5 May 2014

 

Eagerly anticipating today’s milestone event, was dressed in my work duds and out the door at 0700.  Still very lonely two hours later, called Sean to see if maybe (sic) there had been a change in plans.  Got the text message (sent hours earlier) a few minutes later (thanks for nothing, Verizon Wireless), informing me that Jimmy Ploof wouldn’t be available until about noon. Jimmy arrived just after 11, and in an absolutely amazing display of excavator expertise, completely de-stumped the house site in just over an hour of frenetic digging.  The size stump that took me 5 hours with the Kubota to claw out down at the sauna site took Jimmy less than a minute to unearth.  Even with all that raw power, I swear he could have picked up a sheet of paper with his excavator… without wrinkling it!  Sean arrived, in company with his brother (and foreman) Ben, just as Jimmy was finishing the stump removal, which made quite a large pile. With Ben doing the photographer honors, Sean, Jimmy, and I posed for the obligatory ground-breaking ceremony picture.  Somehow the gold plating seems to have worn off my shovel.  After Jimmy left to retrieve his truck from the tire repair shop (which is why he was late arriving this morning), Sean, Ben, and I spent a couple of hours going over administrative and house specification issues.  Spent the next couple of hours coaxing electrons into patterns consistent with what Sean and I had decided.  Jimmy arrived back, with his son, James, at 4:30.  The three of us then spent an hour accurately staking out the house corners, then putting in ten-foot offset stakes so that Jimmy will know where to dig for the foundation tomorrow.