dawg tahrd

Dog-tired after a long day's work. According to my brother David, I stink. We were in the car just a few minutes ago, driving around town in search of a McDonald's triple-thick chocolate shake, and my stench must have been too much for David, who doesn't normally complain about such things.

Today, we finished up the deck's foundation and Dad put in an online request for another inspection by the county tomorrow-- our eighth. We can't install the actual deck until this inspection has been passed; the final deck inspection won't happen until everything is ready to be inspected.

Finishing up the deck involved digging a deeper trench under the stairs to allow more concrete to be poured and to set beneath them. We had to nail on more braces, and also had to fill in the huge holes into which the support posts for the deck stairs had been driven. Those holes had already received their dosage of concrete, so they needed to be filled with earth, which in turn needed to be tamped down.

Tamping loose earth down into a large hole is hard work, as I think I mentioned in one of my previous posts. Today's labor involved the use of a 2x4; to fill the hole, we had to recover a lot of the earth we had shoveled against the sides of the new dining room (this was dirt from the twelve other holes that had been dug by Juan, et al.). Recovery wasn't easy because that entire area is now covered by the deck-to-be; maneuvering between those joists and shoveling out the dirt is a task for the long-legged. Dad eventually had enough and dug a separate hole in the back yard from which to gather enough earth to fill the two newest post holes.

I had to break off from work to make ddeok-bokgi for the crew. Mom had made mieok-guk for everyone; I'm not sure why we chose to offer two full-scale dishes for lunch; my dish lost out, with only yours truly eating the ddeok-bokgi at lunchtime; everyone else said they were too full. The crew didn't get to try my dish until the end of their work day, i.e., around 6PM, at which time they proclaimed my attempt at Chongno-style ddeok-bokgi "very good."

After the crew had gone, we somehow mustered the energy to make dinner. In our continuing quest to use up leftovers, we made spaghetti by using three pounds of meat (about 1.5 pounds each of ground beef and pork sausage), some leftover button mushrooms, and two bottles of Ragu spaghetti sauce. Our pantry yielded up enough pasta for several servings, and thus did we further dent our supplies.

There's a good chance that, at some point in the near future, the parents are going to end up either tenting it, like I am, or staying at a friend's house for a night for two. The dreaded sanding day is approaching; Mom remains hopeful that she and Dad will be able to remain in the house. Me, I'm betting they're going to get kicked out: the ambient dust particles will prove too dangerous.

Maqz, my brother Sean's dog, didn't enjoy today. The noise, the smells, the unfamiliar people... even though the work crew was nice to Maqz, the poor dog was obviously agitated. Mom, the designated pamperer, took as much care of the twitchy chihuahua as she could, but even that wasn't enough to calm Maqz down. At the end of the day, the boshintang jokes started up again, and Juan told me that they sometimes eat dog in Guatemala, too-- only they eat it raw. Why? Because the dog's meat tastes best right after you kill it, he said. And I thought I was brave for having tried boshintang!

Maqz can relax a bit now; the day is over. We start up again, bright and early, around 6:30 or 7AM.


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