OCT-C-2
RE-ENTRY AND
SEE THE PROGRESS
IN THE DERWOOD RENOVATION—
THE ADDITION
AND THE REMODELING
OF EVEN THE
WOODS AS I COME BACK TO SEE DERWOOD AND DC AND GWU
October 19--20, 2003
It is all coming
together. The hot tub and regular
bathtub are hoisted into the upstairs for master and guest bedrooms, and a
bunch of appliances marked “Ferguson’s” or “D G Liu” are scattered around
looking like they are ready to be connected by the plumbers, which the master
timetable says should have happened about last week.
The outside of the Game
Room has taken shape with the two by eights roofing in around the structural
steel, and joists supporting the roof and floor. The outside is wrapped with Tyvek. A new carpenter was working on Saturday, and
he introduced himself as Jody, who had once worked for D G Liu, but had been
hired only on Wednesday, essentially to see this job through if it took seven
days a week working on it. He had a
generator going and power saws whirring, and he was hard at work on a beautiful day for it.
The leaves have turned color to reveal their yellows and reds—visible
now through the not completed roofing.
And that is not all that
is new with the woods—huge piles of logs and branches were dragged up along the
drive and stacked for later consumption by the “Intimidator.” A whole swarm of Guatemalan crew had gone
through the woods with chain saws and lopped off most of the downfall branches,
and then segmented the tree trunks into chunks to be carried away by trailer
for some useful purpose. I saw the
large piles of fallen tree refuse, but did not know that I would be present
during the grand denouement on Monday afternoon. I saw several big trucks and a lot of similar
looking folk running through the woods, dragging the last of the branches to
the roaring big “Intimidator” and before my incredulous eyes, they threw in
logs up to two feet across, which the machine ground up and spit into a big
truck as chips. There were segments of
the tricentennial oak that were so large they had to be split in half, and
still the 28 inch diameter log was dragged in by several workers to get to the
point where the trunk was “caught” by the spiral steel gear, and with an ear
piercing roar, the diesel engine swallowed the huge log and a cloud of dust issued
from near the truck as the chips were blown inside. The whole operation was done fast. It was very important that the workers not
get to close or caught up on the log’s side branches, since there would hardly
be DNA identification of anything spit out the far side. Some of them had earl plugs and a couple wore
protective glasses. Almost all of them
recognized me and waved cheerfully. It
did not matter that I spoke Spanish, since any spoken word was irrelevant—I
just gave them the high sign and thumbs up on their good work.
I picked up the mail in
a big plastic bin that had been stored at the post office, and carried it down
the drive around the big trucks. I
noticed that only the couch and sofa were in the living room upended. It turns out that Jodi, the new carpenter,
spotted all the white oak cabinetry that was stacked there, and he took it home
to
Most of my conversation
with Glenn involved our conversation about his tests and forthcoming
operation. He will have thoracoscopy and
biopsy of the lung nodule with frozen section and the immediate lobectomy if,
as the CT and PET scan suggest, this lung nodule is cancer. They had suggested that this be done this
week, but this is his wife’s and his fifteenth anniversary, so they settled on
November 3
So, other people’s
lives, and not just the top-to-bottom rearranging of my own environment, are
also in rapid flux, and I will have to make some further plans about trying to
intersect with a number of them—like rapidly growing twins.
I have submitted the
score of rolls of photographic film, and taken some of the tree removal
operations and the next stage of the home renovation, and will try to get some
work done this week on the course work I have been postponing as I had been
traveling, to start thinking already about the closeout of the year. Before I get that far into the process,
however, I have the Marine Corps marathon this weekend, for which I am in
rather poor shape and totally disoriented on a 11 ½ hour time zone change that
should make the “fall back” one hour time difference trivial, and a lot of
further travel plans to be pulled together.
A
number of people around me have significant problems requiring operations or
(worse) inoperability. So, “At my back I
always hear, time’s winged chariot hurrying near…”