This morning I got to be a mason's assistant. I followed Walt around as he did repairs on the concrete block foundation of a Habitat house we're renovating. I learned a lot, which is good because now I can put it to use fixing the tuck pointing on our house. First we cleaned out the damaged joints w/a hammer and claw, which was, wow, hard on the hands, but still kind of satisfying. Then we washed down the joints. Walt mixed the cement, sand and water, and filled the joints w/a trowel and pointer. Then he tooled them. I just sort of stood around and handed him things, but it was still pretty fun. He told me where to get some buff-colored masonry mortar to fix our limestone wall, and what tools to get. Kind of neat, hands on experience.

In the afternoon, I helped paint the tool shed, so once again I'm covered with white primer. I had just finally gotten the last of the spots off from two weeks ago.

In mostly un-related news, I totally shredded the bottom of my foot when I got home this afternoon. I'm not telling anyone how I did it, because it will make me look like a huge, big dork, but damn, how unlucky can I get? And there I was, standing on one foot in the bathroom, trying not to drip blood on anything while I was looking for some gauze, and I go and lose my balance. I reached out and grabbed the closest thing, and ended up pulling a shelf out of the medicine cabinet. Not good timing, things falling everywhere; I did find the tube of analgesic my mom gave me for the pain in my hands amongst all the things on the floor, though, so I guess some good can come from my repeated acts of idiocy.