One year ago today: July 3, 2019, paranoid,or prepared?
Five years ago today: July 3, 2015, a coffee at Serenity.
Nine years ago today: July 3, 2011, looking at tube radios.
Random years ago today: July 3, 2013, the weed, R.I.P.
Thanks to partial shade in the mornings, I was out there planting two more posts, both three feet deep. That’s quite a dig, around three times the work of a two-foot hole. That’s why you get construction pictures today. Here is a view of the two end plates, partially camouflaged as customary. The tree stump at center is the last of Mitch’s grapefruit tree. It hasn’t produced in two years, even the small fruit that survives the bark blight. This view shows the “back” of the new shed, the area slated for my six-foot work table, the one I’ve always wanted. One where I don’t have to clear a space to do some work.
It was a gallon of peach tea during a mere four hours work time. Around late morning when it usually gets too hot, we got a breeze and some cloud cover. This let me put in the extra two hours, so now maybe I could take the evening off. Here’s another picture from the south side, looking toward the same far corner as the other picture. The crosspieces are not permanent but for bracing as it can take a week for the posts to settle in the sandy subsoil. I seem to have a knack for getting the posts exactly in the right spots and right depth. Must be some holdover from robotics, since what you see here is more than half the total experience I have in the world on this chore.
The design isn’t finalized but see that post just right of center? To the left I may put a large door meant to be used mainly for moving material. What’s challenging me is if I leave the door off the far corner, I could gain another eight feet of work space, but if I wanted something from the lean-to, I’d have to walk seventy feet around the outside of the building. If I put the doorway there, I gain a wall nearly twelve feet long that could house every major bench too that I own with room to spare.
BMW may be the car that finally goes full millennial. Want headlights? Subscribe to that app. Need turn signals for the next ten minutes? Insert coin here. Like A/C? Membership only $80 per month. Radio, power windows, speedometer, even heated seats are just a 30-day free trial away. Get rear-ended when the car behind you has the adaptive cruise control expire. And once we get the Internet of Things, the possibilities are endless, not to mention the probabilities, if you get my drift.
Antelope Island, Utah.
Remember to use BACK ARROW to return to blog.
A late afternoon letup and I got the laminate beam glued and screwed. I can barely lift one end of it. After five minutes of messing with the laser level I again concluded they are a great concept if anybody can get them to work. The beam is 18 feet long, to get the laser to throw that far, it has to be so dark you can’t see what else is going on. I resorted to string and bubble levels, analog technology that works. Moments later, this is the beam lying on the ground after being dragged over to the base-line of the columns. I will long remember all my buddies who owe me favors that were around to help with this particularly difficult task.
The fun part was lifting the beam over six feet off the ground to rest on the columns. With my stepladder, this still involved hefting the assembly up near shoulder height, something I hope I never have to do again. Hopefully the beam in place is very hard to see, but here’s a picture anyway. Most of the other lumber here and there is just bracing, since I didn’t want to wait for the posts to settle on their own. The usable part of the beam on the interior is 16 feet, with the one big 12-foot span if you can make it out.
Initially just a shaded work area, I need space to move things around as I do some finishing work, including insulation, on the inside of the other sheds. It’s a pity I can’t build new as planned, so this amounts to another renovation project. Actually, not that I have some experience, you probably noticed a lot more gets done in a given day. The finished sheds and lean-tos add will total some 510 square feet, but very little of it is an efficient layout. The board I have to custom-cut tomorrow is the piece that makes sure the rainwater off the new covered area flows along the existing roof line, which means the water actually drains between the two sheds. I have an eaves-trough in there now but it likely won’t handle the flow from such a large new area.
I’ve seen a few of the posts from the Boogaloo Bois, and they are not as radical or racist as most leftist points of view. They are libertarians, although kind of extreme but still, I cannot fault anyone for mistrusting the government these days. I certainly don’t like the way the media portrays them as homophobic. There’s a vast difference between not liking something and being afraid of it. The queers like to put that twist on anybody who doesn’t like their message. It’s about as ridiculous as stance as saying you are afraid of the Seven-Dayers because you don’t like them ringing your doorbell. And they get about as much respect as you can imagine over it.
The press is unwittingly making a martyr of some guy named Carillo. They say he killed two “federal agents” but the details are not forthcoming. I want both sides of the story and will be disinclined to blame anybody until then. I know that a lot of people who kill in such situations are sincerely acting in self-defense, but that is the last precedent that law enforcement wants to allow into the equation. The police have become far too violent to expect everybody to surrender quietly, those days are long gone. I’m sure the full story is on-line somewhere, but it doesn’t come up in the first page of search results. Right there, something funny is going on.
As for advocating another civil war, that is something that’s been around since the hippie movement of the sixties and it ceases to have any real impact on public opinion. That would change if the Boogaloo people ever get organized. But the odds of that are mighty slim—provided the press doesn’t provide a rallying point, like they are with this Carillo thing. The IQ of American mainstream journalism has long slipped into the double-digit range.
ADDENDUM
July 3, time to check on my old band, the five-piece that plays once a year. Yep, they are still there, with the same members, which is pretty amazing since bands that cost money rarely survive. That’s the band where they all have day jobs except the guitar player, who has a night job. So he can’t gig much. They have an impressive list of credits, though the list inexplicably peters out around 1997. These guys are definitely not in the music field for money. Or fame, or gigs, or fun, or popularity, or any reason I can discern. This is the band that could win a music contest but won’t be playing this weekend or this month, but maybe this year, unless you find the gig. But careful, they’ll do a Hippie on you. They’ll complain they have to get all the gigs, but if you get any they want a written contract and won’t guarantee they’ll be there.
Moments later, my posts got set in no time, there was a flash storm that nearly flash flooded the neighborhood. See, I if I had an overhead, this kind of weather is the best you’ll get for working semi-indoors. My guess is close to an inch in less than an hour. If it stays cool, I’m going to start on that beam. Once even part of that roof is done, the effect inside will be instant. I can store things like insulation outdoors, I’ve had to keep half a bale in the spare bedroom. I’ve got another $300 allocated for materials but things move only as fast as I can get rolling over here.
The neighbor’s shed is air conditioned. For me that would be luxury, I’d probably air condition the metal sheds before the work area. It’s established that I make him feel bad because he’s not out there working every day and did I tell you he showed me some of his work? The guy has had lessons, but there’s a trade-off. He can build pretty nice stuff from plans, but he can’t modify the plans. The tool boxes I’ve made are designed to fit around the given tool, he has to find plans for each project. On the other hand, his finishing puts mine to shame. I still can’t dovetail, and he’s got boxes of old bolts that should be holding jewelry.
When I replaced that fence panel, I raised it 4” off the ground. Drippage causes a nice trench to form, so I’m going to follow the example around the yard. Matilda has discovered the trench area is good scratching. I put some garden hose rollers on the birdfeeder to see if the squirrels can defeat that. I left the chain saw out to see if there is anything special about the grapefruit wood. I’ve still never connected up that lathe-looking device Agt. R brought over a couple years ago, I don’t even have any wood turning tools.
This might be my opportunity to have a grapefruit towel rack. The bathroom has always had a shortage of space for those, so I’m considering putting a rack across the hallway on the wall. You see, there is a bead curtain on one end of the hall and my normally closed bedroom door on the other. It would be pretty safe to reach across the hallway and no problem at all if you are home alone. I also dug out those laser levels the club could never get to work right and one of them still throws a beam, sort of. I think if I work with them in the dusk, I’ll be able to see the mark well enough to mark the uprights. The posts are pretty even but in this case, I’ll saw them to the right dimensions.
