10,000 pounds of love

i spent all of saturday morning and most of the afternoon working harder than i can ever recall working. the old guy needed help with the removal of a cement slab in his backyard. the cement slab was reportedly assisting water in getting into the basement. a terrible crime. the cement slab was not available to comment.

so the plan was to use a jackhammer and break up the cement. To then remove it via a rented trailer and finally to drink a beer or two in contented weariness and move on with our lives. the players include myself, the old guy and the poor guy that my sister married. the poor guy is actually a great guy but also gets stuck helping with these monstrous endeavors because he's tough and handy.

so we broke up the concrete with the jackhammer. which, if you haven't tried it, is a great way to kill a few hours and an even better way to destroy every muscle in your forearms. it hurts to hold a pen today. thank you jackhammer for this fantastic new realm of pain.

unfortunately the concrete was 8 inches thick instead of the standard 3-4 inches. and it was reinforced by wire. so we had to use the jackhammer, then a prybar to further separate the chunks, then snip the wires that were holding them together. and then, as a reward, we got to pick up the chunks and throw them into the trailer.

in total we dropped off just short of ten thousand pounds of concrete at the dump. so what makes this all okay? the old guy. harmon tends to have issues with respect for most individuals, but not with him. the sad part is, even if i busted my ass helping him with projects like this every day for the next three years we'd still be a long way from even on the ol' favor scale. dad's are tough to keep up with that way.