Next Step, Lego

Tuesday was supposed to be my biweekly apheresis at the Red Cross, but I got there to discover the type of machines they normally use with me were full. The other type is very similar, but uses different anti-coagulants, and we discovered my body doesn't like them as well. So it was off to Camron-Stanford House to work on the database, et al. Only to discover their Mac wouldn't boot. After spending a while trying different things, I gave up and took it to a local repair shop. Which is to say, Tuesday was not a particularly productive day.

Wednesday I worked with Naun. He did wear his new boots, though he commented they were 'pesado'. My dictionary didn't have it, so a quick trip to Babel Fish and I found out it meant 'heavy', a fact I can't argue with. But I reminded him they were to protect his feet. He seems more relaxed, and it was a good work day. Building more forms for the foundation footing, and bending, placing and tying rebar. I got him to laugh again on the drive home. He asked how much the car (a '94 VW Golf III, 4D) cost, and I told him I didn't know since it was 12 years old. (The Kelly Blue Book says somewhere between $2,100 and $2,500.) Then we saw a classic Corvette convertible zip past, and I said, "That car cost much more than this one." (pause) "But he can't carry lumber and rebar with his car." OK, still not the funniest joke in the world, but it's nice to see him relax a bit.

Today I worked alone on finishing up the footing forms and rebar. A couple more pieces to tie in tomorrow, and I'm ready for the Lego...er...QuadLock ICFs. They should go up quickly, so I'm hoping to get an inspection and pour next week. Wahoo!

New Shoes

On the way home the other day, I took Naun to Sears and bought him some steel-toe work boots. He's been wearing some decent but scuffed up leather shoes (from Honduras; I asked), and it struck me while he was cleaning dirt out from them that they weren't the best work shoes. Even after he's done working on my project, he'll have other work opportunities, so why not be prepared.

So off to Sears we went. He was a bit confused at first by the request to take off his shoes, but I explained as best I could that I wanted to get him some new boots as a bonus. They were on sale, so they didn't even cost that much...probably about what my steel-toe work boots did 5 or 6 years ago. I just hope he doesn't treat them like his dictionary, and not bring them to the work site for fear of messing them up.

I think and hope I'm paying Naun a fair wage for his work. The benefits package is limited (transportation and lunch), and bonuses rather arbitrary depending on when I think of something, but it's a good deal more than minimum wage. Minimum wage just isn't a survivable amount of money to make anywhere in the U.S., but especially in expensive areas like the SF Bay Area. The median house price recently hit $630,000 -- yikes! Fortunately for people like Naun, rents haven't gone up as insanely as house prices.

I'm in the middle of reading Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, an intriguing look at how people who work for low wages get by (or not) in America. She describes one job where she was expected to buy her uniform vest and a tape measure. It's one thing for a business person to go out and buy a suit, briefcase, etc. when making a decent salary, but to expect someone making not much more than minimum wage to spend a chunk of money just equipping themselves for the job seems absurd.

So some new shoes for Naun to work in seemed like a darn good idea when it occurred to me. I just wish I'd thought of it a couple weeks ago. But then again, a couple weeks ago I didn't know if Naun was going to work out.

I like working with him well enough, and he's an incredibly hard worker. But for a lot of stuff, I'm more comfortable working without him. As an introvert, it takes energy for me to interact with other people. And it definitely takes me energy to explain how to do stuff and be patient with his learning process (like others at Habitat were with me), doubly so in Spanish. I enjoyed Friday's work, where I worked at my own pace, and didn't have to explain any process to anyone.

Today Kat led another prayer workshop at Resurrection. As with the first, it was well attended, and although Prayer of Examen is hard for some people (myself included) because of the introspection required, I think people got a lot out of it. This afternoon I prepared the service slides and artwork for tomorrow's services. So no work on the house until Monday. Hopefully I'll have an estimate for the QuadBlock concrete forms soon.

Dirt Management

One thing I hadn't really counted on was just how much dirt would be involved for digging for the foundation. I know dirt expands some when you dig it up, because you're loosening it and mixing in air, but we now have a huge (yooooj) pile of dirt. A bunch of it will go back into fill around the foundation after it's poured, but we will have permanently changed the landscape of the backyard.

Wednesday I was at Camron-Stanford House again, working on their database. The database is an ugly mess, to put it mildly. I figure there probably need to be 20-30 fields at most in the artifacts database, but there are over 100, many with near duplicate and frequently non-descriptive names. Ugh.

Yesterday I worked with Naun, digging more for a larger foundation footing. I'd missed an addition the city had made to the plans for the foundation footing size, and using QuadLock it suggests a different approach for the footings, requiring more space. So we dug.

Today I worked on my own, straightened and squared the forms, cut spreaders for the footing, dug space for a pilaster, and added more forms for the footing. All in all, a good day.

Windows

The dual-pane kind, not the buggy software kind. I spent much of the day installing new windows at my friend Cindy's, who runs Oakland Firefighters Random Acts. It's a great local non-profit, but part of the original plan was to have it spread all over, which it's started to do. There are now Random Acts programs in California, Arizona, Ohio and Tennessee. Probably more that I don't know about.

My charming assistant for the window install was none other than Larry Hendricks, the Oakland firefighter who started Random Acts. As part of the fund raising for that, Larry has started the Burning Pianos project. (Nothing at the website yet, but they just recorded a song for it, and shot and edited a music video for the song.) It was a good thing to have someone to work with, because the center window of the three was about 5' by 5', and heavier than I could have installed alone. I ripped out most of the old windows, then with two of us we made short work of framing up a new opening, and getting the windows put in and squared up.

Tomorrow I'm off to the city to talk about changing the plans a bit, and spend the rest of the day helping Camron-Stanford House get their database updated so they can get their insurance straightened out. In other words, no planned work on the house for a bit.

Hmmph

Not a very productive day, alas. Naun and I got some heavier plywood (19/32" aka 5/8") to build forms with, but I spent much of the morning discovering that the basic problem is the depth of the forms I'm trying to build. The stuff I've done before at Habitat has been on level ground, and a single level (for a two-story house). What I'm trying to build is on two levels, with multiple levels for the footings because of the slope of the hill. The deepest part (around the thermal mass for passive solar heating) will be about 5' tall, though most of foundation is 4' or less. 4' tall foundation stakes just aren't going to cut it for that.

I'm going to look into pre-fab insulated forms, maybe something like Quad-Lock. Doubtless it will be more expensive than wood, but seems a lot easier for what I'm trying to do. Maybe they appeal because of the similarity to Lego. I not only loved Lego as a kid, I still think it's pretty cool--best toy ever.

I also got (another) frantic phone call from Camron-Stanford House, one of the local non-profits I do tech support for. They needed to send out a press release with a photo, with the photo coming from one source and the press release with another. They're very nice people, but not the most tech-savy. So I took Naun home a bit early, stopped for a pint at Pacific Coast Brewing, then headed over to CS House. After a quick check, I determined they didn't have the right USB cable to connect the digitial camera, so we made a trip over to Berkeley and back, got the email of the press release, put it all together, and *phew* sent it out.

Pacific Coast Brewing is a great brewpub in downtown Oakland, on Washington between 9th and 10th, near the Oakland Marriott. If you're ever stuck at a conference or the like in Oakland, PCB is a great spot to duck out to for a long lunch. They just finished getting their kitchen remodeled. I hope my project doesn't take as long as it sounds like theirs did. They make great beer, and have a bunch of other great beers on tap, but don't use their site as a paradigm of great web design. If I weren't so busy with the addition, I'd probably try to figure out some kind of barter exchange of web design for beer.