git along, li'l doggie!

the out of square foundation created problems that we didn't foresee. since we had to tweak with angles of the riser walls, move them in or out from the edge of the edge of foundation, the load of the dome shell made the riser walls go out of plumb. oooh - not good. we called a structural engineer who suggested using come-alongs. come-alongs, hmmm... new one to us. after i found out more about a come-along i realized i knew what one is, just didn't know the name. i just kept thinking of the chorus of old cowboy song, "the last round-up." git along, li'l doggie, git along, git along.

why i even know that song is beyond me.

we know come-alongs quite well now. used 4 of them to get our riser walls in plumb. and then used one to pull a hexagon that was needing to get moved a bit, and then also a pentagon that got out of whack. once we realized how they could be used, they turned out to be great tools. my chorus is now "come along, li'l doggie, come along."

keeping the dome dry has proven to be another challenge. how do you put tarps over that, you ask? well, using a trick i saw the arborist use, ed threw a line with weights over the dome, attached a rope to that and then pulled the tarps up, overlapping at the top. it would have been so much easier had we one large tarp but we managed. we are quite anxious to get the shell shingled, though, so we don't have to mess with the tarps. because of one thing or another, we've had to do the tarping at least 4 times.

once was in the middle of the night. i had the (not-so) bright idea to duct tape the two overlapping tarps together and use them as one before we left for vacation. it would have worked out well had the tape held but, alas, it did not, as we found out when we got home from denver at 10:45pm. with heavy rain forecast the next day, we spent a few hours with flashlights in the middle of the night putting the tarps back on.