Saturday, August 25, 2007
To be fair, there is some legitimate debate about which tyrant was the worst of the lot. Specifically, there are some reputable historians who believe Josef Stalin was the worst of the lot, and others who believe (mainly on the basis of recently revealed evidence) that Mao Tse Tung was the one. On the basis of what I have personally read, I'd say the preponderance of the evidence would give Mao the nod.
George W. Bush (I knew someone would vote for him!) doesn't even place in the top 100 on this scale.
I expected many more people to vote for Adolf Hitler, based on his notoriety – my readers are apparently better informed than most Americans…
Ready for the final inspection! The inspector is scheduled to visit on Monday morning, and with any luck at all, we'll pass the inspection and pour concrete on Monday. Woo hoo!
The photo at right was the last one I took today, after spending most of the day working with the crew. I accidentally caught a piece of wood in mid-air – someone below launched the wood up just as I snapped this. What I was really trying to capture was the two “mats” of rebar up on the roof. There's an amazing amount of structural steel up there, waiting to be covered in concrete.
Today, for some reason I never did figure out, David decided to bring most of his family along: his wife, his daughter Alicia, and three of his five boys: David Jr., Eduardo, and Alfredo. Except for Alicia, all of them worked at least part of the day, even if it was just being a gopher. They all work together very well, with the kind of teasing and ribbing you'd expect from a team very comfortable working with each other. Everybody was always willing and ready to pitch in, and everybody seems to know how to do a great many things…
Yesterday they finished putting the extra shoring on the interior part of the form. It looks very sturdy now!
A neighbor and friend, Dick F. (who has lots of concrete experience) came over to show David and the rest of the crew a better way to lift the two rebar mats up to the correct height above the bottom of the form. There was a little friction at first – I think David was probably a little put out by the idea of someone telling him what to do – but he seemed to realize quickly that he might be able to learn something useful from Dick. In the end, they supported the rebar in exactly the way Dick recommended, and it looks very good to me. There's one small area where I think the top mat is a little too close to the bottom mat, but that's easily fixed if the inspector believes its a problem.
The rest of these photos show scenes from yesterday's and today's work.
To be fair, there is some legitimate debate about which tyrant was the worst of the lot. Specifically, there are some reputable historians who believe Josef Stalin was the worst of the lot, and others who believe (mainly on the basis of recently revealed evidence) that Mao Tse Tung was the one. On the basis of what I have personally read, I'd say the preponderance of the evidence would give Mao the nod. 
