Weeks Twenty-Two and Twenty-Three

December 11 to 24
...and our last weekly blog entry.

Oops. Missed a week. Apologies to bloggees. HTFWYHF! [Text-messaging abbreviation: How time flies when you’re having fun.]

Or, perhaps more accurately, HTFWYIEAT. [as above, but “in Edmonton and Toronto.”]



Harold heads for the frozen west in the middle of Week 22 to visit his uncle and in laws. One of the highlights is seeing neice Emma in a Christmas concert (curly blond hair, lower left), also attended by nephew Paul. Dianne, for her part, spends most of the week in T.O.

Meanwhile, Jim and Rainer keep working on the dormers. But without either Eastman on hand to harass them with photo ops (“Can you nail that stud in again, Rainer, but smiling?” “Jim, could you carry that bundle of shingles up the ladder again, but on your left side?”) not much documentation goes on.

And when Harold and Dianne come back north, they’re both – truth to tell – just too pooped to pictorialize.


But the end of Week Twenty-Three sees the two south dormers pretty well complete – minus some shingles and flashing – plus the insulation of the garage underway.

And suddenly…

…it’s Christmas. As this post is, um, posted, our Daring Duo are in Toronto again, with Sue and Matt for the holidays

And so it seems an appropriate time to end the weekly chronicle, for now, at least. (Look for occasional updates in the new year.) Yes, the plan was to keep up with weekly postings until we spent our first night in the garage, but that's taken a little longer than expected - likely now the first week of January. Besides, the distractions of turkey, cranberry sauce and Baileys have intervened. Time to chill.

First, however, the caption results from Week 21…

• "Somebody get the bubble bath and my rubber duckie!"
• Dianne and Harold resort to feeding the numerous house workers, stopper-byers, and aficionados via trough.
• This Christmas you too can sit around with the Eastmans for grace at the trough and the true no-room-at-the-inn experience!
• "Spare Change?"
• "Here comes the joker
We all must laugh
Cause we’re all in this together
And we love to take a bath."
- from "Bathtub Gin" by Phish
• "Dormer, Schmormer, is the toboggan run ready?"
• "We have juniper berries, too: time for gin!
• "Harold, I know it's cold, but three months between baths is a little TOO medieval..."
• “Um. Dianne. Don't you think that wheelbarrow is a bit big?”

Oh, and of course these two gems from anonymous commenters…
• Safe, Low Priced CHEAP PHENTERMINE Online!
• Buy [URL= http://mtsu32.mtsu.edu:11263/_disc2/00000195.htm#soma ]soma[/URL] online
Looks like we’ve been discovered by the comment spammers…

Well friends, the egg nog beckons. Thanks to all of you who cheered us on. We’ll stay in touch…


In the meantime, from the four of us (wait, five...sorry Claudia) have a great holiday time filled with peace and joy.

Week Twenty One

December 4 to 10

Set off the fireworks! Break out the bubbly! Call Guiness! (Or at least have one...)

We have a roof!


Monday, the crew gets a big boost with the arrival of Cleveland, a roofing colleague of Jim's. Outside on the snow-covered 45-degree slope, our two seasoned roofers slap down the shingles at a furious rate, despite the fact that the nail guns give up after the first day. (C'mon, Rent-All...it was only minus 10...) Inside, Rainer and Harold cut and install the last remaining roof boards.

Rainer has been doing all the real dicey stuff out along the ridge. As the end approaches, however, Harold realizes he's missing out on some great tell-the-grandchildren material, and volunteers to replace Rainer as Fiddler on the Roof.



















Dianne snaps a shot of the looniness that follows. That's Harold at the top, clinging to the ridge with one hand, holding a board with the other, and concentrating on growing a third appendage for swinging a hammer. Turns out it's Dianne that gets great grandchildren-story content... "Grandma, tell us another dumb thing Grandpa did when you built that house..."


As the roof nears completion, everybody feels like partying. Tuesday after work, the Mars Lander sees one of its biggest crowds yet. From left to right, clockwise: Cleveland and Trish, Jacquie, Rainer, Jim, Lassie, Mathis, Sophia.


Wednesday at sunset, Jim and Cleveland lay the last shingle on the main roof. Time for bubbly!



Friday sees the return of Ralph the plumber, who descends yet again in the Bowels of the Earth (aka the crawl space) to hook up the plumbing to the bathroom. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew starts putting in the windows. Wow. It's starting to look like a real house...


Harold and Jim also work on laying a floor in the garage in preparation for the move from the Mars Lander. Dianne snaps this early evening shot, inadvertantly revealing that Harold is simply an extension of the Borg. "Renovation is futile," he murmurs. "You will be insulated."


Saturday brings a big symbolic moment: the reclaiming of the antique tub after six years in storage. The big copper soaker will find a temporary home in the bathroom, before being moved to its final location in one of the dormers.


Speaking of dormers, Jim and Harold get started on the first one Sunday. It's the beginning of the end...of the beginning...of the end... Never mind.

*****

Caption This!

Last week's shot and your suggested captions...

