It’s not, in my opinion, necessary, but it is over the long haul—a chimney starting to have loose bricks at the top is going to admit water, which in our climate means ice, which expands joints, etc.
So the scaffolding will stay up until Tuesday, giving the mortar time to cure, and then they will finish up and we will have a nice newer chimney than anybody on the block.
Monday, I have yet one more dental appointment, this one with the regular dentist, who will remove the temporary filler on the bridge and replace it with new filler. I don’t see any reason to replace this comfortable bridge at this point. We will discuss that issue.
Meanwhile—we got ourselves a nice new exercise machine that I have some hope for, Gazelle Edge, which is no-impact joint and muscle exercise. It sits in a box in the living room until I clear some space in my room, which involves the garage sale we are finally going to have. We have 3 recliners and a chair to move out, not to mention knick-knacks and unused bric-a-brac and sitabouts. And books. Boxes of books, including old Time-Life sets that we just don’t need. I hope we have a lot of bibliophiles come through.
Are they going to put a sealant on the chimney as well. That was done with mine after I had a leak into the fireplace.
We are having the top 36″ of the chimney remortared, with a brand new water-shedding sloping cap, and it should be very waterproof. It’s not a functional fireplace. The cleanout is much too small, and it’s a two-story job with another semi-functional fireplace in the finished basement, which shares the chimney. We’re both allergic to wood smoke, and we find out electric insert (fake flames) is quite enough on winter evenings.
Worst case, see if your local Friends of the Library wants to take any unsold books without sentimental or true resale value. As long as what you’re trying to give them isn’t a 30 year old World Book encyclopedia set with the L volume missing and the M volume water damaged, they should be happy enough. I know you take good care of your books 🙂
Alas, with the shift toward e-books, Friends of the Library has a glut of books. Old reference works get outmoded: e-books tend to be fresher. We have a set, eg, on Native Americans. We have a ton on ancient Britain. Not everybody’s cuppa. I’m hoping to get some fen in to the sale who may have more eclectic taste.
I wish I were in the area so I could have a prowl through. Sometimes, ‘esoteric’ is just what the doctor ordered. For a while, during our Napoleonic War kick, we were researching all types of obscure things. One of the hardest things to locate was information on what the Russians were up to during that era, specifically their navy in the Med. I found a book on ebay that had exactly the information we needed, we bought it, and I have never seen that book for sale again. Here’s hoping you will draw in people for your sale that want exactly the unusual materials you are selling.
“Esoteric” can be interesting. I wish I’d had the money and space at the time I saw one on ships’ names, which went into, among other things, how they can move from one country to another. (The specific example was Enterprise, which was originally the name of a French ship that was captured by the Royal Navy. Some time later the British ship carrying the name at the time was captured by a US ship…where it’s still in use.)
Are there any school libraries that might be interested in some of the history/anthropology type books?
We wish you were, too. Some of this stuff is definitely off the beaten path.
Sympathies on dental work & garage sale. Just had crown reglued & grateful no worse. Gave many books to Friends of the Library in May & found home for old soft cover art books not previously owned by famous award winning SF & Fantasy writers. You are charitable to nosy neighbors. Yes, a few more bricks mught have been loose next year. I prefer neighbors who notice something I might want to keep an eye on.
I suppose you guys could sign the books that don’t go at the yard sale and get someone to ebay them as autographs. It would just feel wrong to shred them and use them as mulch.
I could do what Harlan does and sign them Herman Melville.
But only when you’re writing about fish 😉
That sounds like what Yossarian would do in “Catch-22”, sign his paperwork “Washington Irving”….
I was thinking of more like ‘From the library of X and Y’.
Lol—I see. 😉 We could.
Our library has a lot of things donated to it. I was reviewing some of the older things, and ran across an art book inscribed “From the Library of Jack Lord”, handwritten. That one went to our Friends group, who will auction it off; there is definitely a memorabilia market.
The leaking that I had was through the mortar on the side of the chimney -when there was the right combination of rain and wind.
Voice of experience here: Much less traumatic and less expensive to deal with chimney repairs before they become chimney emergencies. A few loose bricks inevitably become more loose bricks, eventually to become falling bricks, eventually to become catastrophic.
Ah – the mention of Time-Life brings back memories. My first job in publishing was at Time-Life Books in London, the best job I’ve ever had, and at a time when book publishing still reigned and there were wonderful bookshops, a few even focusing solely on SF, used and unused titles.
I have only kept the Time-Life books I worked on, apart from one or two that are of particular interest to me. I tend to only buy CJ’s books now as they come out, along with (very rarely) the odd book by one or two other authors, as well as history and archaeology titles. I have special shelves in my study for small-format paperback SF books by a few authors I particularly like (have always been very fussy about what SF I buy). The only hardback SF books I buy are CJ’s (though I get them in paperback as well for reading while travelling).
I’ve had to be pretty ruthless about getting rid of books (though I certainly like having them around me) because I’ve always been given so many books by publishers I’ve worked for…