I wasn’t sure how much the Big, Scary Foundation Project would affect my blogging. Unfortunately — for the next week or so, at least — it’s going to affect it a lot. After the many serious problems we uncovered today I’m going to be totally preoccupied with the safety and success of every step we take. I trust the Wandering Monk and his smarts, but we’re both in territory where we’ve never gone before. I won’t be thinking about much else besides how to get past that dreadful mess. And I won’t be surfing the ‘Net or participating in many…
2 CommentsMonth: May 2017
So. This morning we went outside to tear away siding and general rubble at the base of the house to get an idea how bad the beams and joists of the bedroom floor were. The Wandering Monk was hammering and prying away and the bottom of the west wall. I was hammering and prying away at the bottom of the north wall. This wasn’t a particularly tough job because … well, there wasn’t much solid wood to pry at. That’s the north-wall foundation beam, such as it is, bending, cracking, and diving deep into the earth. Those are floor joists…
22 Comments… it begins with tearing out the ceilings. Because once this monster project is done, I want only building, creating type work to remain in the bedroom. No more giant trash heaps. So the Monk has been tearing out the old, water-damaged fiber ceiling. First, down came the 12×12″ tiles. He pried. I scurried at the bottom of the ladder, bagging up the remains. Then he went back for a second pass, prying off the larger sheets of fiber that were behind the tiles. These sheets were covered with paper that had become brittle and fragile over the decades. Messy…
11 CommentsKilling time while waiting for The Wandering Monk to arrive and begin the foundation project, I found something absolutely fascinating. Johatsu. A Japanese word meaning “evaporated people.” Not dead. Not suspiciously missing. But people who’ve chosen to disappear out of their existing identities into new, perhaps off-grid ones. A French couple have been tracking this phenomenon for years and now have published a book: The Vanished: The “evaporated people” of Japan in Stories and Photographs. PRI has done a story on the johatsu and the French pair who became obsessed with them, as has Business Insider. Oddly, it turns out…
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