Riding the bus

OK, so many of you know that my State Senator, Dennis Damon (D-Trenton) has introduced a thing called LD 1020 "An Act to end Discrimination in Civil Marriage and Preserve Religious Freedom. It is a bill that would define marriage as a civil contract between two consenting adults, regardless of gender. It would also allow religious institutions to retain the right to refuse to marry any couple that does not meet their own requirements. (Catholics do this now, refusing to marry people who have been previously married and divorced, or couples where neither person is Catholic. I presume other churches have similar restrictions.) It would also make it so that Maine recognizes any marriage performed in any other state (including same-sex marriages).

Dennis is a brave, amazing guy. He made my heroes list a couple years ago when he was instrumental in passing legislation to allow adults who were adopted in Maine access to their original birth records, including the names of their birth parents. Now he has done this. Straight, with grown kids, he has been a teacher, coach and entrepreneur. His wife still teaches in public schools. All-American stuff.

And since he proposed this bill in the legislature, he has been the target of some pretty nasty stuff. Hate speech directed at him and his family. Public insinuations about his manliness and/or sexual orientation. Death threats. All-around nastiness. And he has remained steadfast. Bless his heart.

But this post was not supposed to be about Dennis. Well, maybe a little bit, toward the end. This is a post about marriage and a bus.

See, a friend of ours (K) who is a local mover and shaker in liberal political circles was charged with delivering 100 supporters of the bill to its public hearing before the legislative committee designated to hear it (probably the Judiciary Committee). Both sides will be out in force for this thing, and our side needs not only articulate speakers, but bodies in seats. The rules are pretty strict - no placards or signs, no cheering, no cat-calls, no misbehavin' of any kind. Seating is limited to 900 people, with the proceedings being simulcast to monitors in a second auditorium where more seating will be available. The show begins at 9:30 a.m. and is expected to go until 8:30 p.m. I have no idea if there will be a break. It will be a long, emotionally charged, exhausting day.

And our organizers are telling us to be at the auditorium (at Cony High School in Augusta) at 7 a.m. in order to be sure we will get in and get decent seats. They're also telling us to wear red to make a visible show of support.

So K and I got talking and L chimed in with a reminder that we actually know somebody who owns a bus. Like a real bus. A big bus. OK, an old school bus, but still. It's more than a Volkswagen microbus. It's more than a 12-seat university van, it's more than the old 16 passenger bus I used to drive. It's a 56-seat behemoth of a thing. And yeah, it's yellow.

So I called the gal, E, who owns the bus. Actually, E and her partner own a cab and hired car/transportation service. They have vans and SUVs and even TWO buses. Very cool. Could she give us a price? Sure!

Oh, and could I drive it, please?

You want what?

Hire me, I said. Put me on for one day. I won't even ask for pay, to keep our costs down, and I'll clean it out when we're done.

There was a very long pause.

Are you still driving for company X? No.

You still have your license, though? Oh, yes!

Is it clean? Like a whistle! I'm really quite boring, you know... (hush you!)

What are you doing for work now? I'm a self-employed contractor.

Really? So, like, your time is pretty much your own, then, right? Um, yeah. Pretty much.

I'm short one or two bus drivers and I have some shifts that need coverage. Think you could do them?





{in this long silence, I understood exactly what was being offered here in trade: You want to drive this bus bad enough? Bail me out of these shifts and I'll make it happen.}




(deep breath) sure. What have you got?

Well, kids, Dawn is taking one for the team.

Remember how much I like children, right? Yeah. Well, this company has the contract with a local school to transport their athletic teams to and from events. I will be bringing kids to a track meet, a tennis match, and a softball game. Three shifts, each probably a minimum of six hours, and I get to also drive the bus to Augusta for the hearing.

Now for the extremely local part of this post.

• This all happens on Friday, April 24, 2009.

• We will be leaving very early and probably staying until around 6 p.m. before heading for home. That means you might not get back to your car until 8 or 9 p.m., perhaps later.

• If you live in Hancock County, Maine and want to ride on this bus, you can contact me at bbginanp (at) roadrunner (dot) com and say "I want to ride the bus" in the subject line. It will cost $15 per person and will include a box lunch.

• There will be three places you can catch the bus. We depart the Bar Harbor town pier at 4 a.m. We have the OK to park cars on the pier for the whole day. We go to College of the Atlantic and pick up passengers at the whale's skull. We depart COA at 4:15 a.m. and head to Ellsworth.

