I spent almost the entirety of the day shoveling piles of dirt from one place to another as part of the larger process of building a rammed earth house.  It’s a pretty cool project, one that’s been in the works for the past four months, I’d say.  Construction began with the laying of a river rock foundation, piece by piece, stone by stone.  I mostly avoided this portion of the work because it was frustrating and slow, like if Tetris were a game that wasn’t fun and didn’t have the catchy yet paranoing tunes playing in the background.  But that finally got done and the whole thing was capped with cement, so now the actual rammed earth part of the building begins!  A better, more complete explanation of the “Boden Haus” can be found elsewhere for those whose interest has been piqued by my riveting prose.

So, as for shoveling, it’s an incredibly exhausting mode of physical exertion.  Not to sound too much like a wuss, but I’m more sore from one day of this than, oh, nothing else I’ve done in the past year.  In a way I’ve found the experience refreshing, and I’ll probably put in a few more days worth of digging before everything is said and done.