Seal Team 3 - Going In

I have my orders.

I've been assigned to Seal Team 3. 

At 1600 hours this Sunday, I am to report to the Coast Guard City for duty.  

For the record, I don't get a ride in a stealth copter.  No guns.  I won't even be wearing any camouflage.

I'll have a clipboard, tape measure, work boots, and #2 pencils.  

As a part of my Masters in Historic Preservation schooling, I, and 23 other students, will be spending a week in Traverse City.  A short distance from town stands the Campbell-DeYoung Farm.  

The Victorian home, built around 1860, is being restored by the Eastern Michigan University Historic Preservation Department in cooperation with the Leelanau Conservancy.   For the past few summers, this field school (a required class) has been stripping, painting, gutting, measuring, recording and a host of other activities associated with preserving old structures.  

Fortunately for me,  most of the carpentry work is done.  Skilled carpenters "measure twice and cut once."  I have discovered that I tend to "measure twice, cut once, cut again cuz I screwed up, swear, realize I'm bleeding, and then get someone else do it." 

Three teams have been assigned.  Teams #1 and #2 get to do plastering (no dry wall in the 1860s), window installations, wood floor work, interior painting and decorating.  I'm on Team #3.  We survey.  That'll be cool, I'm sure! All teams paint the exterior. 

In case you have not yet caught on, I did not goof with the SEAL vs Seal thing.  SEALs get to jump out of planes, swim miles for a warm-up, and kill people with their pinky fingers.  We'll be sealing a building with exterior latex paint.  Get it?

See you in a week!