New Roof and a Key

From my other blog:

Our school's IT person helped me out yesterday by letting me know that the iPad I was given was a student model, which is why everything was blocked, and nothing worked. He gave me a teacher's model, which I brought home yesterday. I found iTunes and the App Store loaded on this iPad. I opened up iTunes and entered the term "free" in the search, and found a vast array of public domain books that I wanted to read. I don't have time, though, so I'm not sure what I was thinking.

Some of the public domain books were compliments of the Gutenberg Project. I've heard of that. I'll check back again soon to see what they've added. I saw Dickens, Wharten, Thoreau, and more. Some of the books that were originally written in English are published through this service in other languages. I saw a Dickens novel published in Finnish. I didn't down load that one.

Instead of going to the dojo this morning, I went to the new dojo and helped strip off the old roof. It was one of those flat jobs that are typical for small city buildings. We figured about eight tons of stones were sitting on top of the roof. Over the years a lot of dirt had mixed in with that. We shoveled it into wheel barrows and dumped it into the dump truck that was pulled up to the back of the building. After that, we pulled up the layer of rubber that was supposed to have water proofed the roof with mixed results. We folded these sheets up and dumped them in the big dumpster out back. Then came the 4' x 8' x 4" sheets of Styrofoam, then some brown material in sheet of 18" by 36" by about 1". Someone called it Celotex, but I don't know. This stuff was very dark brown, but it was light and would be good for insulation. That took us down to the plywood. As we stripped the old roof, the professional crew installed the new roof. After my two hours, the entire old roof was gone. There was only a little water damage down at the low end of the roof. We pulled up some of the rotted plywood, and found the stringers underneath in good condition. Our chief instructor, who paid for the building himself, and is paying for the new roof, said that by tearing the old roof off ourselves, we saved "a ton of money." It felt good to be part of that.

Since there were only six of us there, not including the professional crew, I worked the whole time I was there. Sometimes there are so many people there, that some people are always standing around waiting for some direction. The "second" crew showed up at about 11:30. It was the people who went to the dojo and attended class. I have no idea what they were going to do, since the big job was done.

There was also a small section of roof that covers the stairway along the side of the building. This section was only about four feet wide, but it was steeply angled. I have a feeling that when they tear that part off, a lot of people will be standing around doing nothing. As said, I'm glad I went early this morning.

Lastly, as I was walking out to my car, I ran into our regular instructor. He said that since our brown belt, Joe, was awaiting orders and would probably be shipped overseas, he had an extra dojo key burning a hole in his pocket. He gave it to me, saying that sometime I would have to get to the old dojo early to start setting up if someone else wasn't already doing it. He said that since I was a high enough rank it was something he'd wanted to do. "With rank comes responsibility," he said.