• We pick up passengers at the Ellsworth High School (yes, you can park there all day) and depart there at 5 a.m. SHARP. We will be travelling down Route 3 and might pick up people in Belfast if they request it. (Probably in the Reny's parking lot, and probably at around 6 a.m.)

• YOU MUST RESERVE A SEAT if you want to ride. We are expecting to fill the bus to capacity. You can pay when you board the bus. There is a reduced price for high school kids.
  

Now back to the cool part about Dennis Damon.

When we were in Augusta recently for that tradeswomen's conference, we stopped over to the state house to visit our local delegation. We got to visit and chat with our House Rep, check out her seat in the chambers and stand behind the speaker's podium (wicked cool!). We also tried to find Dennis, but he was out of the building shuttling between meetings. The nice lady in the Senate Majority office found him via phone for me, though, and handed me the receiver so I could chat with him. I thanked him for his bravery and for the good work he's doing. And then I asked if he was a notary public. In fact, he is.

Well then, I said. When this is all over, will you marry L and I?

Yes, he said, he'd be glad to perform our ceremony.

So sometime soon, perhaps this summer, even, L and I could very well be getting married. Like for real. Legally and everything. It's big. It's huge. And it is not something I ever imagined I'd see in my lifetime.

It will probably be in the park (Acadia). It will absolutely be potluck. There might be volleyball or softball or Frisbee. There will certainly be dogs. There won't be alcohol, but there will be fun. And most importantly, there will be love and laughter and good times. Because that's what families and marriages are all about. Love and tears and laughter and togetherness.

Dennis rocks, don't you think? He's gotten a real rash of shit over this thing. Do me a favor and send him a note thanking him for being such a good guy, would you? Here's the link to E-MAIL SENATOR DAMON. Remember to mention LD 1020 and thank him for being so great, hmm?

Thanks.

My knees are on fire

A few neat things going on with me lately.

First, my great friend LC has been up visiting and saving me from my own best intentions and ignorance on this job that never ends (aka the sun porch job). Yesterday and today we installed the hardwood floor. There is still a tiny bit to do, but it looks so damned good I had to share. My knees don't give a damn whether I use knee pads or not. The pressure of being on them is still awful and as soon as I finish this post I am going to go smear Biofreeze all over them and head to bed. But first look at what we did:



There will be a trap door in the floor. It goes in this space and is presently being held together with clamps. I think she's doing something really fussy to it - something about holding the hardwood securely to the plywood or something. Yeah. I dunno. I'm pretty sure Gollum lives down in this hole though. I know I was in there last summer when there was no building on top of it, but right now it just looks creepy. I'm sure there are 50-legged mutant spiders down there waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting person who wanders down to chase a dropped tool. I have been very careful with my tools.




LC also saved me from the butchery I was attempting on the window and wall trim. Here are some pictures of that.


With any luck, we'll finish up a good part of the trim, baseboards and floor tomorrow. After which I reserve the right to sozzle in a borrowed spa.

My fancy speech

I made a fancy speech at the fancy banquet at the end of the conference that I wrote about yesterday. I was a nervous wreck.

I had been cautioned (threatened) by the staff to not say anything inappropriate, and while I do have a natural tendency for such things, and while I do love to tell scandalous stories, I also understood that this banquet was about the organization and the work it does, not how funny and/or outrageous Dawn can be. I have ample opportunity to prove that every day. This was not the time or place. Still waiting on pictures. I'll post them when I get them.

I dressed up pretty nice, sat with the big shots and managed not to get soup on my tie during dinner. At our table were me and four friends, including L, two tradeswomen (besides me) and a stock broker; and the Commissioner of the State Housing Authority, the Deputy Commissioner of the Department of Labor, and a big shot administrator in the Department of Transportation. The Commissioner also happens to be the woman who founded Women Unlimited, my own personal hero and sometimes mentor for lo, these 20-some years, Dale McCormick. Dale also used to be the Maine State Treasurer, so she and my stock broker friend chatted on about bonds and rates and the financial news of the day. I was glad for that. My stock of stories seems to rely heavily on work screw-ups and things that are not appropriate dinner conversation. At least not at banquets, anyway.