• The hermit on the mountain invites the tourists in for a little squirrel jerky and homemade screech.
• “You would not believe how many Kyoto carbon credits I had to buy to add a garage to this thing!”
• “This is a helluva time to ask, but, we do have a car don’t we Dianne?...”
• “ABC turned down our ‘Cottage Country Makeover’ pitch, but Collingwood Community Cable is offering to pick us up.”
• "There's snow on the roof; ice on the ladders; my fingers are turning black and ready to fall off; and you ask 'where are the puppy pictures??' *&^%$#!"
• As told to police after the incident: "He seemed so ordinary . . . gentle. . . had a wife and a dog. He was building that house . . . and then . . ."

This week's caption pic:


*****

Pose of the Week

Week Twenty

November 27 to December 3

How many photos of men roofing in the rain can the readers of this blog stand to view? About as many as the authors can stand to shoot.

Hence, no roofing-in-the-rain shots in this post. And there is indeed rain. After a respite last week, it pours with a vengeance. The crew gets in a little more than two days' work.


There's snow - major snow - in the forecast for Friday, so clearly this is the last chance to do any stuff involving the ground. Dianne draws the short straw and gets to fill in the trench holding the septic line, despite the pouring rain. By the time she's done, she looks like the first 15 seconds of one of those old ads for Tide. (Picture Harold in despair at the washing machine: "How am I ever going to get these stains out...?")


Sure enough, the white stuff arrives Friday. On the up-side, it gives Dianne a chance to try out her new roof rake. Dianne, for those of you who don't know, is a ferocious show-shoveller, and the prospect of being able to shovel off the roof, for crying out loud, is just too much.


Saturday the sun comes out briefly and melts the snow. Without shingles, there are predictable consequences in the living room...or is it the walk-in shower...?

Saturday night, it snows again, and there's a strong sense that it's here to stay. But does this stand in the way of our intrepid roofers? Not a whit.


[Ed. note: Hey, did we say anything about photos of men roofing in the snow?] Jim dons the safety gear so kindly loaned to us by Dave two weeks ago, while Harold sticks to the relative safety of the ladder. As neighbour Lloyd says, "Build in the winter? No problem! Just dust 'er off and keep on going."


The end of the day brings a milestone that hints at warmer things to come: Jim and Harold cut a hole for the chimney...

*****


The weekend is leavened, of course, by the drama of the liberal convention, which reaches the Mars Lander by the slightly smudgy miracle of streaming video.

Claudia is especially rapt...

"I like this Dion guy. He's the only candidate with canine content..."


"Yeah, baby, he won! Dion for PM! And Kyoto for Minister of the Environment."

*****

Caption This!

Creative captioners came up with the following suggestions for last week's pic.

• Claudia dreams of opposable thumbs.
• "I spy with my little eye..."
• "Nail gun...ZZZZ...Nail gum...ZZZZ...Snail gum...ZZZZ...Escargot and gum...ZZZZ
Whatever. I'm going to try to eat this thing when I wake up. If I wake up. Any nice French wine to go with that?"
• Happiness is a warm nail gun.

This week's caption pic:


****
Pose of the Week


Can you spot Jim?

Week Nineteen

November 20 to 24

"Quelle semaine!" as folks to the east of us say, in the nation that's part of a united Canada. Six straight rainless days (some with actual sunshine!) - plus The Return of Jim! Life is good.



Taking advantage of the great weather, Rainer puts up roof boards at a furious pace, performing Batmanesque feats (feets?) of balance as he gets up towards the ridge. Harold keeps encouraging him to be careful, but never quite gets around to volunteering for board-nailing duty. He's too busy installing the headers for the second floor dormer windows. At least, that's his excuse.


And speaking of boards, Jim returns from a week of treading them in the November Theatre production of The Drawer Boy. It's good to have him and Jacquie back in the morning coffee circle. And Dianne's feet. And Claudia's nose.


Jim's speciality is roofing and it shows. He hauls rolls of ice and rain guard, and 80-lb bundles of shingles up the ladder with apparent ease - as does Rainer. Harold wishes he could help, really he does, but he's still working on those headers...


Armed with a roofing gun and several sets of roof jacks, Jim races across the north face of the roof, trying to get the shaded side of the roof done while the temperatures are still relatively high.


Thursday is an especially busy day as Ralph the plumber turns up again to connect the septic line and drill lots of interesting holes in the floor and walls. Phil the electrician and colleague Bob also arrive to drill more holes and string wire. With the site a-swarm with workers, Harold and Dianne feel like construction magnates. Donald Trump is so nineties.


More help arrives on Saturday: neighbour Lloyd Moxam drops by again to pitch in with the roof boards.



Sunday brings a special treat: daughter Sue comes up from Toronto with her guy, Jason. Harold immediately puts him to work on...guess what...those pesky headers.

With a solid week of work, the house is really beginning to look like…a house.


*****

Caption This!


Last week's puzzler elicited these responses...
• Today in competitive ladder-climbing it was a dead heat at the end of hour two!
• The first cloned construction workers somehow seemed not quite complete.
• The mathematician has reached the highest rung on the ladder of human thought. (Henry Ellis)
• It's offical. The building has eaten them!
• Who ya' gonna' call? No really. who? We need this house built! Now! Who do we call?
• "Yes winter's coming. But it's no good losing our heads."

Here's this week's caption challenge...


*****

Pose of the Week