People at Work on Our Street

They started at 7am, but worked efficiently and were finished with the driveway next door. The workers are the same ones who leveled and graded the field behind their house and opposite ours, and they are a friendly group who make much of Spike.

The old driveway was destroyed by fire and a lot of heavy trucks. It is impossible to imagine the heat of that fire until one hears the stories of embers carried by high winds, melted decks and vaporized rocks. I chose this picture because it shows the relative positions of our house at the top of our driveway and theirs which is next to the roller at the top of theirs. Our fire garden is behind the fence with the stars on it.

We're looking forward to having Janet and her husband Paul back in the neighborhood. 

I was right in thinking that there would be more noise on the other side when Bart and Renee decamped with their RV. It seems that everything involved in building that house takes five times longer and a lot more intrusively noisy because of its location. Painting it requires a cherry picker/crane with a platform on it for lifting everything from building supplies to people up three flights to access the part of the house that is over the garage. Although the vehicle itself doesn't move much, it beeps every time it lifts or lowers anything. It seems to have a far louder beeper than any of the myriad other ones around and no obvious need for it to beep at all. My tolerance was severely strained when they began this morning at 7am. Having not swept very well last night I was hoping to sleep in a bit, but it was not to be.

My grumpiness wasn't aided by the fact that every road on our main route over the Fountaingrove Parkway to Kathy's house was blocked by flag people backed up and stopped traffic and no way to turn around and take a different route once we realized that the long line of cars in front of us was not moving. At all. We waited ten minutes, then were motioned ahead only to be stopped again. I read somewhere that they were going to be replanting the median strip. The uphill lane on the other side seemed to be completely blocked by parked trucks, seemingly excess to requirements, but there was no sign of anybody doing anything except for the flagger holding up his stop sign. 

I am finally ready to say that I am thoroughly sick of construction and disruption. It is now 5:30, pitch dark outside and I can see a line of some kind of heavy construction vehicles parked up on Los Alamos Rd, red and yellow lights flashing and one bright floodlight shining down into our bedroom.

What fresh hell is this?