Week Fifteen

The rain went away. The mud dried. Work resumed.

		Mark added some cool-looking decorative crown molding to the edge of the roof. It's a nice match for the rain gutters on the old part of the house.

Here are a couple of shots of the finished crown molding, both before and after tar paper was applied to the roof.
		Mark is building the platform they used to stand on while they put up the molding. Chris assists. His excuse for cheerfully watching Mark work was that someone took his ladder away and he couldn't get down.
Week fifteen saw the substantial completion of the upstairs framing. This is from the corner of Justin's room*, looking toward the laundry room and bathroom.		This is a shot of the hallway. Clockwise from the left are Justin's room, Brittany's room, her closet, the upstairs bath, and the laundry room. Above is where the pull-down attic-access staircase will be located.
This is taken from Brittany's room*. Her closet is on the left, with the bathroom immediately behind. The laundry room is on the right, obscuring the kitchen window.
The asterisk! The attentive reader might have noticed an asterisk accompanying the descriptions of rooms as either Justin's or Brittany's. The occupants of each room apparently haven't been clearly established. We took Justin to the house on Sunday to look around, as he hadn't seen any of the actual construction, just the really big hole many weeks ago. We showed him what we thought was going to be his room, as well as what we thought was going to be Brittany's room. Justin's immediate comment was that he was getting the little room, and that giving him the smaller of the two rooms was "messed up." Justin is always happy to express his viewpoint, as well as to lobby for the adoption of his views. He immediately began lobbying for a switch in which room he would get, putting the interests of poor, little Brittany second to his own interests and desires. His eighteenth birthday is May 29, 2004. We worry that if he has the larger of the two rooms that he may grow comfortable and be reluctant to leave the nest that day. One thing is certain: the discussion has not yet concluded.
Figure a. Back Fat with Hammer Oil on canvas, 2003		I call this picture "Back Fat with Hammer." I assisted Mark in buying a new computer a couple of weeks ago. One of the reasons he bought the computer is so he could upgrade his printer to one of the cool HP printer/scanner/fax/copy machines, which he purchased a few days later. He called me several times as he was setting it up to ask questions. I answered a few questions, but for the most part Mark answered his own questions, and installed and configured the printer entirely on his own. He was rightfully proud of his accomplishment, and told me several times that if he got any better at working on computers, he was going to come to my office and sit at my desk all day while I came out and built the "[adjective deleted] room" at the back of the house. Ready to acknowledge Mark's superiority at configuring computers, I brought a hammer to the site Monday morning and was promptly laughed at. The hammer was apparently an old horseshoeing hammer of some sort. (I would like to point out that the hammer doesn't belong to me, rather I pulled it out of Leisa's "tool drawer.") Mark suggested taking a photo of me, "working" on the project, so I posed with the hammer, unaware that the unflinching eye of the camera was capturing for the æons that wonderful body attribute known as "back fat."
Figure a. Six Pack	Figure b. Party Pig® (similar to party ball)	Back Fat: the very real consequence of eating just one more piece of pizza at Number One Brothers. Of uttering the phrase, "I'm kind of hungry tonight, let's get two separate orders of wings, okay," at Buffalo Brown's. Of deluding myself with the belief that "I'll start going to the Y tomorrow." I heard the DJ on the radio tell listeners the other morning that the "six pack" he once had was now a "party ball." Alas, I am now in the same boat. The next time Leisa accuses me of not putting cute guys on the site, I'll point her to Señor Six Pack at the left. And the next time she complains that I need to take a photo of her that she imagines to be really stupid looking off the site, I'll point her to Herr Back Fat, above. And any time I attempt to comment about her forty-one inch hips, hollow, mocking laughter will burst from her lips as she points to the above photo. The only good thing about Back Fat is that people are so busy noticing the Back Fat that they don't notice the Male Pattern Baldness!
Coming in Week Sixteen: Plumbing and Electrical work.

The asterisk!