Day 39, Sunday, September 09, 2001

Today is Laurie's birthday. We will celebrate this blessed day the traditional way: We lay blocks! Butchie is up at oh dark thirty and outside playing with the fire. We roll out of bed at 8:30. A quick breakfast and out to the hole. Butchie and I lay blocks and Laurie mixes mortar and tools the joints. A big "thank you" to Laurie and Butchie for the tremendous help.

Let me tell you a quick story about the cursed bag of mortar. I had 34 80 pound bags of mortar delivered with my rebar. They come on a pallet ($20.00 pallet core charge!). They were set outside the basement because we were still working on the footings. Now I need it in the basement where we mix it. We picked up the pallet with the machine and one bag fell, no, jumped out onto the ground an split open. Crap! We left it there covered with a piece of tar paper. We had a goal of finishing 4 courses on 4 walls today. We had about 22 blocks left and we had gone through all the mortar we had, except for the cursed bag. Laurie went up to rescue it. She carefully wrapped it in the tar paper and brought it to the ladder. I climbed up and met her. We carefully carried it down the ladder. We carefully carried it to the mixer where I promptly dropped it on the ground. Crap! No sweat, we scooped the remaining 75% into the mixer. "Don't forget to adjust the water amount" I tell Laurie. Butchie and I await the final batch. It wasn't to be. Too much water, soupy mortar, no good. The last 22 blocks will have to wait. Damn that cursed bag!

Laurie and I went out to a fancy Italian restaurant for her birthday dinner and got cake at the diner. Back at the camper I gave her the sweater. She was surprised.

Thanks again to Butchie and Laurie, the foundation is 1/3 done!

8 hours, sunny and 82.