June 25-27

Saturday June 25

Ronnie did not show up as semi-promised.  No phone call, nothing.

I researched wet-dry vacuums, and went to Sears and bought the one top rated by Consumer Reports, a Sears Craftsmen 17762.

Sunday June 26

Showed friends at my monthly party the hole in my backyard where the slab for pool house will go.  It's quite impressive looking, actually, with the 30 inch deep beams.  People unfamiliar with slab construction needed lots of explanation, they seemed to think I was building a basement or something.

When my party ended at 9pm, I got the wet dry vacuum out of the box to vacuum up the mostly pea sized gravel Ronnie and his workers had spilled in my side yard, where it is doing no good whatsoever for my grass.  It took a bit longer than expected to assemble the thing, but once I read instructions all was fine.  By 9:40 I was busy vacuuming.  A strong breeze from the southwest was blowing, so I placed vacuum about 10 feet to my east.  I also used paper bag and the vacuum has a HEPA like filter.  With all that, I figured I was safe and didn't need respirator.  In fact, I later checked the "muffler" and there is no visible dust there whatever.  With that muffler in place, the machine is amazingly quiet, much quiter than my neighbor's outdoor compressor, so I did not feel guilty running it until about 11pm.  The machine was getting so heavy with gravel it was hard to move, but it almost seems like I hardly made a dent in the amount of gravel, mostly dispersed amidst the grass, that ultimately needs to be picked up.  I'll have to buy another dozen or so bags.  I needed to spend another hour or so rearranging junk in my garage to fit the rather bulky vacuum in.  I certainly don't want wet dry vacuum full of dusty gravel inside house.  I needed to take my mother's old wheelchair out of garage and brought into living room, where there isn't any room either, and I'll just need to move it from side to side to vacuum up after party.  I needed this Pool House yesterday if not two years ago to handle my junk problem.  I am in serious gridlock territory, yet I do not want to give stuff up (like the funky wheelchair we got for $35 and then mom spent weeks repainting it to look nice) because there will eventually be more space for it.  I am strongly considering renting offsite storage because the Pool House is taking so long to get built.

I moved Ronny's wheelbarrows and other tools away from corner of house near power meter, so I could do watering there and along back side of house to help preserve foundation.  Ronnies stuff had prevented that area from getting it's share of the rainfall.  I put up a tape across the corner so as to warn against storing stuff there in future.  Among the tools I found 3 of my own garden tools which I moved to back side of house near patio.

The garbage can near patio which Ronnie's workers had put excess plastic sheeting, sheeting box, and some soft drink bottles was very stinky because it was left open and had filled up with rain this week.  With rubber gloves on, I dragged the can to the other side of yard and dumped it away from me.  I determied to pick up the stuff later after the sun had killed the germs.  The sheeting box, however, was sufficient unaffected that I put it in main recycling bin.  Then I took a shower.

I need to do something about the corner of patio which gets a waterfall of rain off the house and patio roofs.  That's was what had filled up the trash can, I've seen it happen before.  I think excess water at that position during heavy rain was causing an exceptional amount of house shifting noises this week after heavy rain on Wednesday.

Monday June 27


Ronnie called about 10am and said he was picking up more gravel because the engineers normally like to see gravel underneath the rebar in the beams.  I told him that was sounded great, and that I was impressed with the look of the slab forms and beam now.  Then he said he would get the rebar put in today also.  I told him I had moved his tools from corner of house and suggested he put them elsewhere, prefereably a different location every day.

Ronnie showed around 11:15, but for less than a half hour.  Looking from bedroom window that afternoon, I couldn't see any gravel in the beams.  But when I took a look at side of house, I saw two new piles of freshly spilled gravel.

Ronnie called and left message, but didn't return my calls until about 7:30 pm when I was on my dinner break from work.  Then he said he was working at my house in the evening to avoid the heat.  I told him I thought that was a great idea.  He said not to be worried if I heard from the neighbors.

I brought revised and signed casement window quotation (hinge now on right side) down to Office Depot after having dinner and faxed it back to Fleetwood Windows.