a few days off
On Wednesday I managed to finish the last of the revisions to my paper that the reviewers suggested and emailed it off to my co-author. He had already warned me that he would be traveling all last week with poor internet access, so he wouldn't be able to look at it before Monday, so this meant that I got the rest of the week off. (It says something about Academia that in a summer when I am technically unemployed I am still working so many hours that I revel in 2.5 days off.)
I celebrated the time off by returning to the various outdoor home improvement projects that have been neglected the past few weeks. Thursday I managed to level out the pile of dirt lord_kjar had dumped in the area that will, probably next summer, become the home of the new shed we bought last autumn and haven't had time to put up. This is an area next to the driveway that had sloped a fair bit, so earlier this summer he used the tractor to frame the space with some large rocks (0.5 to 1.5 m wide) and then dumped the load of dirt and rocks he got from a colleague's yard (said colleague was grateful that we were willing to use the tractor and huge trailer to haul it off at one go, saving him many, many trips to the dump with his tiny trailer) there and smoothed it out with the tractor. Then, while I was off in Norway he added another scoop (or more?) to the area, and the last load was dumped right at the edge of those framing stones, such that much of the dirt had fallen down the outside of them and obscured the lovely rocks from sight. Therefore I started Thursday morning by scooping up the dirt from the outside and carefully packing it into the spaces between the stones before tossing the rest of the excess into the center of where the shed will be. Then I raked all of the area between the stones to a reasonably level surface and used a little hand broom to clean off the outside of all of the stones. The area looks much better now.
After doing all of that I had some lunch, and made progress on my current book in progress. I had never read (or heard of) the English version, but the cover made it look like a fun read, and, indeed, now that the annoying character is out of the picture, it is, and I look forward to reading this one a second time, now that I know where the story is going, so I can look for details I missed on the first pass. I see that there are more books by the author about one of the other intriguing characters, so perhaps I will track them down some day.
Then I went back out and sifted rocks out of dirt to continue filling in the walkway to the earth cellar. That project is more than half done now, and it would be nice if it were completely done before the snow flies, so that the path isn't muddy during the spring melt.
I managed to get about three buckets of small rocks suitable for the walkway (and put larger ones aside for building the earth cellar). I used the sifted dirt for back fill behind the earth cellar walls, but the single wheelbarrow full of dirt didn't make any noticeable difference in depth of fill. Then I went in, played hammer dulcimer a bit, and did more reading.
Later, after lord_kjar got home from work we built an extension to the series of A-frame/tripods we use over the earth cellar walls for hoisting rocks up and into place so that we can start work on the south wall of the cellar. However, since sun is actually setting these days, the light wasn't good enough to start using the frame to move rocks, so instead he brought up a load of dirt in the tractor scoop, and we started filling in gravel against the wall and dirt further out behind the walls that we have already worked on this summer. On the north side of the earth cellar the wall is now less than 1 meter below the surface of the yard, and we have filled in dirt behind that wall all the way to the top, so next spring we won't have the same problem with the sides of the pit eroding and falling in that we had this spring.
Friday he only had to work half a day (having been on call last week), so we took the opportunity to lower the next three large stones into the pit and into place where they will go on the wall. However, by the time that was done we had only a couple of hours before our friends from choir were expected for instrumental music night, so instead of concreting them straight away we opted to do a bit more dirt and gravel fill on the west and south side of the cellar, so now everything is as high as it can be till we do the next batch of concrete.
The plan for today is to do that concreting, bake the loaf of bread (full of whole cloves of garlic, which will roast to pockets of soft goodness in the baking) that is rising, and then head to Umeå (three hours south) for the 30th birthday party for two of our friends (twin brothers).
I celebrated the time off by returning to the various outdoor home improvement projects that have been neglected the past few weeks. Thursday I managed to level out the pile of dirt lord_kjar had dumped in the area that will, probably next summer, become the home of the new shed we bought last autumn and haven't had time to put up. This is an area next to the driveway that had sloped a fair bit, so earlier this summer he used the tractor to frame the space with some large rocks (0.5 to 1.5 m wide) and then dumped the load of dirt and rocks he got from a colleague's yard (said colleague was grateful that we were willing to use the tractor and huge trailer to haul it off at one go, saving him many, many trips to the dump with his tiny trailer) there and smoothed it out with the tractor. Then, while I was off in Norway he added another scoop (or more?) to the area, and the last load was dumped right at the edge of those framing stones, such that much of the dirt had fallen down the outside of them and obscured the lovely rocks from sight. Therefore I started Thursday morning by scooping up the dirt from the outside and carefully packing it into the spaces between the stones before tossing the rest of the excess into the center of where the shed will be. Then I raked all of the area between the stones to a reasonably level surface and used a little hand broom to clean off the outside of all of the stones. The area looks much better now.
After doing all of that I had some lunch, and made progress on my current book in progress. I had never read (or heard of) the English version, but the cover made it look like a fun read, and, indeed, now that the annoying character is out of the picture, it is, and I look forward to reading this one a second time, now that I know where the story is going, so I can look for details I missed on the first pass. I see that there are more books by the author about one of the other intriguing characters, so perhaps I will track them down some day.
Then I went back out and sifted rocks out of dirt to continue filling in the walkway to the earth cellar. That project is more than half done now, and it would be nice if it were completely done before the snow flies, so that the path isn't muddy during the spring melt.
I managed to get about three buckets of small rocks suitable for the walkway (and put larger ones aside for building the earth cellar). I used the sifted dirt for back fill behind the earth cellar walls, but the single wheelbarrow full of dirt didn't make any noticeable difference in depth of fill. Then I went in, played hammer dulcimer a bit, and did more reading.
Later, after lord_kjar got home from work we built an extension to the series of A-frame/tripods we use over the earth cellar walls for hoisting rocks up and into place so that we can start work on the south wall of the cellar. However, since sun is actually setting these days, the light wasn't good enough to start using the frame to move rocks, so instead he brought up a load of dirt in the tractor scoop, and we started filling in gravel against the wall and dirt further out behind the walls that we have already worked on this summer. On the north side of the earth cellar the wall is now less than 1 meter below the surface of the yard, and we have filled in dirt behind that wall all the way to the top, so next spring we won't have the same problem with the sides of the pit eroding and falling in that we had this spring.
Friday he only had to work half a day (having been on call last week), so we took the opportunity to lower the next three large stones into the pit and into place where they will go on the wall. However, by the time that was done we had only a couple of hours before our friends from choir were expected for instrumental music night, so instead of concreting them straight away we opted to do a bit more dirt and gravel fill on the west and south side of the cellar, so now everything is as high as it can be till we do the next batch of concrete.
The plan for today is to do that concreting, bake the loaf of bread (full of whole cloves of garlic, which will roast to pockets of soft goodness in the baking) that is rising, and then head to Umeå (three hours south) for the 30th birthday party for two of our friends (twin brothers).