain had put the plastic back in place.

Perfectly in place.

It covered *everything*, even the bits of the old roof where the
insulation had been exposed.   There was just a tiny bit of water on the
floorboards, but that was even evaporating as we looked.

Yow.  One *could* say that we were expecting the downhill flowing
properties of the rain to smooth the plastic into place by itself, but
that would be lying.  We were just damned lucky...

Chuckle...

Tuesday and Wednesday I had to go to work to hit a dropdeadline.  Thursday
morning, VA (my boss) was going to the Bay Area to demonstrate the front
end to our tools that we were building for the people she was going to be
visiting, so I had to get stuff done for that.  She was out Friday and
Tuesday.  I thought I might get something up on Tuesday and failed
miserably at it, even after getting up at 6am and getting in before 7am.
I actually stayed until 5pm to set up the basis for what I was going to do
the next day.  The main problem was in the interface between the Windows
3.1 dialog box notation and Liant's converstion tools from that stuff to
the C++ program that would implement it.  Sigh...

So I went home, and was happy to find John and his dad with half the roof
finished.  I helped with a couple of rows of shakes (while shaking at
being up that far... grin... it got better with time) and then ran off to
a Church Council meeting.  Wednesday, I worked, got more stuff up than I
thought I could, and then went home to help with the last of the walls and
some other stuff.  Didn't get home until 6:30, getting everything buttoned
up for the demo; but I was happy with how much I had finished for work.
Spent the evening and a couple hours *after* it got dark helping with the
top rows of the roof.  Eventually climbed down with an armload of
equipement to boot.  Grin.  Then helped John and his dad put up the
outside boards.  It was *amazing* what a difference it made to the
interior of the house when the wind wasn't blowing straight through.

It rained heavily last night, and the roof didn't leak one drop.

Cool.

Thursday morning, we both decided that the Fairy Housecleaner, Beda, was
going to get a substantial bonus for dealing with the disaster area that
was our livingroom.  John wrote the check before I voiced my opinion, and
I was amused that we'd come up with the same amount.  We both went to
work, and I had a class to teach that night, a spinning class.  So we left
work at 5:30, ran by the local dairy to get our glass bottled milk, had a
couple of ice cream cones because we wouldn't eat until after my class,
and then bombed home.  The ride to the dairy took rather longer than we
thought, and the class was supposed to start at 6:30, and we didn't get
home until 6:20.

We ran into the door, to get all my stuff and ram it into the CRX.  We
stopped dead in our tracks.  *I* wasn't sure if it was our house or not
for a second there.  The Fairy Housecleaner had completely and absolutely
outdid herself.  It was a head trip I couldn't *believe* to have the house
look like THAT after the incredible mess it was in the day before.  I had
to change, and ran upstairs to our bedroom and was blown away by an
absolutely square cornered bed, *EVERYTHING* put in not only its place,
but put there so neatly One could measure by it.  A pair of canvas shoes
I'd had on the floor were Arrainged on the corner of the impossibly neatly
made bed at an exact 45 degree angle to the edge of the bed.  The tissue
in the tissue box had it's edges folded in.  The TP in the bathroom had
the edge folded to a perfect triangle... There wasn't a *speck* of dust to
be found *anywhere*.  The whole HOUSE was like this.

It was frightening.

I *had* to bounce on the bed, once.  Perfection and Powers That Be...
brr.

Grin...  She'd also moved every bit of my spinning equipment from the
livingroom and scattered it between three storage rooms.  Sigh... it got
to a point where both John and I were screaming wordlessly between dashes
between the car and the rooms, as I tried to figure out where the HELL
everything I needed was and how to get to it and.... AAAGGGHHH!!!

Yeah... John and I came up with this great idea, when we're both stressed
to hell we don't yell at each other, we just scream.   Works every time,
and gets us both giggling at each others screams.  I think, however, that
it would only work in a house like ours where the neighbors won't call 911
at screams from the neighboring house.

