cellio | Pennsic prep (mostly)

Sunday was a planned work day for my Pennsic camp -- specifically some house repairs. Last year we replaced several sections of siding that had gotten mushy because we didn't know from day one that caulk is important. There were some sections we didn't get to last year, so we attacked those this time. Dani and I had done a scouting mission and several camp members had gotten together two weeks ago to prime and paint plywood, so this "should" have been easy. That noise you hear is heavenly laughter. :-)

When we did that scouting mission (a month or so ago) there were lots of wasps or hornets swarming around. (I was disinclined to get close enough to armed insects to determine which these were.) We've had nests before, so I brought up some chemical weapons this time -- and we found nothing. Ok, we found an occupied bird's nest (they can stay until Pennsic), but no wasp/hornet nests at all. That's great, but a little mystifying.

First lesson learned: a power inverter works better if you have the cables -- or, failing that, if the cables are not in a car at a gaming convention in Columbus. Oops. We were so careful to make sure I had the box before Dani left for Origins; it didn't occur to either of us that the full-looking box was not actually full. Fortunately, alaricmacconnal is handy with copper wire, which he was able to pick up on his way up to Cooper's Lake.

Second lesson learned: the circular saw really is too big for the power inverter (I think the person who thought it worked last year was mis-remembering), but a jig saw is good enough to make straight cuts in plywood. (A lesson we learned last year is that you can't really measure for the replacement piece until you've removed the old piece, which means cutting on site.)

Third lesson learned: rain is wet. :-) Ok, we already knew that, and we knew we were gambling some on the weather. We got rained on twice, but each time only lasted about 15-20 minutes and people were smart enough to come down from the big metal ladder. :-) A bigger storm rolled in as we were finishing, so we got to drive home in that.

We've had some impressive storms in the last few days. I don't think we got the predicted hail this afternoon, but on both Saturday and Sunday there were some pretty fierce winds and impressive light shows.

After I got home (and cleaned up) Sunday night I was able to visit with college friends from Seattle for a couple hours. I'm not certain they had had their first kid when last I saw them, and they were in town this weekend to drop him off at CMU's pre-college program. Wow -- been a long time. It was good to catch up some (though it was incomplete).

Pennsic prep (mostly)

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