Sunday, December 07, 2008

Building At A Breakneck Pace

No time to follow politics. Precious little time to get ready for the arrival of the inlaws come Christmas week. I haven't heard news outside of top-of-the-hour radio this last five weeks.

I am typing this on our new PC. The old one finally cratered a few weeks back and it is only in the last few days that the new beast (suitably Death Star in appearance) has been up and running. Vista. Meh.

Tomorrow we are placing about 1800 square feet of concrete pad. I will be on hand to check grades and assist with any conflict resolution that pops up. Concurrent with that, the pile contractor will be drilling a total of eight seventy foot deep 24" bores for our second tower crane location. The pipe guys (who yesterday buried four connections I needed to shoot for asbuilt purposes, and then disappeared) will be pushing north with two ten inch, one six inch, and two twelve inch lines that I must stake and then map.

I missed my first shot at seeing youngest goddess' Christmas dance concert last Friday; plan A was to be done and gone by four but I ended up hitting the road home around six thirty. This is the magic hour of the Salt Lake commute wherein all Utah drivers remove their brains and sit them in the mason jars on their dashboards. What is a nominal forty five minute commute at five AM becomes by five PM an hour and a half trial by fire. I have my second chance tomorrow, and have already let the powers that be know that I'm leaving by four.

Since the laborers are going to be there by four thirty AM to strip blankets, the carpenters and finishers there by five thirty, myself by six, and the pipe guys by seven, I have a reasonable shot at making it to the show.

Too many people here in Utah are jobless, or know that they soon will be. I met a man last night who lost his state job a few weeks back and whose entire extended family is either laid off or closing their businesses.

He was buying a gun. There's a lot of that going on. I'm buying Christmas presents (on a modest, so modest scale) and more food - the food being for long term storage.

I think that the "in the event of" is just about to hit.

Merry Christmas to you.