Sauna

And when I said I intended to sit on my back porch and embalm my nerve endings in alcohol, I meant to say I intended to put a sledgehammer through my neighbors' sauna.

We have great neighbors - Ron and Connie. Connie is a school teacher and Ron's retired from working a body shop. He's also a handyperson who always has a project or ten that he's working on. He's the guy that can patch together your lawn mower when it rusts out, or is over with his chain sawwhen a deadfall comes down. He's build and rebuilt a lot of things over on their property, including a small sauna.

Now in regards to this sauna, it was built some 37 years ago at their first house, and moved over here when they moved. It was about five foot square and ten foot high, and made of local cedar. But time and rot has taken its toll in places, so they decided to take it down.

And I'm sitting my back porch and I hear the banging, and Connie shouts over "You want to help?" and I say sure and spent the next hour or two helping them reduce the old sauna to kindling. And I had to work to keep up with Ron, who does have a few gray hairs on me. And Ron had built it SOLID all those years ago, with 4x4 cedar posts that were really 4x4 (ask your local wood technician why a 4x4 is not 4x4 anymore). So with must effort, we managed to bring it down without either snagging the power lines above it or crushing Connie's lucifers (well, not crushing them too much, and they will come back).

So all in all I would call it a good afternoon's work, and a great way of blowing off steam. I offered my sledge-wielding services if they wanted to destroy anything else in the future. Because that's just a good-neighbor thing.

More later,