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06/06/2004: "I almost did it"

On my morning run, saw hundreds of umbrellas, with a large orange hand-painted butterflies over them, laid out on a lawn in the Battery Park. I was tired and achy from my first tile project I started last night.

A few days ago tiles were finally delivered. Komuro san saw them and said, "Should I come help? I'll bring my friend who's a tile layer. He can do it for you." Then he called his friend, Kazu, and over the phone he agreed to come help. So last night around 7 pm he shows up, expecting a small 'favor' but confronts this job. He says, "Are you serious? You were going to do this yourself?" Well, the floor is not level, there's little corners everywhere, and no walls are straight. He measures, decides on the starting point, and says "Well, it will take time, but let's do it." So he did most of the work, and I laid some of them. I did half of the grouting. And we ran out of tiles. After 12 hours of work it's 99% done. But a tricky little area is still left. I must say that I enjoyed doing it, the new floor looks fantastic, and glad to have a new skill acquired, but this is an extremely tiring job. It turned out that we were all underestimating before yesterday, but I'm glad it's almost over and not looking forward to doing it again very soon. For such an uncalculated work, the newly tiled floor just looks more than perfect.