We're Bad Neighbours

Friday night Troy said it was the night for us to finish up some more Tyvek. (Could you hear my little, "yippee"?) A friend had come by to help the previous weekend and he and Troy got up one strip along the top of the south and west walls. And they had to do it in very high winds which threatened to carry them away at every moment. (I was inside minding the fire, in case you were wondering.)

Well Friday Troy wanted to get the four foot strip of Tyvek done on the north wall...and more if we were good. He argued that it wasn't windy. (It wasn't.) It wasn't frigid. (But it was cold.) And there wasn't 2 feet of snow on the ground. (Now, only about 6 inches, but it was covered with ice so easy to walk on...?) In any case, out we went.

And not surprisingly, it went fairly smoothly. We did get the strip put on the north wall and then proceeded to the south and west walls. For that we had to lift the bottom of the strip put up previously to tuck this one under, but it all just takes time. Nothing hard about it, I mean. Troy got it cut out around the door and windows and I just kept hammering in cap nails. After a couple tries (i.e. time to warm up in front of the fire) we each found the right glove combo to keep our hands warm enough.

I told Troy he would be in trouble if all this hammering adversely affected my knitting. Troy optimistically said that maybe it would help my knitting. And although it did tire my forearm, I did not notice any negative impact. (Did I hear a "Phew!" from you? Why thank you!)

Oh wait! Why are we bad neighbours? Oh yes, that is because we were hammering those hundreds of nails in from 7:00 to 9:30. Now a good one would take a tap, BAM, BAM and it would be in. But a bad one would take up to a dozen hits (bouncy plywood). I'm sure the neighbours did not enjoy. But I'm sure they're learning that if it's not one noise with us, it's another. Troy at one point wanted to bring over some of my canned pears to make nice with them, but I told him that he could spend all day canning his own pears (and only getting 5 quarts out of it) to bring to the neighbours. I know, I'm not very nice, but I do shingle. Keep that in mind before you tut tut your condemnation.

The temperature now IS frigid so not much work is going to be done outside. Not much work is getting done inside, actually, besides keeping the woodstove stoked. The living room (where the woodstove lives) is having trouble getting above 60. For fun, Troy took out his remote infrared thermometer and started measuring temperatures in the kitchen. This is with the oil stove in there going. Various places in the room read in the 50s and 40s, but the coldest temperature was measured on the floor near the west wall: 36 degrees. **36**!! That's cold. No wonder the heating pipes there froze and burst last year.

Anyway, enough of that. Troy says he is working as fast as he can and I don't mean to give him a hard time.

Take care. Keep warm. Pictures to follow tomorrow if I can leave the living room.

-christina