Today, Liz suited up and put in some time in the front office. I’m still unable to really assist, so this was all her. She hauled a ton of material out, and set about getting the room ready for drywallers.
Today, Liz went down to the basement and spent some time reviewing/revisiting the work she’d done to prep for our trim. She mixed up newer variations, and was working on dialing in the formula for the shellac/stain for our overall trim.
I think this move is meaningful because it’s a sign of trust. And Liz is always over the moon, when it happens. But I also think it’s an indicator of how fearless Cloudy is – she reminds us a lot of Phineas, in that way.
Even with her just having one eye, you can see that she is scoping out the full length and breadth of her domain.
One challenge: in some spots, we had some seriously large roots that had grown over the concrete. So we had to break out the sawzall and cut through a lot of material, to make space for the concrete to come out.
There was this special moment, where Cloudy flopped right next to Hugo. It’s always a little dicey when they get this close, because anything could happen – and things could get violent/aggressive very quickly. But it worked out well.
After the doc arrived, we talked about things and she ended up prescribing me some steroids for the inflammation (some kind of pack).
As I got up to leave, I struggled a bit to stand up from the chair. On seeing how much I was struggling, she said that she was going to increase the dosage.
During one of the slower moments, near the end – I took some photos. We haven’t been in the classroom itself much, as the last classes have had us out on the main floor with our various pieces.
Here though, we ended class by gluing up our tops and lower shelves.
Our approach involved getting a bottle jack under a few 2x4s, screwed into the side of the post. We balanced things on a 2×6 board, that was sitting on a series of 2×4 blocks.
Rather than repair things, we assessed and decided we were going to tear the whole thing down and start over. And we had the (good? bad?) idea to do the removal and new fence by ourselves. And lucky you, you get to watch.
First class tonight, for another session at the Chicago School of Woodworking. We arrived a bit late, and hurriedly got all our materials into the classroom while the rest of the students were out on the floor.
Paused to take this photo, which had a lot of nice light coming in the windows.
Doing a bit of math, trying to figure out what lengths to cut so that we each had enough… but that each piece would also fit in our car.
We set up a separate area, which was different from both of their current areas. The idea is to have some kind of “neutral ground” that doesn’t technically belong to either of them, so that there’s less of a chance of any territorial behavior.
Bit of a staredown in this photo. Blocks of wood are to prevent them from pushing the gates together, and getting too close.
A relaxing, laid back night out to celebrate my birthday tonight. First up – stopping in for drinks at Kumiko.
A quick bunny bonding primer: if there is some interest, that’s a good sign. If there’s a really strong interest, there’s the potential for strong reactions. If two bunnies get into a fight, it can get nasty (and dangerous) quite quickly. So the screen is to help provide a bit of a barrier.
If the bunnies are indifferent or mostly ignoring one another, that’s actually a good sign.