Bag 2

Bag 1 started back in March.
http://dougintology.blogspot.com/2007/03/knock-down-this-wall.html

I still haven't replaced that cart. I guess I don't need to.
The temperature dropped low enough for me to go push mortar earlier today. I finished off the last of the first bag in one tray full. Looks like I have room for 3-4 more trays before I have to start drilling again.

For this expedition I used my Segway. I rode to HomeDepot, hopped off, and pushed it in the front door. There were some odd looks but nobody could actually find a reason to object so I went on. Way back in the store was a nearly empty pallet of type S mortar. The first two bags had holes in them that left me and the Segway covered in gray dust. I threw them aside - as much as I can throw and eighty pound bag of shifting sand - and got one of the intact bags off the bottom. I set it where my right leg would go and headed for a register.

Someone stopped me an asks how much I paid for that. "Oh, about five bucks." which showed my mind was not on my Segway. Ask me that on the way home from work and I answer more reasonably. Anyway, I had to give my prepared speech on Segways.
He asked me how I was getting home so I demonstrated the peg leg technique I typically use.

At the register she spend five seconds looking for the barcode on the Segway before figuring out that it was the mortar I was buying.

Out front a loud beeping reminded me I needed to start the Segway before putting the mortar on. That required taking it off and reforming it into a skinny, tall bag instead of a pear shaped bag. This was so that it would sit on the button my foot is supposed to press and trick the machine into thinking I was standing there.

I started off with my right knee on the bag. That was good until the end of the parking lot. The bag deformed and the contents shifted so I was now in a painful position. So I put my right foot on the bag and adopted the dramatic "Land HO!" posture. It worked but by the time I got home my left ankle was killing me. But the struggle from last time was enough less that I still had the strength to heft this bag upstairs instead of dumping it in the middle of the kitchen for five months.

Mine is hardly the only construction in the area. At the end of the block a house is going up. A few houses down someone is gutting their place. By the alley the wall on the end is coming out and being rebuilt for much the same reason I'm working on mine. The mortar is shot and the wall was bulging out. The means there's three massive dumpsters along my street.

1,372mi on this Segway since buying it at Christmas.