Seriously! A whole week without a single post, not even an explanation as to why there are no posts! Booo! Actually I have an excuse and I posted last Friday they the blog might be slightly dead but I figured at least one of my sisters would at the very minimum make one post. I guess it was too much to ask. So yes, I have been very busy, the following is a rather long rambling post on some of the various highlights from the past two weeks.
Two weeks ago I was commissioned to build a privacy fence of an extra long length, since Nick has to take it easy for 6 weeks, I grabbed my cousin who had nothing better to do and we set to construction. The fence post holes were marked out and we started merrily drilling away with a two-man auger. Well we were merrily drilling for maybe a minute then the auger hit a root and decided it wanted to turn into a paper weight and stop drilling. It was coaxed back to life only to die several rotations later. After several hours of messing around with not much visible success, I decided to return said auger, get my money back and go a different route.
The different route involved shovels and manual post hole diggers, which is actually the correct name for those things. Something like 12 hours were spent digging our holes by hand. For some strange reason, the man we were building the fence for wanted it built right through a miniature jungle, hanging vines and all. This involved first hacking a trail for the fence, then as we dug, hacking through a plethora of roots just to get to actual solid ground. The second day rolls by and we still don't have the holes dug, though they surrounding jungle is pretty much taken care of. I decided to grab another auger this time one a little more powerful from a local place. The second go around with an auger worked without a hitch. Day three ends and we are ready to set the posts.
Not much can be said about setting posts other than it is messy work. It probably would not have been so messy except halfway through the day it decided to rain just enough to make everything muddy. I had close to a quarter inch of concrete mixed with mud covering my entire body. My mother wanted me to strip just to come inside the house, but the posts got set.
Rather than rest heading into the weekend, I decided the best way to end a 55 hour work week was to kick off the weekend by dancing late into the night! I am after all member of the "Manly Men Know How to Dance...And Do" group. (Yes that is an actual group and I am an actual member) So I headed west to a monthly Contra dance get together with some friends.
Four hours later my feet were not sore (this thanks to converse) but I was as sweaty as I had been when I was digging holes for the fence posts. It was a lot of fun though, contra dancing involves lots of fast swinging of your partner and there were several dances where my parter and I were swinging so fast that had I not been looking at her face I probably would have gotten dizzy as everything else was a blur. I would post some video but I am still waiting on it, so I just have this lousy picture of the crowd. If you don't know I am the guy in the brown shirt to the far right.
Monday morning my cousin and I were back at it building the actual fence on the posts. It took longer than I would have liked but we got the job done and it looks pretty good if I do say so myself. Something that was rather funny that kept occurring as we worked on the fence was the fact the people driving by, mainly of the female variety kept yelling at us. The chorus of yells such as "Ooooh" and "Hey Baby" as they drove by just made me laugh. The completed fence:
If you notice the fence curves along with the sidewalk so you can't see the whole length but this was the best picture I could get without standing in the middle of the road. :p The day after the fence was completed my dad and I made a quick trip to Florida that for a job which was why I was silent on the blog this past week. Next week is already shaping up to be just as busy as the last two but I will try to at least post a "Notebook Blogger" and "Stupid People News" and maybe my sisters will come out of hiding with a post or two of their own. Though I could continue babbling on about FL in this post I think I will go clean (yes a guy cleaning) my room as it has looked like a bomb went off in it for the past two weeks and yesterday I had a hard time finding some clothes I was looking for which of course means they are probably buried somewhere in my room.
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