Constructing in the rain

For today's Motown Mission the group split in two. I joined the construction crew of 7 youth and 3 adults. At a nearby house the crew pulled out a small rotting back porch (pretty much done by the time I got there). A few started laying the joists for the porch while the rest started building sections of a railing to surround the adjacent deck. There was a light rain for most of the morning, but it wasn't a problem because of the large tree overhanging the deck. But there were storms in the forecast, so I frequently asked another adult to use his phone to check weather maps. At about 11:00 the rain got a bit stronger, so we dashed (by car) to the church a block away where we had an early lunch. The part of the team from the garden was already at the church.

The rain lessened by 12:15. The garden team decided to do an indoor project for the afternoon. We went back to the house. We got the frames for the railing done in short order. The slats will come later. We also got the joists done and started laying the deck boards. The rain had stopped and the sun was shining. Things were looking good. Then the last of the power tool batteries gave out. So at 3:00 we declared the work day was over.

The teen leading the project is the son of a home builder. He's apparently worked for his father a lot.

That early end of work meant I had time this afternoon and evening to resolve a few issues with the new computer. The big one: I got the adapter so the second screen is now working! On the vertical screen I can expand windows to see up to a page and a half of a document. With the two together I can have three documents open without them overlapping. I haven't tried displaying music on the vertical screen because I haven't loaded my music program yet.

I went exploring on the Microsoft help forum for the new email program. Yes, it had loaded all my email messages from the previous computer. How was I to know I had to type “ctrl-y” to see all of the folders? Now that I know that I can see each of my three attempts to load was successful so I have 3 sets of emails. I also set up the old computer (on the floor in the kitchen where there is room) to extract the address book in a format the new system understands. Strange that a few addresses showed up on the new system without names prompting another look at the old one.