8 May 2014

Jimmy was back at 0745.  Wink delivered a dump truck load of sand shortly before 8, which Jimmy used to smooth the cellar area where the wall footers will be laid.  Then Jimmy started digging the trench for the frost wall that will support the west side of the house.  While that was ongoing, I went over to Kate’s to check email and put in an online order.  Just as I started the latter activity, the touchpad mouse on my (not-so) trusty laptop computer stopped working.  Nothing I could think to do would rectify the problem.  Gaack!  Headed into Middlebury (was out of ice cream, AGAIN!!!!), stopped to reassure the Goodro Lumber staff that I would be putting all their kids through college this summer, then went to CSI, a computer repair place I’d heard good things about.  The denizen of that emporium asked, “Is the touchpad turned on?”  To which I replied, “I didn’t know you could turn it off.”  So he pressed the F5 key and (1) the touchpad mouse started working again just fine and (2) my face turned bright red.  Got back to Fern Lake about 11, just as Jimmy was packing up from finishing this phase of his site work responsibilities.  After he left, went into Brandon to do more errands.  Then started cleaning up chunks of roots and some stumps that didn’t make it onto the truck on Tuesday.  Met Sean headed in as I was headed out the driveway with the first load.  We reviewed progress and the short-term schedule for an hour.  Then I finished the site cleanup, greased the poor tractor, and washed the mud and the blood and the gore off that much-abused machine.  Black flies still are well and truly present.