made by america (part 2) + summer nights

above - picture of the day

so the challenge of building base boards for the kafe continued on. one might think you'd get better at sawing angles after doing it for a whole day - but that's not the case with team USA. sure, one could say it's because the right tools aren't available (we are using what looks like a 50 year old hand saw - which also doubles as some kind of angle creator, a chisel that's continually about to crumble with each hit from a perfectly fine hammer, and some tough a nails file thingy) but i still can't help but think that it's not just the tools. it's us. there's got to be a better way of doing things. better than our way.

so, to start things off, we spent roughly 30 minutes trying to figure out how exactly to use a hand saw to draw angles. Lars had shown us how to do it yesterday, but for some reason it appeared much harder this morning. to say the least - it made me feel very, very stupid. like some toddler trying to figure out how to put the square into the square hole. i was thinking how embarrassed i'd feel had people been watching - besides alex, who was equally incapable.

as you can imagine, between the mind puzzle of using a saw as a compass and alex's lack of geometry know-how (seriously, lacking), the day wasn't looking too efficient. yep, we were well on our way to cutting approximately one angle per 30 minutes.

pictured: alex doing what he does best (not cutting angles) / the goods / 'base boards' installed (kinda)

now, we are practically finished. but tomorrow comes the scary part. nailing the boards to the kafe's building. it's scary cause it's nails. what if we mess up? what if someone realises we actually have no idea at all what we are doing (ever)? what if there was some communication error? i dunno...guess we'll just have to wait to find out.

pictured: me in our room with the golden light coming in (around 8pm)

in other topics...sweden right now has a pretty sweet sunset happening almost every night. and when i say night, i mean 11ish. each day the sun stays up longer and longer and rises earlier and earlier (i haven't woken up to experience this yet - that is before 5am - but apparently dawn has been happening at 2:30am). so the evenings are golden hued as the sun sets and a brilliant royal blue as it takes a quick nap. very nice. very weird.

pictured: the blue night sky - it's way bluer in real life (around 11pm)

im so full right now. like a fat cat. like the fat cats that lie around the house. we eat pretty well here. that's a good thing, filled with good things...like apple marmalade that tastes like apple pie filling. and plum marmalade made with whole vanilla beans...that goes perfect with butter...mmm. im so full, but i still want...more...