This week, the common phrase “What’s up?” is taking on a whole new significance at our little abode. What’s up is work on the roof.
Friday we had a call from the roofing company we’d contracted with when our roof suffered wind damage back in March. For various reasons, including changes to building codes, a complete re-roof was deemed necessary. This was originally scheduled for May, then changed to June when the roofing company had weather delays. Then shifted again to early July because of more weather delays. (Remember all that hail?)
Anyhow, Friday’s call was to let us know that they’d had a delay with another job. If we could be available, they could start our re-roof on Monday.
This shift was our third, but at least it was back in the direction of getting the job done. Monday began with roofers overhead at just after 7:00 a.m. The cats migrated to hiding, with Mei-Ling and Roary in the bedroom closet and Persephone under the bedspread.
Background soundtrack also included predictions of rain…. Happily, we didn’t get any while they were working, but we did get high winds. The roofing foreman told Jim that being hit in the face by a windblown shingle feels like getting slapped with sandpaper.
The reroofing won’t be the end of work up atop the house. When Jim went aloft to set up the swamp cooler (aka evaporative cooler) on Wednesday, he saw what he thought was a leak near a drain plug. We called in the experts (a company we absolutely trust), and received the unwelcome news that we need a whole new unit. This should go into place on Friday.
Last week, I finished up my work on SK5 (my latest Star Kingdom collaboration with David Weber). I turned it over to him, and the very next day the mail brought the page proofs for my forthcoming solo novel, House of Rough Diamonds, the third Over Where novel, sequel to Library of the Sapphire Wind and Aurora Borealis Bridge.
So, I’ll be reviewing those while overhead mariachi music plays and hard-working roofers and plumbers thump about in the erratic dances of their trade.