Day 67 Sunday, October 07, 2001
Laurie here.
KERF. What a silly phrase, huh? The verticle line cut into the window opening is a "kerf cut". It will
be needed for the exterior window trim.
We wrote it on ALL of the window bucks, but we still managed to fight with the gasket, get the window buck in and
THEN remember that we were supposed to kerf first. Kurse. Take out the buck. Take off the gasket. KERF. Reapply
gasket. Kurse. Put buck back in. Put on the header. We'll learn the kerfing lesson THIS time. Billy began
this procedure whilst I went to town to return the useless, but BIG, circular saw. Bubba (that's how he introduced
himself) met me at the door making fun of the "city girl" who isn't strong enough to carry it all the way
inside. Fine with me. Why would I WANT to carry it any further?? He gave me directions for a quicker way home "past
the cult." His directions were good and he was referring to some Yoga Retreat Village on the other side of town.
You know--lots of vegetarian, hairy girls who can probably put their ankles over their shoulders. But anyway--it was
a faster route and I saw some new sections of Sullivan County.
Returning to Billy, we laid course 12 on the second wall and everything went well. Then…well, then..we noticed
a few of my mistakes. Billy sometimes calls me RAY (after Dustin Hoffman's character in RainMan-"I'm an excellent
driver." "Kmart sucks.") because I have a gift of math in my head. This gift has been a blessing to
Billy at racetracks ("how fast was I going per lap?') at the store ("how much will 8 2x10s & 4 2x12s
be?") and even with his GPA ("what do I need to get on my final to get a 3.90 GPA?") So he has
come to trust me with numbers. Today that proved a mistake. I did all the measuring and marking. My math was
RIGHT ON THE MONEY. It seems that I just can't copy. TWICE I marked 1 15/16ths where 1 5/16ths should have been.
ONCE, I copied the wrong number completely and well, was just 2 inches off. WHAT AN IDIOT!!!! I must say, Billy
handled it well. This was certainly grounds for dismissal. There HAVE to be OTHER mathematical mud queens out there.
One extra large molding is in our future.
We finished course 12.
It began to snow. Just flurries, but DEFINITELY snow. We checked the diagonals. We're doing very well. The neighbors came for a visit,
but it was too cold to talk outside. They were gone in 10 minutes.
10 hours, partly cloudy and windy around 48.