Don't Fence Me In

Surrounded By Surplus Concrete...


Good news...the fence went in surprisingly quickly this morning. Home Depot was on site by 8:30 AM with my purchase, and I was home by 1:00.

I find it very satisfying to be healthy and physically fit again. Today I found myself strong enough to toss 900 pounds of quickcrete around not once, but twice (Home Depot loaded them on TOP of the fence panels so I had to move them) and still have energy to come home and start fooling around with some other projects.

Of course there were only four eight foot panels and five posts, but the little 2-1/2 HP auger I rented hummed right along digging 24" to 30" deep post holes before I could break a good sweat.

I've got to go back and install the hinges and latch on the gate next week, but otherwise the back of the property is secured and identified as a place where people shouldn't want to dump the miscellaneous BS that keeps showing up in the alley.

The surplus concrete came about through my miscalculation of the quantity required, and then when I realized that the auger only had a 6" bit, it was evident that the 4"x4" posts were going to sit in the bare dirt because I was too lazy to carry five gallon buckets of water from the kitchen sink to the property line.

I hate cutting corners, but since the fence isn't mine (or won't be in a few months) I felt like that the deep embedment would make up for the lack of cement. Of course the fence panels may take off and fly over to the Brunswick Marina in the next tropical storm, but there's a ten foot high fence directly across the alley about twenty feet away that should deflect some of nature's wrath.

Meanwhile, after moving all 18 bags of sackcrete once to get them off of the fence panels, I moved them again to load them into the suburban and hauled them home in anticipation of getting a $100 refund this weekend.

One less thing, I guess.

But...

Now our clothes dryer has decided to stop drying clothes--instead just tumbling them into knots and wearing lint off them in the process. It's probably the thermostat or the heating element, but now I have to get out my multimeter and jack around under it's hood looking for loose wires and making sparks.

Fortunately Kenmore has a good web site with diagrams and I've already checked on the price of the heating element, so at least this new adventure will cost less than my concrete savings.

I really should jump on a bus or into a carpool and run over to the football game tonight to wrestle with my big pyramid structure, but you know what???

I'm a bit tired of my volunteering efforts right now, and technically I've already trained a couple of people to handle things so I think that I'm going to stay home and work on my bike rack paint job, electrocute myself in my dryer, and possibly wander over to our local pub for free hors d'oeuvres and a couple of drinks at happy hour.

Then I'm gonna come home and grill a couple of Fillet Mignon's on the grill, toss some steamed asparagus on the side, and doze on the sofa watching Jeopardy.