June 7th, 2011

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Tuesday June 7, another hot day in the mines.

Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

But I am happy, sitting behind a cold beer in the Zimnicea hotel. An old Bollywood soap is playing, and all the waitresess are glued to the T.V. Camelia gave me the eveing off, to fend for my own dinner. She had to go to a friend’s husband’s funeral today in Alexandria. 54 years old, heart attack.  Life expectancy here for males is under 70 years, Romania ranks 55th on the UN data base. Of all the countries I have visited Romanian men smoke the most. For women I’d give that record to the Dutch.

I start early before the sun starts beating down on the project. Today at 2 p.m. I packed it up. The problem is that I cannot wear goggles and a dust mask at the same time. My glasses or goggle will steam up. So, I stick with the dust mask and try stay in the right wind direction. But my eyes were starting to hurt too much.  I have had a couple problems again with the epoxy not curing correctly. Because of the heat I try to mix small batches, otherwise they kick off too fast. But the smaller the batch the more likely that you may not end up with the right ratio. I carefully use a scale for this.  Then when it does not cure properly you end up with a messy goo that takes hours to remove. Sunday I made a batch, but I did not trust it. I left it alone. Yesterday I found that it had set up just fine. And in the sanding of the hull I still discover patches when I had a problem back in 2003 with the West System pump. And then I have to sand back down to the bare wood, because nothing will stick to those surfaces.

So, I was “home” early, took a shower to remove the coal miner’s look and then went to pick Mulberries. There are two kinds. Black and White. Both are delicious. I took the pictures just outside the “Tabara” gate. And then this gypsy family came by on their horse drawn wagon.