day one hundred fourteen // forty.

today was loooonng but very productive. all that was really to be done today was continue bricking. there were three teams working: jayson, allison, et al once again fixing the first past by the atrium [they got it nice and level yesterday, but it wasn't parallel to the house], amy, elise, kim and maybe some more people putting more gravel on the path to get it ready for bricking, and shannon, jessica and i working on our path by the mechanical room. i picked up the art of bricking by observing and helping jessica, and we got our path mostly finished by lunch. also, we got the diamond saw set up, so that we can cut the bricks in half to fill in the holes in our harringbone pattern. it's a crazy saw that spits water on the blade as it cuts to keep it nice and cool & cutting properly. it takes a while to cut through the bricks because you can't push them through fast, but it cuts them nice and smoothly.

lunch today was AMAZING. shannon from gtcc brought his green egg grill and cooked us some hotdogs! plus we had chips and veggies and AMAZING brownies that jessie cooked. it was lovely :)

after lunch, harold from pine hall brick came to help us with the branched off and curved portion of the path. we had NO idea how to go about accomplishing this task in the short period of time we have left. so harold was nice enough to take the afternoon to help us and show us how to do it! we changed the pattern for the curved part from the harringbone pattern to a running bond pattern, which is wayyyyy easier but still looks nice. it doesn't involve complex cutting t0 create the curve, so we all like it. so harold showed us how to make the branch off of the first path area. this does involve a lot of cutting, but it's not horrible. i started cutting the pieces to fill in holes while jayson, allison & harold got started on the running bond. they got a LOT done in the 4 or so hours we were working on it, and i'm confident we can get all the sidewalks done by the end of friday! and it's all thanks to harold :) he was so patient with us, and did a great job of explaining everything and helped out a lot too. he stuck around for over 3 hours this afteroon, and even bought jayson, allison & i popsicles when the ice cream truck came around! basically, he was amazing :)