The Cementing (concreting?) Sexytary face reveal.

 This is what I have to deal with every day at work.  

Scrap metal rebar cause its cheaper than sellin for scrap and buying actual rebar.  
1 part cement, 2 parts sand, 3 parts gravel.  Water and a bit of dish soap for plasticizer.

When it rains it pours (shit)

The office girl has been out this past week dealing with some personal business. That meant I’ve had to go through the business inbox myself — and we’re talking hundreds of messages coming in every month.

I discovered two things pretty quickly. First, she hasn’t been following up on messages and takes forever to reply. Not sure what she’s been doing, but she isn’t getting back to people ASAP or really engaging with customers the way she should be lately.

Second, several customers have had urgent service issues that never got addressed. Specifically, we shipped orders out and the freight company still hasn’t delivered them.

I followed up with the shipping company. The employee told me the shipments weren’t delivered, they still have them, and then he added that he’s quitting the company.

I spent the whole morning making legal threats, gathering evidence, and sorting through the paperwork. I’m not legally liable, but it’s still a bad situation to be stuck in. The shipping company has the items, and I’ve got the chat logs, pictures, and signed waybills to back everything up. Lots of excuses — none of them valid for taking two months to deliver a couple of pallets.

It’s the kind of mess that shouldn’t happen, and it’s left me dealing with frustrated customers who just want what they already paid for.

Meanwhile, on this rainy afternoon, we have no machinery orders to build. (See above.)

I put the two welder guys to work building concrete slab forms, gathering all the scrap steel I’ve accumulated over the last few years for rebar, and pouring an 8x10-foot slab four inches deep. I have a spare cement mixer from a previous experiment that will be used for the task.

I still lack running water — just occasional barrels filled up via garden hose and a meter from the landlord. However, it is raining, and the gutter in front of the shop has a foot of running water in it, so that shall work.

I lack the funds to do the entire shop, and I can’t put large sections of the shop out of service, so I will have them do it one section at a time as budget and time allow. The first slab will be to place the plastic extrusion machine on. The next slab will be for the shredder.

Excess concrete will be put in sandbags and placed in the increasingly large ditch eroding in the driveway. I have lost one lane on the driveway due to the rain. The sandbags are not waterproof, but should be sufficient to allow for curing despite the running water. update Sand concrete and cement bought. 2 cubic meters comes out to a bit less than a hundred bucks. Which translates to a slab 8x20 feet 4 inches thick. Ready for pour, but materials wont arrive until tomorrow. Also made this today. 300 some odd dollars of plastic lumber.

The rain if anything has gotten even more.

 Sat night to  Monday, my phone was doing the emercency alert thing every few hours as yet another wave of rain came.  

We talking firehose like rain.  Heavy wind etc.  It is like a non stop typhoon... Or the exaggerated rain in Forrest Gump.

The chickens survived miraciously.  Although the coop is quite muddy.  Birds sitting on upturned plant pots.  I am sure they are hungry.  They devioured all the feed ASAP, and want more.  Because they ate the feeder empty yesterday.  

I have switched to the cheaper feed that is mostly wheat berries.  They seem to like it, and they can clean it out of the cook vs the crumbles that just get ground into the mud.  Plus the wheat if it is missed will sprout and they can eat it that way.  

3 workers are MIA today because of the weather. 

AOC sends her best:

update.  Coop now covered in tarp.  Birds fed.  Pecking and shitting away.  

Plastic lumber is being made despite the rain.  Got lumber orders to at least cover payroll this week.

I been having bouts of sideways rain today.