9/30-10/2/03 I went up to the property for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

I stopped at Priscilla's on the way up and I stopped at Vera's. Vera let me take a bunch of stuff she considered junk. This included a hydraulic rock cutter, three heavy house jacks, two adjustable legs for the scaffold frames I bought from her earlier, some sawhorses, boards, wire, pipes, sheet metal, nuts and bolts, and odds and ends. Some of it will undoubtedly be useful to me and Vera was delighted to get rid of it.

I arrived at the property at 1:10. It was a pleasant 75 degrees, there was no frog in the can, and there was no work done on backfilling the trench. Tim has not returned any of the phone messages I left for him regarding his plan to complete his end of the bargain.

After moving in, I carried the things I got from Vera up to the building and also a bundle of 1x2s I had bought. It was awkward carrying those things up the make-shift trail up the cliff and hopping across the open trench in the roadway. But I did it. It took the rest of the afternoon. Of course, I stopped to feed the chipmunks and gray jays during the process.

In the evening, Earl called and we talked for about an hour. He cautioned me about trusting Tim too far. He also told me that it is very common for builders to have to shim window openings in order to true them up. That made me feel better about my openings.

On Wednesday I shimmed the remaining window opening out 1/4 inch at one corner and shimmed the bottom up 1/4 inch on one end. After what Earl said, I didn't feel so bad about having to do this.

Next, I rigged up to lift the last window into place - the lower right big window. I got the window lifted about 5 feet off the ground when Dave, the highway maintenance guy, stopped by to talk about harvesting some of my trees for firewood. He said he would stop by after work to go into the woods with me to look at trees and make a plan. By the time he left, it was lunch time.

After lunch, I finished lifting the window and I installed it. It was a great feeling to get that last window installed without breaking any of them. There was no longer any doubt in my mind that I could install all of them by myself. It was done.

Since the next steps were to remove the rigging, install the trim boards, and remove the scaffolding, I figured this was the ideal time to wash the outsides of the windows. The scaffolding probably wouldn't be in place again for a long time, and it seemed that it would be better to wash them before the trim was installed rather than afterwards. So, I got a bucket of soapy water, a squeegee, a sponge, and a towel and washed five of the windows. I had already removed the scaffold from under the small window on the left, so I just had to skip that one.

During the process, I fed the chipmunks and jays. Scruffy was among those visiting late in the day. Before I quit for the day, I went up and checked the spring. I noticed that the old hose had quit running so I checked it out. I stuck my finger into the end of it at the spring and could feel that it was plugged with debris. Since I wasn't using it for anything anyway, I decided not to take the time to do anything about it. I also checked on the little tree and it looked pretty healthy. The fence was still intact. This year's growth was about 7 inches.

Dave did not return to look at trees with me.

On Thursday morning, I removed all the lifting rigging from the building and put it away. Then I made all the trim boards for the front windows and stained them. I left for home at about 1:30. There were no frogs in the can..