I was introduced by the Deputy Commissioner, Jane Gilbert, who is a remarkable woman. It was humbling to be sure. I had a few notes that I scribbled on a hotel note pad. I set them on the podium, glanced at them once and pretty much ignored them for a while. I don't remember what-all I said exactly, but I am going to offer the best reproduction of it here. It might not be quite right, but it is as close as I can get.

When Lib first asked me to speak at this thing, she told me she needed a biographical blurb to put in the program. Somewhat daunted by this idea, I came up with something along the lines of "Dawn is a tragic example of what happens when an ADHD child grows up. Unable to sit still at a desk job and with an attitude so bad that it does not allow her to work for anyone else, Dawn is a self-employed contractor. And some days that's iffy."

{They all laughed.}

The truth is, though, that I have some real advantages in my life. I do have the benefit of a college education. But it has not been all that I had hoped it would be.

I grew up in a family that valued white collar work. I was taught early to get an education and get a job that was clean and that wouldn't break my back. My father was a machinist. He used to come home dirty and sore, smelling of metal and oil and smoke and with sharp little shards of metal in the bottoms of his boots. My mom used to complain about the metal from his boots getting in the carpet.

"Get an education, kid," he used to tell me. "You never see bankers out of work."

The stock broker at my table snickered, as did several others.

But I think my father was pretty typical of his time. Do better than me. Don't work this hard to make a living. Don't pay for your livelihood with your health.

So I went to college right out of high school. I majored in Education because it seemed like the thing to do. And about halfway through my sophomore year, around the same time I sobered up, I came to the awful realization that I do not like children. At around the same time, the university came to the decision that both it and I might benefit from a year's break from each other, and we parted ways for a while.

I came back to college after a year and a half, bounced around from major to major until somebody decided that I could write, and I ended up graduating and going into newspaper work. It seemed like a good fit, but eventually the flaws in that plan began to show through. See, reporters are supposed to be unbiased, and I am sure it will come as a shock to some here, but I've got some opinions. And reporters are supposed to not voice their opinions, and well, Dawn has never been really good at keeping her mouth shut. So I ended up getting run out of the newspaper business.

Unemployed, I did what I have always done: I fixed stuff for people. I painted and wallpapered and made repairs for folks who needed them. It wasn't big money, but it was something. Around that time a friend mentioned to me that Women Unlimited was going to be offering a 15-week class in something - bridge building, she thought maybe.

Bridge building? I didn't like to get up on the third step of a stepladder and she thought I should take bridge building? Hmph. Well, there was road construction as well, and something about a class B truck license, and that sounded cool, so I made a call and got an interview.

I got accepted to the class and we learned all kinds of things - we got our truck licenses, we learned to read blueprints and how to do construction math - cause you know there are a lot of fractions in construction, quarters and eighths and sixteenths and stuff. Well, eighths, anyway. Sixteenths are kinda fussy.

{"Sixteenths!" cried Dale from our table. She's a fussy carpenter. I'm more of a framer.}

And we learned welding and CPR and First Aid and we did a ropes course and I went up high and was OK with that. And we learned welding. Nancy Bailey of Nancy's Welding taught us how to weld, and I loved it. I came home dirty and smoky and with little shards of metal in the soles of my boots.

And my girlfriend complained about the carpet.

And I told her too bad. I love this stuff.

We got all kinds of certifications and we got some confidence in our own abilities. When I left that class, I felt that I could do whatever was necessary on a job. I knew I could learn what I needed to and that I could ask for help and that would be OK.

I went to work that spring on what is now the Donald V. Carter Memorial Bridge between Waterville and Winslow and later I went down to Portland to work on the Casco Bay Bridge there. Now remember, I had been afraid of heights before Women Unlimited. And here I was, up on the bridge, and I remember the day when I realized that the white thing that I saw blowing by below me was not a piece of paper but a seagull flying. I was up HIGH! And it was grand.

I got to that job around the time they were finishing up the big piers in the middle (they're called bascule piers) where the works of the drawbridge are housed. They had been poured and partially finished, but needed to be completed. Bolted to the outside of the piers were these enormous brackets, and on these brackets were beams and on the beams was plywood, making an 8-foot wide platform skirting most of the pier. On that platform was mounted a handrail, kick-plate and mid rail, and four or five or six levels of blue pipe staging. It allowed the crews to work on the outside of the concrete structure as it was being constructed.

