12/10-12/13 I went up to Camp Serendipity for 3 days: Tuesday through Thursday.

On the way, I stopped and visited with Uncle Charles. Then I proceeded over the pass to the Dickinson's, the Tutino's, and the Williams' where I delivered a jar of Ellen's Christmas jam to each family. I saw Bert and Ernie at Tutino's but unfortunately I didn't have and biscuits with me.

I arrived at Camp Serendipity at 12:30. The temperature was about 20º. There had been no new snow and it looked like the old snow hadn't melted a bit since last week. It was just frozen a little stiffer.

I raised the flag, lit a fire in the stove, had my lunch and a nap, and then went to work moving varnished boards out of the cabin and onto the porch. There were 10 boards on the rack and the heat from the stove had caused some of them to warp pretty badly. That was reason enough to move them. Another reason was that the family is coming up to Camp Serendipity in a couple weeks and it will be a lot more comfortable in the cabin without those boards in the way.

After stacking all the boards out on the porch, I dismantled the two stanchions forming the rack and took them outside also.

Then I assembled a Celestron telescope we had just bought. We figured that there would be better viewing up at Camp Serendipity than in Seattle so that is where we'll keep the telescope.

On Wednesday morning it was 20º outside. I went to work on the ceiling, nailing the top course up against the Grid D purlin. This was a lot tougher job than I had expected.

Normally when I install a board, the groove of the board is on the downhill side and it engages with the tongue sticking up from the last course nailed on. So gravity helps seat the new board and hold it in place until I can nail it. Also, I am facing the ceiling with the lower part in front of me and the higher part behind me. That way, I can see what I am doing and I can nail more-or-less in front of me.

But to nail up the top board up against the purlin, I have to work against gravity and push the tongue of the new board up into the groove of the board that is already between the purlin and the rafters. Gravity works against me here. Also, there is no comfortable way to stand or kneel so that I can see what I am doing or reach it easily. If I face the lower part of the ceiling, then the board is up over my head and behind me and the log purlin keeps me from getting my head high enough to see. If I face the upper part of the ceiling, then I bump into the ceiling so I can't get high enough to work on the board.

I started out by cutting an 8-foot board and spending a lot of time wrestling with it up on the high scaffold. Each time I had one end in place and was working on the other end, the first end would fall back out. Keeping my balance and controlling the board was stiflingly hot, exhausting work. Each time I failed to get the board in place, I had to climb off the scaffold just to cool off and catch my breath. After about 4 or 5 of these failures, I gave up and took the board back down to the porch where I cut it into two 4-footers.

Even at that, those 4-footers were hard to nail in place. The first one wasn't bad but the second one gave me real trouble. I could see from that experience that I never would have gotten the 8-footer into place. I cut all the rest of the boards for that course to 4 feet or less.

I finished nailing the entire course up before I stopped for lunch and a nap. I was very happy to have that job done.

The remaining course in that section of the ceiling is somewhat narrower than a full board so I ripped a strip out of the center of the boards so that the remaining edges, when put together, fit into the space between the boards already in the ceiling. I ripped the boards at 45º so that they overlapped better. The work is tedious because I have to measure the width at each rafter position and then figure out how much to rip out of the boards to match. I had a few episodes of "measure once, cut twice", or in one case, mix up right and left and throw the first try away. Before I quit for the day, I had about 3/4 of the gap in the ceiling filled.

On Thursday morning, I finished filling the gap in the ceiling which meant that 1/4 of the entire inside ceiling job was done. Hooray! The ceiling between the Grid D and E purlins was now finished. Before I left for home, at about 1:30, I swept up all the sawdust from the front porch. There was quite a lot from all that ripping.