Day 3: The Blisters

Today was a big day.  Huge.  Enormous.  Gigantic.

Feel free to add your own phallic jokes here.

But wait, it gets even better.  It was a giant vehicle bonanza at the site today.

Ten minutes later, Optimus Prime showed up.  Not kidding.

That big ole white arm thing is a pump truck, or pumper.  What it pumps, in case you were wondering, is concrete.  For the past few days we have been working hard building the forms for the house footings, the were then poured today.  The pumper eliminates the need to use a wheelbarrow to move concrete, which is both much slower and much more work.  Who has two thumbs and loves that?  Well... all of us, really.

Fill 'er with the regular, please.

So that big tube spits out concrete, which sounds a little bit like a blender mixed with the bubbling liquid in a witch's cauldron, and the rest of us work frantically to level out and tamp down the mixture to the chalk lines we spent an hour running on all the forms.  Of course, I had mixed success.  I was given the very important and technical job of "take this rake and push the concrete around", which I'm sure is the construction equivalent of telling the slow kid to keep score.  Regardless, I raked the crap out of that concrete.  It was leaf season all over the place.

See? Not a single leaf.  Only concrete someone else smoothed and leveled.

And there you have it, folks!  We have a foundation.  They say that a good foundation is important for success.  Being unsuccessful in house-building is probably not something I want to experience, so fingers crossed!

Later Days.

Alex and Linzi

PS. If you were wondering what the difference between cement and concrete is, then it's your lucky day!  Cement is a powder made from limestone and some other minerals that hardens when it gets wet.  Concrete is a grey sludge made out of cement, water and stone.

What's that? You didn't ask and this was useless knowledge?  Well... GI Joe says knowledge is power, so you're welcome.