Our new next door neighbors, Vincent, Judith, and their son Vincent will move into their home in about a year

They are doing significant renovations to the acre-plus yard and the house. i have watched with interest and have established a good relationship with the site managers, bulldozer and back hoe drivers, and the other workers of which there many: hard working men. There are no accountants back there, no finance folks, no insurers, not computer wizards, just hard workers. It is fun to watch. i do.

Of particular interest to me in the past few days have been the stone masons (i guess they are still called that). They are putting a facade of stone on the chimneys and perhaps the entire exterior. It looks as though it will be beautiful when finished. It also requires unique hard work and art. The scaffold rises about forty feet to the top of the chimney. The stone cutting saw sits on the top rung of the scaffold. The worker hauls up the stone pieces in a bucket with a pulley. He measures and cuts the stones to fit closely together, fits them, and then uses mortar to glue them in place. It is fascinating.

i became more and more enamored with the requirements to do it right and the rigorous physical requirements to get it done.

Then around 10:00 a.m. this morning, i went to the kitchen to clean out my coffee French press. As i began to rinse it out, i looked toward the chimney. There, this hard working mason was taking his mid-morning break. i kept fooling around in the kitchen as i watched him eat at least three tamales. Then after finishing his break meal (snack?). He laid out on the fourth level slats of the scaffold and took a half-hour nap.

So much for hard work.