You and me both, brother!
I was away for the last eight days, but my slacking off is deeper. Since my last post, all five of my plants have been knocked over at least once, some three times, and when I say knocked over I mean at least some of the dirt in the pot and the entire plant were out of the pot. Fuck.
The first two times they got dumped it was a worthless (drunk) friend of my worthless, though not a drunk, neighbor. The drunk is no longer allowed in the back yard. We’ll see if that lasts. The last time was all me. Two Solos went over, though the plants remained intact in dirt, so putting them back was relatively simple.
Here’s today, after being away for eight days with nobody attending to them. I think they look pretty good.
As for the trip to my son’s house in Portland and then on to my oldest friend’s current location in Tapps Lake, WA (where there is no lake!), here are a couple of shots taken as we were driving. I cannot tell you how much I value his friendship. There’s nothing like someone whose known you since you both were kids. He can call me on my shit like literally no other person, including Mrs. mota. Thank you, Michael, for being my friend for so long. We’ve been friends for coming on 60 years.
Mt. Hood
Mr. Raineer
This is my son’s back yard shot from left to right. The step van rolling home belongs to a friend who is in Colorado at the moment. It’s nice inside. My son and his wife are remodeling the bus on the far right in the last picture of these four. You know, the one you can’t really fully see.
My son is a carpenter, currently working on the Portland Int. Airport (aka, PDX. HA!) remodel/expansion. There was a “small” piece of plywood roof underlayment fall off that wasn’t going to be used and someone asked the kid if he might want it. Hell yes, so they loaded it onto the lite truck (with a forklift). It was true fall off. (For you non-carpenters, “fall off” is the piece that you don’t want when you cut a piece of wood.) In this case, it’s a piece of 3" thick plywood! That piece is the fall off from a single sheet that was 5’x30’. The largest single sheet they used on the job was, if I remember correctly, 8’x40’. Three inches thick. The piece of fall off weighs about 500 lbs. Yes, that piece of plywood was manufactured with 30 plys!
I’ve mentioned stereotomy before, but perhaps not in this thread. Stereotomy is a construction method that dates back to at least the 1300s. It’s literally how every large building was constructed in Europe and N. America prior to about 1900. For example, it’s how Notre Dame was originally built and remains the method for its reconstruction. Here’s the most amazing part to me, as someone who was a carpenter in part of my working life: There is NO math involved, only numbers for measurements.
This is a model my son built for a stereotomy class he’s taking. You can just make out that the top of the dark piece of wood (the king post) is not square, but rather a rhombus. The bottom of the post itself is square. You can also see how the light piece of wood, a hip rafter, intersects the king post off center to itself.
