Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

As I wrote yesterday, Lisa spent several hours hacking away at the tree that was sitting on the roof of the old house. She has cut it back considerably, but now we are stuck.

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Lisa has an idea about getting it off the roof, but she doesn't know exactly where to get the necessary materials -- in particular, we need another long, heavy rope, probably at least as heavy as her current safety rope, and a bunch of pulleys. She thinks she could run the ropes from high in the redwood tree, tie one end to the fallen tree, and use the mechanical advantage of a block-and-tackle rig to lift the end free of the roof, then swing the loose end clear of the roof. If that didn't cause the other end of the tree (still attached at its base to the parent trunk) to fall free, we could at least lower it to the ground in a controlled fashion. However, we can't use the existing safety rope for this purpose because she needs it for climbing -- she'd be attached to that rope while rigging the rest.

We only have one more day of clear weather -- there's now a chance of rain forecast for tomorrow -- so it looks like we'll not be able to get anything else done with the Roof Tree today. But since we have the roof ropes rigged up and the ladder in place, Lisa hopes to go up there again (once the sun has melted the frost on the roof) and lay down plastic sheeting over the gap in the goop she laid down over the east end of the roof earlier this year. It's too cold to apply more roof goop, but at least stapling down some plastic sheeting may keep rain from entering this section, which it clearly is because the roof still leaked even after all of the other sections at that end were sealed.

Job 1 today was actually to replace the plastic sheeting that covers the scaffolding that shelters the trailer. A portion of it blew off several weeks ago. Aside from the cold, we really couldn't ask for better weather for unfolding a large sheet of plastic and draping it over the frame: not a breath of wind. It was cold, though, and the plastic was slightly reluctant to drape properly. Lisa got up on the roof of the trailer and laid out the plastic while I grabbed it at the ends under her direction. She then came down and stapled it to the boards that run along each side, and then cut off the loose bits.

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The sun sets early, of course, and just before sunset, we called it a day for the outside work. We got a lot done today, although not being able to get anything done on the old house is a bit disappointing to say the least.