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stolen rawhide distraction
Monday, October 20 2008
Today I was again able to install only seven concrete blocks in my greenhouse wall project. When I was done, there were only two blocks left to install on the building's lowest tier. The gap was near the center of the west wall. I slapped a level across this gap and saw that one side was nearly three quarters of an inch higher than the other. This was the error that had accumulated as I'd gone around. I really should have been leveling from a constant reference instead of with respect to work I'd just done. Still, it could have been much worse. There was also a three quarter inch east-west error as the ends of the walls as they approached each other. I decided to compensate for this by thickening the concrete block wall in a few places with concrete to support a second tier that will hopefully be closer to square than this one was. As you can see, it's not easy to correct for mistakes made in lower layers. Still, this tier of concrete blocks is much more precise than the footing was, and hopefully the second tier will be more precise still. But what do I know, I'm groping towards wisdom as I go along.
At some point I drove to Uptown Kingston to pick up Gretchen's guitar, which she'd left at a guitar shop there during her time down in the City. Strangely, only Eleanor came with me on this errand. Earlier Eleanor had stolen a rawhide bone from Merlin, the downhill neighbors' Border Collie. But since Eleanor doesn't really like rawhide bones, Sally had ended up with it. She'd lain down amid the tiny White Pines of our "septic field knoll" (near the greenhouse) and had quickly become absorbed by the task of chewing on it. She was so distracted that when I was leaving, she didn't respond to my calls. This might be the first time ever that Sally turned me down on an invitation to take a ride into town.
In addition to the guitar, I picked up 160 pounds of concrete and 160 pounds of mortar while I was in town. I would have gotten more, but the streets of Uptown are not as smooth as those leading out to 9W, and I was worried about my car's suspension.
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