Well, when I got to the job, it was time for that stuff to be taken down. We disassembled the pipe staging and handed it in through the windows. Then we took down the hand rail and fed those pieces in through the window. (All of this material was then carried down and off the bridge via either crane or barge to trucks where it was taken back to either the company's warehouse or disposal facility.) Then we started to peel up the plywood, working our way back toward the window, standing very carefully on the beams. There was a lot of air under those beams and brackets, and not much else. We were probably 60 or 70 feet above the water at this point. Maybe more.

So we handed in the beams and the brackets, unbolting them as we went, working our way backwards, until there was one bracket left bolted to the outside of the bridge. And I was standing on it. There was nothing but air all around and the flat face of the concrete bridge and the hole of a window through which I had to go, taking the bracket with me. We ended up with me being held by my belt and lowered head first out the window to loosen the last bolt on the last bracket. It dropped and swung at the end of the rope we had tied to it, my buddies hauled me back inside and we pulled in the bracket. The side of the bridge pier was bare - nothing on it from the operator's house where the road would be all the way to the water line.

And six months earlier, I couldn't get up on the third step of a stepladder. Women Unlimited is remarkable. It gave me that experience.

I left that company to become the first woman apprentice in the Sheet Metal Worker's International Association Local 17, where I worked hard and learned a lot.

But I have to be honest here. I did not finish my apprenticeship. I left after my third year. I decided that maybe I could go back to newspapering work. And so I tried. For a lot of years, I tried.

I liken it to buying a pair of shoes that don't quite fit. Have you ever done that? You see these shoes, and they're not quite comfortable, but they are the coolest things you've ever seen and you WANT them to fit so badly that you try and try and try, and no matter what, even years later, they still give you blisters and hurt whenever you wear them. They never break in properly.

That's what white-collar desk work is for me. I really wanted to do it. I really wanted to enjoy it. I really wanted to be good at it. I was taught early on that THAT was my goal. Professional work was the ideal I was supposed to pursue. Only it never fit. I always got blisters.

It took me a long time to figure that out, too. But now I am self-employed, working as a contractor, doing jobs that are sometimes more than I can handle. But that's OK.

I am confident today, in large part because of my experience with Women Unlimited. In fact, sometimes it works against me. When people ask me what my greatest strength is, I say "my confidence." When they ask what is my greatest weakness, I say "my confidence."

It is true. I bite off more than I can chew, on a fairly regular basis. The lucky part is that I have to good sense to hire people who are smarter than me and have them teach me how to do the things I do not know. I am working on a project now where I tore down a greenhouse and am building an 8' by 16' sun room with custom windows and a hardwood floor. I never put in a window before this. I've never laid a floor. But I know people who do know how to do those things. And they help me and I learn.

I learn something on every job I do today. Each one is different and each one teaches me something new.

***
I think I wrapped it up in some fashion at about this point. I have no idea how I concluded, other than I thanked the staff of Women Unlimited for being so amazing and wonderful, and I thanked Dale for the gift of Women Unlimited, and I thanked the tradeswomen who attended the conference and who learned and shared their experiences with me. I remember that I thanked them for inspiring me every day.

And then I sat down. It seemed done.

Again, if you would like to support Women Unlimited, please do so by contacting them HERE. They rock. Please help them to continue to do so.

I don't do a lot of preaching or encouraging (telling) people to do this or think that or support this other thing, at least not in this space. This is my one shot. I'd really like it if you did. It is probably one of the only things I will ever ask of you. Thanks.

Of tiles and opportunity

So we are home from the conference. We are exhausted.

My session on laying ceramic tile went extremely well. I had approximately 9 people there - and since I had anticipated a crowd of maybe four or five, it was a bit of a free-for-all. A couple of the people had laid tile before and they were able to help the others who had never had the pleasure. My dear friend Lis showed up and helped me run and fetch and clean tools and keep everybody on track and up to speed. I would truly have been lost without her. The fine folks at Women Unlimited poked in occasionally to see how things were going and someone took a ton of pictures. I'll try to post them here as soon as I get my mitts on them. They're all a little fried today. I'm not going to push.

