Better news than expected

September 27, 2007 (5:21am)

36º F, Overcast, SSE Wind, 4 mph.

Good morning,

It turned out to be a rather nice day yesterday. A bit cool in to morning, requiring a jacket to be worn, but my the mid afternoon, it was warm enough to break a sweat. Today looks to be some different. Rain is predicted with possible thunderstorms later in the day. I really do like this kind of weather we have had for the past few days. Nice working weather.

Margriet learned something of how to stain wood. After getting the cabinet sanded and de-dusted, the natural stain went on. She was pleased with the color change, actually just making the oak look wet and bringing out the grain. It was not as hard as she thought it would be, and got pretty good at it before she was finished. Today she will go over it and see if there are any “repairs” needed and the color is even. I peaked at it last night and it looked good to me. This is a bit different for her than just buying a cabinet in a store.

I managed to get the last two shelves down in the lean-to and put in a window. Actually I took off one of the 4'x16' panels of OSB from one wall. Now that is heavy! I thought I would use this panel to construct an assembly bench in the shop the full size of the sheet. I think I have changed my mind to make it 3'x12' instead. I can see the lift-arm/hoist I mounted in the truck will have a task I had not planned on - helping put the 4'x16' sheet into the truck to move it to the shop. Hope I can at least get one end into the truck so I can push it in the rest of the way in. The entire sheet was held onto the wall with 6 pole barn nails (hard aluminum ring-shank nails) and maybe a half dozen 16d nails on one end. Not much I think.

The last two shelves were the most difficult part of the deal so far. The one that was 8' off of the ground was sewed together with 16d nails. Was kind of “fun” standing on a ladder trying to get some leverage to pull things apart. The lead-to is 12'x16' in size, with a 6' high wall on the north and a 12' high wall where it attaches to the house (kind of a large carport structure). Actually pretty good sized and wish it were not attached to the house. Could use it for several things somewhere else. The floor is the same sand soil as the rest of the soil around here. Being under cover for some years, it really is dry. Very dusty too. When I was closing things up for the night, I raked over the floor to be sure I had not left too many tools and nails in the sand. Even with the short wall open, the interior was one cloud of dust when I finished. Lots of stones, about the size of a tennis ball, on the floor also. Should have several bucket fulls of them when I do the final clean-up.

The roof of the lean-to is constructed of 3 sheets of 1"x4'x16' OSB with steel roofing over it. I really am not looking forward to wrestling them off. Fortunately, this is the only place constructed like that. The rest I need to take down used 2"x4" stringers between the rafters. That will be much easier to work with - I think. These are also on the lowest portions I need to work on too. Wish I had a plug cutter. Just make some neat round hole surrounding each nail, rather than trying to pry the sheets up and off of the rafters. Have to puzzle on that a bit.

I think it was yesterday, or the day before, I said we had not seen the turkeys for a couple of days. When I went into the lean-to starting work for the day, there were turkey footprints in the sand where I had walked the day before. Not too sure when they were there, but suspect it was before I started for the day.

We got an email yesterday with some pretty good news concerning my friend Dan. I started to email Grace last week to find out if they knew, but didn’t get any replies. The secretary was at a conference for a couple of days, so couldn’t, but I don’t know why pastor didn’t reply. Anywho, Dan’s sentence is 45 months, less time served (7 months) and some drug/alcohol program requirements to complete. That is about a third what I expected he would receive. I am sure he is devastated, as he was hoping to be released with time served. I really don’t know the charges against hm, but never though that was a possibility at all. We have not had a letter from him for some time. Expect he doesn’t want to break the bad news to us - yet. We don’t know where he will be serving his time, but expect it will be in a Federal prison as the charges were Federal. He could, I think, get out sooner if he behaves himself, but at the moment, it looks like I will be writing letters to him for a bit over 3 more years. Wish I didn’t need to, but happy I can.

Time to get a-going.

In Christ My Saviour,

Chris <><