Me and my aching back

So, something of a mixed bag of results this weekend. On one hand, the framing continues, and the outside is coming together nicely, but on the other, well, that's why I have a feature called the Injury Report, isn't it?

First up, the War Department managed to find a project that not only makes for a good picture (well, the best picture my crappy-ass camera can manage), but makes for a better picture than MY project! I hope this doesn't start a trend. After all, if I'm going to be writing all the posts, I want all the glory. (True story: when I sat down to post this, I asked Amy, "How come I have to write all the posts?" Her response, "Because you like that shit." So there you have it.)

While I toiled in the basement putting up studs and using the hammer drill and hurting myself, Amy decided to take advantage of some mild, sunny October weather to put the fence back together. She had saved most of the uprights when we took the fence down, so it was just a matter of cutting a couple of two-by-fours to the right length (which I, having ready access to the chop saw, did for her), and reattaching the boards.



Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Of course, what you can't tell from that angle is that the replaced section is all nice and straight, and the other half of the fence is all crazy tilted and askew, making for a rather odd view when looked at from the side. But that's a job for another day...

As mentioned, I was down in the basement doing some building of my own. The first few studs - the last ones on the Dread Wall of Pink - went up pretty quickly, with only a little fiddling around the electrical panel:



After some consulting and brainstorming with the War Department, I laid down the footers that will form the back wall of the closet:



Amazingly enough, the tapcons went in for all seven of those holes as smooth as you please. The only problem was when I went to stand up afterward...

The Injury Report

• The muscles in my lower back have siezed up right proper like. It hurts like a son-of-a-bitch when I try and lift anything (like a cat or a piece of two-by-four), and has improved only slightly since yesterday afternoon when it first happened. As you can well imagine, this has somewhat limited my usefulness today. Okay, it's completely limited my usefulness today.

That's it for me. I'm going to go lie down again. Gingerly.