So we took eight or nine women, some of whom had never so much as picked up a tile before, and we got 'em messy, covered in glue and grout, and no longer afraid of tiles. First we had them spread the mastic (big word for tile glue) on some boards, then they laid out the tiles, using the spacers. Once the tiles were stuck down, we put aside those boards and got out the boards with tile already on them. They selected the color grout they wanted and we mixed it up with water. I got the measurements wrong on the water, so we had some fudging to do, but we got it worked out. Then we had to let the grout sit for 10 minutes while the Portland cement in it did its chemistry thing. During that time, I answered questions as best I could, admitting it when I simply didn't know. I explained how important it is for the surface you're sticking the tiles to to be extremely solid so that there were no shifts and tweaks with the seasons - those will crack the grout and allow water to leak in and rot wood, etc. I talked about the different kinds of tiles and how to cut and chip with the little plier nippers to make cutouts for pipes and faucets and such.

When our grout was cured enough, we mixed it again and then spread it on the pre-laid tiles. Everyone had different tiles to work with, so everyone had a little different experience, but I noticed that they all seemed to be checking out how the others were doing and commenting on the differences and similarities. (I made sure we all wore gloves to save our fingers from the chemicals in the grout.) Then we wiped down the tile boards, exposing the finished product. Everyone seemed very pleased with how their efforts came out, and then - bless them all - they helped clean up so the next session could come in and learn in a room that was not trashed. We had it cleaned up sufficiently and on time and they left exhilarated at their new-found skills. I left thrilled that we would not be billed for a carpet.

One of the most poignant encounters of the day involved a woman who helped me out when I was setting up the session. She worked in housekeeping, cleaning rooms and doing traditional housekeeping stuff at the hotel. She spoke with some of the Women Unlimited folks upstairs, she told me, and asked for a job bank application. She helped me change the room around to accommodate a messy project, found me some extra trash bags, and even got me access to an empty hotel room across the hall so we could fill our rinse pails in the tub there and dump the dirty water into the toilet. She hustled around to help me. I never got her name, but she was a lifesaver that morning.

I could tell she was interested in what we were doing by her eyes. They were curious and almost jealous - there was wonder and yearning in them. I got the feeling that she was not really thrilled with her lot, cleaning rooms in a hotel in Augusta, Maine. Looking around her, she saw lots of women doing lots of things that were more interesting and pretty much guaranteed to pay more than whatever it is that she's making now. The wheels were nearly visible, turning in her head as we went about the conference and she went about her housekeeping tasks.

I learned later from the Women Unlimited staff that she returned after her break with the job bank application all filled out. She wants to be a part of what she saw that weekend. She wants to do something more meaningful than scrubbing hotel toilets and making beds. She wants to make better money, she wants to have the skills and confidence she saw Saturday at that conference.

It is my hope that we see her again at next year's conference, wearing boots and Carharts and talking about her first season working on a road crew or with a flagging operation or operating some kind of equipment. From the look I saw in her eye, I think it is a real possibility.

God, but that is why I love Women Unlimited. Women Unlimited changes lives. Period. It is what they do. It gives hope and opportunity in places where no one else has offered such things.

If you are interested in helping them continue to perform miracles, get in touch with them HERE and make a donation. If you're not long on money, that's OK. Little donations are good too, as are materials. They always have a list of stuff they need. Hand tools, lumber, odds & ends. Check them out. Give if you can. Tell 'em Dawn sent you. They'll know you're OK.

And yeah, I made a fancy speech on Saturday night at the banquet. I'll write about that tomorrow. I am still processing it all. And stay tuned for pictures, too.

pushing things

Here you see the remnants of our first grilled outdoors steaks of the season. Couple of nice little boneless rib eyes, rubbed vigorously with coarse salt and pepper, then grilled rare and doused with A-1 sauce for L, and (sorry Robin) Blue Cheese dressing for me. Served with garlic mashed potatoes made with real sour cream and butter and peas. With butter. Well, duh. Of course.

I needed to cook outside today. It was not the warmest day we've had so far, but I think my area has had all it can stand of a long, miserable winter and reluctant spring. We had a few days a while back when the temperature got up over 50 degrees - and those were wonderful - but we knew they were anomalies. We're almost into April now, and we just can't stand it any more.

I met a friend for coffee today. She showed up in her Saab with the top down. While we chatted, a young man and his girl rode by on a motorcycle. The thermometer didn't ever nudge past 45 here today.

We can't wait any longer for spring. Odds are we'll get one more snowstorm, but we won't shovel it. "Screw that," we'll say. "Nature put 'er down, Nature'll take 'er away. No sense gettin' a hernia over something that's gonna melt inside a week."

No shit. We do that.

Even if it's a foot.

