Full Steam Ahead

This is an air compressor.

It runs this:

That is an "air nailer." It's so satisfying to use that this was heard today: "That felt so good I think this board needs eight more nails." (It didn't, by the way.)

And yesterday, this new Amazing Machine was so cool to use that this other one had to be added to the selection of options.

If you live in the country, and your buildings aren't so much a cluster of buildings as a scattering of them, there's a huge problem with the idea of "a garage" or "a workshop." Those are code words for more specific ideas - such as, "across the road," and "not here where I need it right now and it's a real pain in the butt to clear out a truck and go get the thing."

Hence, the nearly palpable glee in the second picture. See what he's doing? He collapsed the table because it's made to do that, and he can roll the new table saw back to the garage, and roll it back out into the yard again when he's ready to use it. He can roll it to the other side of the house. He can roll it to a different building. He is having a hard time restraining himself from rolling it all over the yard and driveway just for fun!

Today's task involves sawdust, and old, decomposing cellulose insulation, and mouse and fly and stinging insect droppings, and bits of clipped pieces of wires, all trying as hard as they can to get into my bedroom because today (happy happy day!) is the Day of the New Windows and Sensible Plug-ins. When fall closes in this year, and I wish to make my newly cozy room more light with lights, I'll use an electrical outlet that it nearer the floor than the ceiling, and when winter gets here, I'll have two brand new windows that are not winter condos for flies, do not actually funnel cold air from the outdoors and directly onto my bed, and can be opened just a crack if I want to have some fresh air.

I know this is nothing compared to that, but I really do have some new sympathy for great-grandma. The family lore is that she spent one winter, and one winter only in the "Indian shack" (with I don't know how many of the six children) -- and then was built the "woodshed" (that's what the building became), and that building is still as tight as a drum, 105 years later.