Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   spray foam ought to be banned
Monday, April 14 2008
The day was cool but mostly sunny, and I spent most of it working on a project to protect the styrofoam on the back of my homebrew solar panel with quarter inch particleboard. I did this with three sheets of the stuff, and with their smallest dimensions (aside from their quarter inch thickness) being four feet, they were the first objects destined for the solar deck that wouldn't fit through the laboratory's north window. I've raised things from the ground before, particularly long pieces of lumber, but this was the first time that I absolutely had to. (Even the pre-assembled flat plate collector had fit through that window.) So I rigged a simple system of rope and lumber to allow me to hoist the sheets up from the ground, a procedure complicated by winds. (I've noticed that winds only blow when I'm trying to move large flat objects or light a match; wind would be useless as a source of energy.)
Before I screwed each panel in place over the styrofoam, I scraped away places where spray foam had bubbled out in masses. I also removed the old screws (and, more recycleably, the washers) holding the styrofoam in place, since they would no longer be necessary and might get in the way. Finally, I squirted fresh new spray foam into any holes or gaps I was about to cover and then screwed the panel in place. It was messy work; the spray foam glurped out of the holes and fell on the deck, where I inevitably stepped in it and tracked it around. It also glurped directly onto me, getting on my face, in my hair, and on a sweatshirt that Ray had given me (after growing too plump to wear it himself). It also got all over my hands and then onto my tools. Spray foam ought to be banned, but it's so fucking useful! (I don't know how people lived in stone houses back in the 1600s without it.)
This evening Gretchen made another one of her delicious bean-and-tortilla bakes. And then we sat around watching a couple episodes of My Name is Earl, one of the funniest (and - strangely - uplifting) shows on teevee. (Hats off to Nathan VanHooser, who told us about it.) These days it makes the Simpsons look like the Drew Carey Show.


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