Our New England gets up and just refuses to be bullied by the weather one more time this season. So there. Time will win out, after all. Spring will come. It always has.

Tiles are taking over...

I had planned to post the recipe for tonight's supper - carrot ginger soup - but it appears that I already did that. Oh well. It was as yummy tonight as it was back in August when we made it.

Not much to report today. I am still semi-consumed by this tile workshop thing and have been practicing on L. Yesterday I made her learn to put tiles down with the adhesive and today I taught her how to apply grout. She has decided that I do not charge nearly enough for installing tile. Heh.

L has been extremely patient with me as I have practiced teaching people how to lay tile. Yesterday, I put on my teacher voice and we spread adhesive on some plywood and then laid out the tiles.


We each did a couple of boards of tiles so that there will be something ready to be grouted at Saturday's workshop. Here are a couple of samples ready to go.


We did a couple boards with that cool artisan-made tile I got down on Little Deer Isle and for fun today, I taught L how to apply grout and then clean the tiles. Here is the finished product of her efforts. She and I are both quite proud!


That's it for today. Writing over at the other blog is taking some of my time, but not as much as I had feared. It is the research that is exhausting!

back again

like a bad penny.

Please accept my apology for my recent absence. Had some stuff I had to get down and written over at the other place. To make up for it, here are some pictures of what I have been up to.

Remember that teeny delivery shed I was working on? Well I got it done and here it is just after we placed it in its (hopeful) permanent location. There may be some maneuvering around come spring, but we're hoping this will be the place it wants to stay. The bungee cord is still through the hasp gizmo.


And here is a couple pictures of the inside. I know it doesn't seem like all that much, but this is primarily for package and dry-cleaner delivery, so a closet pole makes a world of sense, even if the thing looks like the world's smallest privy out there on the lawn.



And here is a shot of it with the door open. Isn't that a snazzy door? It's made of v-notched matched pine boards. First time I ever made one that came out the way it was supposed to. I was very pleased with myself.


And here is a shot of the shed from the back and side. Notice the dark gray asphalt shingle roof with real metal drip edge. This thing was really a miniature building. And the bonus? The roof was exactly one sheet of shingles wide. Sweet. It took under one bundle of shingles to do the whole thing and required very little cutting. I was sooooooo happy!


The customers are still raving about how happy they are. I am glad. I fussed and fretted over this for a while. I am pleased with how it came out, and am more pleased that they are happy.

Next, I recently had to go visit a friend down at a funky neat and cool interior design/decoration place on Little Deer Isle. Place is called Harbor Farm and they donated a bunch of colored tile samples for me to use in my workshop next weekend.

First, let me show you the approach to the bridge over the narrows out to Little Deer Isle.


Yes, the bridge does go straight friggin' up. Just like that.

It is not an optical illusion. It goes way the hell up.

Damned if I know why. Perhaps so tall boats can go under? I've never seen it, but that does not mean it doesn't happen. Anyway. One lane out to the islands, one lane back. Up and over. Not for the faint of heart. Especially on windy days - whew!

The bridge is the exact same design as the ill-fated Tacoma Narrows Bridge out in Washington State. I just love this video. It is silent, so don't worry that your computer isn't working. Just incredible.



My friend Lib narrates this in wonderful fashion. She'll do it again at the conference next weekend. I may or may not attend her session. Depends on what else I may have to be doing at that time.

In order to prevent a similar catastrophe happening to the Little Deer Isle bridge, engineers rigged these triangular wind buffers to prevent the wind from catching in the tall girders and thrashing the bridge around like the one in Tacoma. They work pretty well, from what I hear, but only the hardiest of souls venture across when a gale is blowing out of the northeast. Here's a shot of the buffers.


So out I ventured onto Maine's connected islands to collect colored tiles for this project I am doing. Here is a sample of the more than 100 4-inch, mostly artisan-made tiles we got.


I am now sorting and fussing and sorting and fussing to make them work and fit in some kind of series of patterns. Working up the patterns and making it all fit onto the boards is going to be more involved than I had anticipated. I am glad I am doing the prep work in advance. If I had tried to throw this stuff together the night before the early morning session, I'd have been screwed.

So that's what I have been up to. I also put up the wood trim on that sun room project, with help from a friend who taught me volumes about how to be patient and do the fussy stuff. I don't have pictures of that just yet, but hopefully I will later this week. Stay tuned.