We did a little gardening....moved a lot of dirt, but let's move on.

This house we're building is of concrete. It is round. It is not conventional in any sense of the word. We're experienced but other than pouring concrete foundations, this is all new stuff. But, we are faking it....quite nicely so far.

Excellent minds..............our team has 2 college brain-i-acts and a wise old man.......excellent minds can work together. Consensually, we decide how to approach each project. The brain-i-acts have good ideas. The wise old man has better ones. However, occasionally the wise old man has a brain fart which the young ones are quick to point out. Fortunately, little time has been lost during those wrong turns so arguing that it might be wise for the old fool to finish college is a waste of time. Everyone makes mistakes. The key to life is to fix them.

Our first hurdle was to figure how to bend our material so it would be round. Remember, we are building a round concrete house. Concrete walls are built using those blocks we built college bookshelves out of. Then you pour concrete into them. More exotic concrete structures use wood to house the poured concrete until it hardens and then you remove the wood form. We are using a Styrofoam form material made by Quadlock out of Vancouver, Canada. Great product. It doesn't have to be removed afterwards so it insulates the wall. The only problem is the panels are straight and rigid. We've got to make them bend. Quadlock figured some of us would be a bit eccentric and build a round wall here and there so they designed it in such a way that all one must do is slightly cut "or kerf" the sidewalls of the Styrofoam panel and it will bend. Most projects will have one or two curved walls which require just a few cuts. Because our house is totally round, it means thousands of cuts. The wise old man, with a little help from the "mentals", built a machine with 7 saws. Nothing but a piece of plywood with cheap Home depot saws screwed to it. We turned it over and put it on a bench that "grasshopper" built, then we applied wood guides on the new table to direct the panels toward the blades. We push each piece of Styrofoam over the saw blades and cut all the grooves at once. We actually have 8 pieces of Styrofoam on the table at all times moving through the blades like an assembly line. Takes but a few minutes to push 100 pieces through. Very inventive! MacGiver and Mr. Miyagi must have hung out together. Or maybe the wise old man is just a Genius!