Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

One nightmare is over: I have curry powder again. Two different kinds. From Penzeys, yet. (I hadn't quite managed to get the mix of ingredients right on my own during the time I was out of pre-mixed curry powder, though I was getting closer). I even have vindaloo powder. Thanks, Sheepie! Eggs finally taste right again. *whew*

The other nightmare, the leaky roof, continues, with some progress...

So -- yesterday I spent a while lying on my stomach at the edge of my roof with my head and arms over the edge, driving nails into the wood on the underside of the overhang on the front of my house. I managed to not drop the hammer. In fact, I only dropped one nail. But my arms got really tired. And my hands don't seem to want to grip things well today.

I started composing this yesterday evening, then got interrupted, and then was too tired to deal with it after the interrution was over. (The interruption was almost for a good thing, but for a trivial goof to be laughed about at random times in the future.)

What would have been posted last night:

Done for the night, but not finished. :-( Dizzy, arms trembling, so yeah, I'd better stop. I tacked one edge of a sheet of plastic to the underside of the overhang on the front of the house, then piled ballast around the edges (and some sprinkled across the middle), hoping that'll be enough to keep it from blowing away overnight. Part of the roof is covered, including the big obvious torn-off section, but it's not really quite ready to be rained on and really not ready for significant wind.

For the record, climbing a ladder with a bucket of bricks is not my favourite athletic activity.

I did too much Thursday and wound up barely getting out of bed Friday (when I'd planned to be on the roof). I need to get up there tomorrow to finish what I started, but given how wrecked I feel right now, being functional tomorrow is iffy. Ugh.

I'm using cheap plastic so far, figuring things out as I go, and may put a more expensive tarp on top of that later, depending on how things go and how things look. Thursday, Sheepie asked whether I needed her to pick up anything from a hardware store before dinner[*], and I asked her to look for a 30'x20' sheet of plastic, expecting her to find a clear dropcloth or a 30' roll. Apparently Lowe's didn't have anything matching that, but they did have a heavy, blue, 30'x50' tarp ... for $100. $100 that I can't really afford, but it's probably best that I go ahead and use it if the smaller pieces of thinner plastic[**] don't look like they'll suffice, and try to find the money somewhere. Once the roof gets fixed for real, I'll be able to use the big tarp at Pennsic, so I'll get my money's worth out of it over the years; it's just a matter of finding the money in the first place. If I can get the cheap plastic to do the job, that'll be a lot less stress.

The big question, other than whether I'll be able to finish this before it rains, is whether we'll get winds strong enough to rip the plastic away, considering that it's only attached on one edge and those nails will easily tear out (and that the wood on the underside of the overhang was springy, leaving me to wonder how well it is attached to the house...)

[*] I'd assumed that anniemal would be doing something with syntonic-comma if she was up to doing anything special, so Sheepie and I made plans for a Not-Valentine pizza outing Thursday.

[**] I know the cheap plastic will degrade quickly with exposure to sunlight, but I'm hoping this kludge doesn't have to last more than a couple weeks anyhow. The epensive blue tarp is the right material to use if it has to last any longer than that.

There was more in my head then but I've lost my train of thought overnight. Anyhow, I slept late, and am moving slowly now that I'm up, and my shoulders hurt a lot whenever I raise my arms, and my hands feel clumsy and slow. Ugh. But the rain seems to be holding off, so if I can drag myself up there and still have the strength to lift more bricks and rocks and small containers of water to use as ballast against the expected winds, I guess I have a little time. I'm just not sure I can actually do it so soon after yesterday's exertions.

I'm also wondering whether the winds overnight will have moved things around already. As the sun went down yesterday the wind came up.

If I do spread the expensive blue tarp, I'll want to be very certain that it's not going to blow away. And I'm worried about that facing on the front of the house not holding up if it's the only anchor. I'm considering tying half-gallon containers of water to all the eyelets around the edges of that tarp and letting them hang over the edges of the roof, hoping that'll be enough weight to keep the wind from picking up an edge (and that random stuff placed on to of it is enough to keep the wind from sucking it up in the middle). Two problems I'm still not entirely certain how to solve are the chimney and the antenna. I might get away with just going over the chimney, since it's at an edge, though that does increase the 'sail' aspect of the tarp. I'm less comfortable draping the tarp over the antenna (I'm also not certain what frequency my ISP connection uses, and what is or isn't radiopaque to that wavelength). That leaves bunching the tarp up to go around the antenna and leaving an unprotected section of roof as well as places that can catch water and funnel it under the tarp ... or getting the tarp under the antenna, which I don't think I can do myself, given that it's bolted to a base of cinderblocks that got made larger and heavier each time a storm knocked it out of alignment, until storms stopped doing that. (There's also the question of re-aiming it afterward, but silmaril suggested a technique that will help with that.)

Whee.

I never did get my neighbour's ladder up, but I did follow the solution of the roofers -- there's a fire escape on the house at the end of the block, and that house and the ones between it and mine are vacant, so there's noone there to hear me walk across their roofs and complain, so that's how I've been getting up and down. The uppermost stage is a vertical ladder -- the rest is very steep, slippery, metal stairs. Climbing it with my shoulders feeling the way they do today will be ... interesting.

Or maybe it's saner to give up, considering that it's already after 15:00, just hope the plastic I put up yesterday holds and does enough to keep the rain out of the leaky part, spread a new tarp in the room that gets the worst of it if water does come through, and plan to go up top to look at the result and do the next steps Monday after the rain predicted for tonight is over and my arms have recovered a little.

I wish I felt more certain about any of these options. (Hence the lengthy babbling. It's partly thinking-aloud.)