Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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Like my brownhouse:
   had I backed that equipment
Sunday, September 12 2004
Today I used Portland cement to fix cracks in the foundation wall. Its muddy consistency made it possible for me to work it into tiny gaps, and much though I would have preferred not to, I had to do a lot of that forcing with my bare hands. Had I dug a proper trench using modern earth moving equipment, had I backed that equipment into trees and really torn up the landscape, perhaps I'd have had enough room to allow me to handle wet Portland cement in a non-injurious manner. But the truth of the matter is that wet cement doesn't seem to injure skin too badly if it is washed off immediately.
I interwove this trench business with web work done remotely on a server in Canada with a colleague in Dublin (we communicated via MSN Instant Messenger). He stayed up amazingly late, given that he was in a timezone five hours ahead of mine. But at about the broadcast time of Six Feet Under's final season episode he had to call it quits, and so did I. And what an episode it was!


View from the laboratory deck, looking southeast.


The southwest corner of the house today, during the height of the foundation wall repair project.
That bright red stuff is duct tape, used to keep plastic anti-evaporation barriers in place.


Here you can see the retaining wall I had to tear apart.


Looking down the hole into the end of the trench three feet north along the western wall.


A view of the trench along the south wall, viewed from the east.
It goes all the way to the foundation but is only a foot wide at the bottom.


For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?040912

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