Don't Quit Your Dayjob

i've been lucky with jobs coming my way just when i need them. i've spent 15 years building my skillset as a builder, so finding work shouldn't be a problem so long as my body holds out. after a two-month break from the dayjob to work on ARTisANAL, today i started on a rustic log cabin above bremerton, a pleasant 50-minute ferry ride from seattle. a friend is converting the property into an artist colony and there's much to be done to rehab the 1973 main lodge before moving on to treehouses and other crafty micro-accommodations that will dot the 15 acre lakeside parcel. the task today was skylights, and as with all remodels there were surprises in store once we started peeling things back. the steeply pitched roof in one area turns out to be four inches thick. the 2 1/8" diameter core sample i drilled out looked like a s'more--layers of 5/4" plywood and perlin for graham cracker, styrofoam marshmallow, with tarpaper and asphalt shingle chocolate on top. it's dirty and dangerous work balancing atop a ladder perched on a scaffold held up by sawhorses, pushing a heavy wormdrive saw directly overhead in a blizzard of sawdust as glasses fog up from dustmask exhalations, but the only harm that came to me was at end of day when i was picking my teeth and an ancient filling came loose and part of the tooth crumbled. there goes the day's pay, probably.