Sunday, October 26, 2008

slowly but surely...

we're getting there!

working just a day a week on the dome makes for slow going. tooooo slow for this impatient person. it is frustrating but i gotta keep it all in perspective. we are getting it close to the point where i can work on it myself - or at least hope i can.

over the weekend we put up the final 2 hexagon pieces. we had left those and went on to the pentagons since we knew those pieces in particular would be odd sized and we were out of full sheets of plywood from which to cut them. tweaking of the shell this way and that way made that particular hexagon more problematic than others. we were right - they were off in size - but now they are up! yay! ed is especially glad to be done with them - it means no more balancing on the extension ladder. at least until we shingle. we also got the top plywood pieces on the last pentagon. not a bad work day - it is looking more and more like a dome.

again, the forecast held a slim chance of rain so we didn't put all the plastic back up. yesterday it was to be in the upper 50s, partly cloudy, 10% chance of rain.
i had been talking of a return to running and yesterday was going to be the day. ed emailed me in the morning and said it was great running weather. i replied and asked him how long it had been since he looked outside (the health room doesn't have any windows) - i told him it was quite windy and looked like it was going to snow. not long after, i stepped outside to ferocious looking skies, rain and HAIL! 10% chance, my ass. the return to running could wait one more day.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

30%

weird post title. i suppose anyone who really knows me won't think much of the weirdness, though.

30%. 30% off would be a good deal - almost 1/3. 30% of the population doesn't sound like so much, although i guess that depends on the issue. 30% wrong on the test wouldn't pass you for a driver's license. 30% black in a color would make it pretty dark. 30% has a great range.


30% chance of rain. in gj, if the forecast was 30% chance of rain, we'd laugh. rain, yeah - bring it on. a friend of mine would always say 4" of rain there would mean 4 raindrops, an inch apart. of course, if we had gotten 4" of rain in gj we would have though the world was going to end! here in the mid-south, it's a whole different story. we've learned that 30% chance of rain means bring anything in you don't want soaked.


one day in the past month the forecast was for a quarter inch of rain - got 4. another time the forecast was for up to a half an inch. got 5. i keep buckets out now to catch the rain just for measurements. forgot to empty one once and found it overflowing - and that was from just 3 or 4 rains.
that's more than the annual average rainfall in gj! it's so different here - green and lush and wet. very wet.

the reason i'm rambling on about this? we worked on the dome this past weekend and removed one of the tarps, thinking to replace it with a different piece of plastic. but the chance of rain was so small, i thought it would be great to let the dome air out - the tarps and plastic make it kind of stuffy inside. chance of rain was 20% on monday. was a nice day. chance of rain was 20% on tuesday, then it
changed to 30%. ok, no time to put the tarps up before taking the cat to the vet. no problem, it's just 30% chance. the score? 30% = 2".

enough blathering about percentages. except to add that we are more than 30% done with the pentagons!

the pentagon plywood pieces go up so much more quickly than the hexagon pieces for several reasons. one, they are smaller and easier to handle. two, the pentagons got the least amount of tweaking when moving the walls in and out and held their shape more. last, but not least, we are not as high up on the ladders and that is a good thing.

it is going to be so cool. it IS cool now.