Tuesday

When I got up this morning, the thermometer read 21 degrees outside. The weather app said the wind chill was 4 degrees.  Our 1.5 heaters made a gallant effort, but lost ground against the howling wind last night.

Today, however, was a sunny day.  We were helped by a little solar gain later on in the day, and were able to turn one heater off for a while.  Working outside, though, was still nearly out of the question.  So we did as much inside work as possible until later in the day, when the sunshine and the protection of the south-facing side of the building allowed some outside work to be done.

Most of the guys continued trimming out the air conditioners while I finished the wiring.  I also added wiring for another air conditioner in the walk-in pantry off the kitchen.   Installing air conditioners in below-freezing weather.  There’s just something not right about that.

It doesn’t take long before tasks start to fall naturally to those who have the talent or experience to do them.  Our former plumber, Daniel, gets all the plumbing-related tasks.  I’m not afraid to stick my hands in a live electrical panel, so I end up doing a lot of the wiring.  We have a former school superintendent, also our group leader, who is doing a fantastic job of herding this group of cats.  He also is a farm-boy, so he is not afraid to get his hands into a project.  Others have worked extensively building their own homes or even just working on lots of projects before this one, so everyone just pitches right in.

One of our women is familiar with QuickBooks so she is helping out in the office.  Others have helped sort paper to be scanned or tossed and there’s always cleaning, LOTS of cleaning that needs to be done.  Today the cook left unexpectedly to handle a family emergency right after lunch so Deb and a couple other women finished cleaning up after lunch.  Try that in an unfamiliar kitchen!

Most of the SOWERs bring their own tools to a project.  Not having any extra space in our RV to do the same, I have been relying on tools foraged from the maintenance shop here at the camp.  In addition to not knowing where anything is, a lot of the time the tool I need either doesn’t exist or is not in its place, so I end up borrowing another SOWER’s tools. So I spent a lot of time going back and forth on the golf cart to obtain tools or supplies.  And in this weather, any motion just increases the wind chill.  I’ll have to think about ways to carry my own tools along...

The women continued on the benches. This job is almost done, so maybe there will be some pickleball in our future.

Lunch time has been our big meal of the day.  Today, while we were eating our pot roast, Rob had us play a game of frozen trivia.  Only a few of the questions were from the movie, but that made all the difference for the kids that were eating with us. We didn’t stand a chance. The prize was some un-frozen ice (a bottle of water).  

After finishing up for the day, I went back to the Ace Hardware store and returned the heater I bought yesterday.  The manager tried it out and agreed that a heater that runs for about a minute and then shuts off is probably defective.  I got my money back.  We’ll just burn a little extra propane tonight.

Tonight is the last night of the cold snap.  21 degrees predicted, but then we’re all the way up to 49 tomorrow, and 66 the next day.  That will be a welcome change.