hole digging

There are two four-foot-deep holes in front of the deck-- dug by the intrepid Juan, if I remember correctly. The holes will be filled with concrete; posts will be added, and the result will be a place on which to pose the new deck stairs. Alas, the holes apparently weren't spaced quite right; Mr. Jeong's measurements were a few inches off. Something had to be done.

Now as you know, you can't grab a hole and move it the way you'd move a garbage can, but you can widen one side of it until you've got what you need. That's what Dad and I did this morning using a variety of equipment-- items with names I don't even know. One tool was a simple shovel. Another was a menacing iron bar about six feet long; it had a hexagonal cross-section, and one end was pointed like a spear while the other was flattened out like a wedge or chisel. A third tool (if my Google search is correct, it's called a post hole digger) looks like a pair of giant mutant chopsticks with duck-billed ends for gouging out cylindrical chunks of earth.

I used all three tools to widen a hole today, and came away with a great appreciation for what those dudes and dudettes on the road and at the constructions sites are doing. They might not all look like the lads and lasses on Diet Coke commercials, but I'd bet real money they've got rock-hard deltoids and trapezius muscles, and can rip your head off without much effort. Even as I type this, I'm feeling the burn of this morning's work in my unconditioned shoulders.

Today's work has been beneficial, though; along with cutting back on meals, I need to keep expending calories. I've gained back five pounds since arriving home, which isn't good news. Truth be told, I'd like to be out walking every day, but renovation-related duties here keep me pretty much bound to the house. Once all this settles down-- probably by the first week of December, as Mr. Jeong's new contract begins then-- we'll be back to more normal blogging. Hang in there. Enjoy the moment. Contemplate the Korean Zen notion of man haeng, the "ten thousand practices." Everything you do, every moment, is practice, from prayer to nose-picking to hole-digging.

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