Thursday, November 03, 2005

Emmie Get Your (Nail) Gun

Today I made another Home Depot run for a couple more joist hangers, some lumber, and a few odds and ends. Then my sister-in-law Emmie (she's the worship leader at RLC that I've mentioned before, fearless* leader of Holy Ruckus) (*fearless except some fear of heights) came over and helped for a while. She runs her own software company, has three teenage girls, and Peter works full time, too, so she could only come for a few hours. But every bit helps, and it was fun to spend time with her in a setting besides helping make the worship service happen or a family gathering, i.e., chaos.

Emmie nailed up the new joist hangers and installed the joists I cut, while I was working on the last bit of external wall. The wall with the back door is at a 45' angle underneath the corner of the loft. The opening for a door is easy enough to frame, but the 45' angle and bit of QuadLock from the foundation sticking out made it a bit more challenging to figure out, and a lot more challenging to install.

Then Emmie used the nailgun (it belongs to her husband, Peter, so she's used it before so little training was required) to finish nailing some interior sheerwall. I measured and cut for the subfloor decking in the loft, put down some adhesive, and Emmie nailed that in with the nailgun, too.

She had to leave after that, but we had a good time talking about everything from her kids to (lack) of privacy on the WWW to the contemporary service at RLC to an interview on NPR with Jimmy Carter about his new book about America's (waning) moral values. I don't believe all the same things he does nor agree with all the things he said, but I definitely admire the guy and would take him as president over the current regime in a millisecond. And I believe he's truly Christian in his heart, not just saying he is but not behaving like one. How can a president let this happen on his watch while saying he supports human rights (never mind the Iraq war and the lies that lead to it) and call himself a Christian? (What part of "love your neighbor as yourself" does he not get?) And how can a democracy that says it supports human rights do this kind of stuff and ever hold its head high in the world community again? I...I could ramble on for pages about this and raise my blood pressure thinking about it, but it's been written before. I guess the difference is that the mainstream American media and more of the 51% are paying attention to what the 49% have known all along.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

There's an interesting discussion on the secret CIA prisons over at Real Live Preacher. He's just as appalled by it as I am, but a number of people seem to feel it's OK even though we don't know if the people held in these prisons are guilty of anything.