Concrete and more concrete (and proof of my Boomer status)

What was your first ever videogame?

Well, I was born in 1958. The dawn of the transistor age. So, yep, my first video game was Pong. When you only have 2 television stations to watch, Pong is an entertainment option.

That was probably the last video game I ever played enough to get good at, though I was OK at Pac-Man. I’ve saved a lot of time by not playing video games, so that I could knit, read, or listen to birds. Everyone gets to choose how to spend their downtime, and we all need it, right?

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And now for concrete. I was a little bummed that I had to be in Waco when the long-awaited day of pouring the cement pad for the water storage tank finally arrived. But my family didn’t let me down, and my son and spouse kept me updated. They even sent a video.

The pad is rather complex, because it has to be below grade to fit under the spouts coming off the roof. But our nephew is quite the engineering genius, so we have it in a depression with a raised lip that will capture any overflow and send it out toward the creek. It will work!

In addition to the pad, we now have a concrete pad that will be a horse maintenance station for washing, grooming, etc. The water spigot that’s awkwardly placed near a former fence will move over, and we will finally get a utility sink, if all goes to plan. We will see.

They had to get a bit of extra cement, so an addition was made to the front porch. It will eventually tie in to the second concrete project, walkways to the front porch and pool area. Fancy, I know.

Today the work of removing the forms for all the pads began. According to my son, that’s even harder than building them. Besides that, some of the supports were screwed in, and a few are now encased in concrete. Of course they can remove them, but ugh.

I like how the edges are getting beveled on the parts that stick up. The horse area is also beveled for safety.

There’s a lot of cleanup and dirt redistribution left to do, but the end is in sight! The pipes and other equipment needed to get water flowing into the tanks is next, plus pumps, filters, and purification equipment. This is a big project with so few workers. Thank goodness I have a talented family and they have a helper who is learning.