Zook and I spent the majority of the day dry laying the third course of between-column rocks. Got all but two sections done. About 3:30 Tammy Walsh arrived with her Kubota loader / backhoe. She moved several bucket loads of gravel into the area between the shed footers so that we could bring the grade uniformly up to 6″ below the footer tops. Then we tried to raise one of the beams into place using her backhoe and my logging chain. Unfortunately, even at full extension with the backhoe arm, the beam was still a good foot lower than the tops of the J-bolts onto which it needed to be placed. As it was now quitting / cooling-off-in-the-lake time, we left the beam-raising mission until the morning. I climbed a step ladder next to the east-side double column while futzing around with the beam. Zap, an evil flying insect (wasp / hornet / yellow jacket?) stung my left hand, almost exactly where it was stung a few weeks back. The pain, as Bill Cosby once said, was terrific. Tammy spotted the nest entrance, not two feet from where I had spent quite awhile working this morning! Lucky I only got one sting… and then for no apparent reason other than sheer cussedness. So after a couple of Benadryl, chased down by a delicious BBQ chicken dinner, Zook and I headed out in search of some Raid Wasp and Hornet Killer by way of Lynne’s and Perry’s water spigot (we’ve gone through 6 gallons of the clear wet stuff in two days of mid-nineties temperatures). The Hannaford in Middlebury was sold out, the Rite Aide didn’t have any, but, most fortuitously, the Hannaford in Brandon had two cans. We’ll see in the morning whether I squirted the right hole tonight.
