Closet Extremist

Allright Already!

So...It seems that somebody is getting impatient to hear about how the damn "rock thing" worked out. Well...my day started out with a quick (120 mile) run down to Chattanooga in order to open up one of the freight elevator's that I installed down at the museum. It seems that there was a small water leak in the pit. They had pumped it out like seven times or so over the last few months, so today they decided to try and stop it with a bunch of concrete sealant. After I got the elevator up to the upper level and the bottom doors open, I got to sit around for most of the day. I HATE just sitting around.

Ford was with the driller today, so I called him at around 11:00 this morning. The driller had only just arrived, so I wished them luck.

Last week, my tool-bags were sitting in the back of Ford's pickup when a tremendous deluge came down from the heavens. There was enough wood laying around for me to build a boat, but I was afraid tthat I'd be unable to round up all the animal's before the flood came. I'm here to tell you that it was flat raining. Needless to say, my tools got a drenching. We're talking about better than $1000 worth of them stuffed into two bags. I was upset. Since I hadn't had the chance to get to them, there were a few items that were starting to rust, so I decided to use the downtime to clean them up and oil them. My claw-hammer was in particularly bad shape, so I got out a piece of emory-cloth and used it to scrape off the oxidation. Now I can tell people that I spent all day "Polishing my hammer".

Oh? The Rock? I'd nearly forgotten. I tried to call Ford around 3:45 this afternoon, but I was unable to reach him. After I got to the house this evening (around 5:30) I called him again, and got through. The concrete had set up enough that they could start drilling, so they had commenced. After they got down to the rock, things appeared to be going well. The concrete held the bit over the rock, and they had made some good progress. After they pulled the hammer out of the hole, they dropped a plumb-bob down to see how things went. Through the rock, the bit walked off three inches laterally in three feet of vertical travel. Dammit!

The phones were being burnt up again to see what could be done about it. My boss, the driller, and the owner of the drilling company, were in a conference call to figure out what needed to happen. They came to the consensus that they needed to core drill that hard ass piece of granite. Tomorrow, they'll drill out three or four slugs all the way through that cussed thing. After that, it should be weak enough to drop the big hammer back down on it and bust it to shards. At this rate, we may even have the hole ready by the time the elevator's supposed to be completed. This (particular) job is FUBAR.