cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Mountains Shall Drop Sweet Wine and the Hills Shall Melt I got that second damned beam into place yesterday by myself. It's not actually fastened, but it is in place and jacked up tight against the bottom of the joists with a car jack. Man, that was brutal. I had to do it twice. The first time, I got it into place and then saw that with the crown up, only 2 or 3 joists were actually making contact with the beam. Not good. Almost every long piece of wood will have a crown. Some slight bow to it. If you lay the bowed piece of wood down flat such that the middle is sticking slightly up, that is the crown you are looking at. Wood is an imperfect medium. It bends and bows and changes dimensions slightly or dramatically depending on moisture content in the wood, ambient humidity and temperature. You mustn't be too fussy with getting wood exactly right when you are building something large because every single piece of wood that you use will have some slightly different individual characteristic that sets it slightly apart from the other pieces if you look closely enough. When I had that 22 foot long beam jacked into place with the crown side up, it only made actual contact with the middle 2 joists. In the process of getting the 300 pound beam back down, it actually dropped and I very narrowly avoided horrible injury. For a moment it seemed like I might very well be pinned in place with the beam awkwardly across my bent right leg as I crouched/knelt on the ground. The position that I was in is difficult to describe, but suffice to say that I didn't have enough room to lift the beam by pushing up with my legs and if I'd used both hands I would have fallen backwards into the mud. Somehow or other I got out of the situation with nothing worse than a nasty bruise on my right leg just above the knee. So then there was much more fussing with the concrete blocks that I was using to temporarily prop up the beam while I got it lined up right and set up the jack. About 10 minutes after dark I finally had the thing satisfyingly cinched up into position. Now I just need to remember to use my lunch hour to run over to the shitty downtown hardware store for some 1.5" 8d nails and 3 or 4 bags of concrete to get the posts attached and buried and have the beam actually permanently installed. If I can get that done tonight then I can *finally* start building the damned walls tomorrow morning. It was all very hard work, kneeling there in the mud, straining against the huge damned beam. Plus all the hammering I did before hand to connect the 2 parts of the beam into a single member (this tendon thing is becoming a problem again). I had absolutely earned a beer when I finally walked inside. Beer and calories. All the calories I could stuff into my mouth. Building a foundation is a pain in the ass. Especially when you are doing it after the building has already been half-built. But the results are very gratifying. Once the concrete set, just the addition of the first beam on the south side of the building has lent a tremendous new stability to the structure. There is no wobble or movement whatsoever. The floor is stronger than that of my actual house. With 2 beams and a series of steel connectors to the joists, this will be a very, very strong foundation and floor. I am pleased. __________________________________ I'm re-reading C.S. Lewis' first Narnia book. 'The Magician's Nephew.' It's ok. Not amazing but ok. I'll be done with it tonight. Ok, it's actually the last Narnia book that he wrote but it's meant to be read first. I think. I will pick up a copy of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' this afternoon for reading this weekend when I am not building walls. __________________________________ There was some album by The Orb that I listened to a lot in college that had a sample that has stuck in my head for years. A deep voice saying "and the mountains shall drop sweet wine and the hills shall melt," also, "they shall also make gardens and eat the fruit of them." Out of curiosity I googled it a few minutes ago and found that it's from the Bible. Amos 9. Here's that bit in full: "Behold, the days come, said the Lord, that the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the treader of grapes him that sows seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all the hills shall melt. "And I will bring again the captivity of my people of Israel, and they shall build the waste cities, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and drink the wine thereof; they shall also make gardens, and eat the fruit of them. "And I will plant them on their land, and they shall no more be pulled up out of their land which I have given them, said the LORD your God." 'Build the waste cities?' What does that mean? I'm guessing that it's more like 'restore' the waste cities. Renovate them, more or less. Places like Petra? Move into abandoned ancient cities and make them nice and comfy. That's what I think. I think I'm sort of doing that. I've moved into this unlivable shit hole, which I am building into something that can be comfortably inhabited. Plant vineyards and drink the wine therof? Check. I think that growing hops and making beer counts. As for the gardens and eating the fruit of them, I'll get to that bit in another year or 2. One thing at a time here. I'm only one man and of necessity am more in hunter-gatherer mode at the moment, as opposed to an agricultural settlement phase. Altogether, it is a very appropriate passage for me to randomly run across at this present moment following a half-remembered sample from an Orb track that I listened to stoned and/or tripping years ago. I would quite like the plowman to overtake the reaper. Also the treader of grapes catching up with him that sows seed. I'm all about that happening as soon as possible. Given the present national economic outlook I'm not sure exactly how that's going to happen but I'm certainly hopeful. 10:17 - 2008-03-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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