Loaded up the CRiXet and dashed off to the Guild Meeting to find that not
everyone was there yet.  No problem.  I started passing out stuff, and
soon realized that there were about four more people than the Guild leader
had said that there would be.  Oh Oh...  I had *exactly* enough combs for
the number of people that were there.  No more, no less, and it meant that
I didn't have any combs to demonstrate with...  AAAHHGGG--- I didn't
scream, I'm proud to say.  I made do, borrowing as I walked around, and it
was fun. Turned out that four other combs were in Yet Another Box that the
Fairy had moved... sigh...

I was there until 10pm teaching the fine spinning techniques that I had
worked on for so long; and the ladies there were pretty pleased.  One lady
looked on in shock as she spun a yarn that was finer than she'd *ever*
spun before.  Two ladies were from the Snohomish Guild, and were happy
with what I taught and were experienced enough to do *really* well at it.
Fun to make it possible for them to do something they never thought they
could do.

Friday was a dash off to the Old Spagetti Factory after work, for Tina's
birthday.  That was fun. I've always loved the Old Spagetti Factory, lots
of ambiance, infinite supplies of bread with garlic butter, and probably
the best (and only) browned butter and Mizithra Cheese spagetti I can get
*with* a helping of spagetti with clam sauce.  Yum.  Good food, a LONG
wait, that that was half our fault for not hearing the group be called for
a table for about 30+ minutes.  Yeek...

Saturday, for the first time that week, we slept late.  Yow.  :)   We also
cleaned up the outside of the house and the working area where we'd thrown
most of the stuff from putting together the roof.  John then made a trip
to the dump and to return the left over materials to Henry bacon.  I
stayed at home and spun on John's sweater, the one that's one part Fezzik
fur and two parts wool.  I'm now about 2/3rds of the way through.  Fez's
fur *still* makes me sniffle a little.

That night we went to see the Director's Cut of _Bladerunner_.  Wow.  It
was incredible.  I'd forgotten how powerful a movie that one was, and how
those images shaped most of the cyberpunk work and world that followed it.
Especially the scene on the roof at the end. Amazing... 

Sunday was the first time we went to church in about... oh... three
months. Grin.  The summer's been so incredibly busy, it was interesting to
get back and have Dr. John give a sermon on finding the lost.  Chuckle... 
It was nice to realize that we still belonged there.  Read something in
the paper that morning that had me chuckling to myself, it was about a
young preacher that had invited an older preacher to speak at his
congregation.  The elder started by addressing the crowd, saying thanks
for coming, and saying "Do you think that Jesus Christ would have called
all of you sinners?" The young preacher though, of *course* He would have,
there are people there that you wouldn't *believe* what they'd done the
weekend before.  Beside, the youngster's formula had always been 1) Get
everyone feeling guilty and then 2) tell them how Jesus saves their
miserable sinning selfs. 

The elder shocked the bejeezus out of the younger by saying, "No.  He
wouldn't have.  You can look through your whole Bible if you like, but
Christ never called *anyone* a sinner.  He did call you the light of the
World, so let that light shine with your deeds."  The youngster spent the
next couple of days looking through his Bible and realized that, sure
enough, Jesus had *never* called anyone a sinner and realized that the
real teachings of Christ were *positive*.  I loved it.  All right, I'll
admit it, I wanted to run out and find some Hellfire and Brimstone person
to use it on.  "You *do* take Christ as your example, don't you?  Well...
did you know..." Giggle...

Watched football for most of the rest of the morning afternoon while I
spun away at John's sweater.  The wind and clouds came up again, and I
suddenly realized that the summer really is over and Fall was here.  The
oak above the driveway has been dropping its leaves, the apple trees are
now about ready to pick.  The second prune tree has sweet fruit, now,
ready to be dried.  There was a two foot long zucchini in our fridge that
we ate part of last night, just gently steamed by the microNuke, and its
buttery smoothness reminded me of acorn squash baked with butter and brown
sugar.  Thought about clam digging by a grey and stormy shore, like John
and two of his friends and I did years ago.  It rained during the game as
well, a curtain of droplets the size of peas.  And as I watched the trees
toss in the winds, I felt like things had just gone around again.

So strange to be old enough to be comfortable with a pattern of life as
big as an entire year...

-----
Phyllis