Crisis

"According to Lewis Bornheim, a crisis is a situation in which a previously tolerable set of circumstances is suddenly, by the addition of another factor, rendered wholly intolerable."

(Which may not even be a real quote by a real human being, and purely the fabrication of author Michael Crichton in his novel The Andromeda Strain, but it applies...)

Yesterday, when the hot weather sapped his strength for working in the forge, Darrell decided to take a poke at what he assumed was a quick little repair, under the deck door, where a small gap has been catching bird seed and attracting mice.
That led him to discover that the thrice-damned raccoons have done more damage than we'd suspected, and have dug away at the underlying wood. Which led us to discover (one more time) how poorly this house was constructed, and to wonder if the building inspectors were paid off or blind!

For what did we discover, but unsheathed wafer board, and no flashing to redirect rain water, which has been gathering and pooling and rotting what real wood there was there. (Though knowing something about the building of the house, and how much salvaged material had been used, it's hard to say how sturdy the wood was when it was installed!)

So Darrell ended up starting to pull away some of the crap, had to proceed to jacking up the deck for the time being so it doesn't just fall off the house...



And then, fools that we are, we left it overnight, so it could dry out a bit before being sealed in again with a replacement lintel beam, or whatever that would be called, and wouldn't you know it, our dratted raccoon friends came by and yanked out as much insulation and vapour barrier as they could possibly reach!


New motto?
Take No Prisoners! Death to All Raccoons!

Growing Things

*Happy woad.

* And just for Karen....

Smelt Prep

We had the smelt prep day this weekend. Some of the members of our Viking Age interest group were by, to help get ready for the upcoming DARC camp and iron smelt. (Somewhere along the way we realized we have to combine interests if we're going to manage to fit things in to peoples' calendars. Iron smelting seems to have achieved a guaranteed date, therefore if we also want to do a bit of period camping, and the occasions for pulling that off seem to dwindle as time goes on, then we have to start multi-tasking!) Yesterday, a new smelter needed to be built, since we eked the last bit of life and usefulness out of the previous one, when we tried the double smelt in the late fall.

*at the smelter shelter, after building the smelter.
*freshly washed from clay to the armpits...

* the messy business of making "Darc Dirt", which is an experimental bog ore analog. And here I thought that Darrell was the one who knew how to get messy!

* the new screen-y gazebo thingie, down by the pond and smelter shelter, where we can hide from black flies and mossies.

*Why your mother told you never to play with red iron oxide. What do you mean your mother never told you...?

Anyway, we're pretty much set to go. The Darc Dirt needs to dry out, and be broken up. Right now it looks like a bunch of trays of red fudge. Charcoal will need some crushing and sorting, but is a good job for on the day. There are always people who'd like to be involved, but don't need to set themselves on fire! (We reserve that special honour for the experienced smelters in the crowd...)

True Confessions

Oh, oh. What is this going to do to my reputation as a confirmed hater of babies?