I fought the heat and the heat won

It was hot today and it was not the Las Vegas Nevada type of dry heat. It was the kind of heat that had me sweating just thinking about building a deck. 96 degrees, high humidity, and no breeze. I'm glad I don't have to make a living doing this. I got a late start, getting outside around 9 am.  I probably should have woken the neighborhood with my work and started at 5 am and then quit at noon. Actually the neighborhood wouldn't have heard me because everyone has their windows shut with the air conditioning running.

My dad came over at 10 to supervise the work again this Saturday. Thanks Dad! We got dad set up with some shade and a fan, and he would help out more often than he probably should have.

My son and I started by attaching the joists to the ledgers, ensuring the posts were vertical as we did so. My son then started attaching hurricane clips to the joist / header connection. Ran out of the 1.5" nails to attach the clips to the joist. Sent my wife to Lowe's with the empty box and a nail. The Lowe's guy still couldn't figure out what the right nail to give her was. Fortunately my wife was persistent and came home with the right nails.

While the boy was attaching the clips, I snapped a string line at 12' out and another at 16' out to trim the ends of the joists to the right length. Used a square to mark the cut lines, then used a straightedge to trim the joists to the right length. Working on a ladder slows things down, working on a ladder on an uneven slope slows things down even more. The heat slowed me down big time, even though we were pushing fluids. By the end of the day, I had rim joists attached to the outside of the 12' and 16' sections, but still have to trim the two diagonal sections (6 joists) and attach two 5' 8" rim joists.

I'm beat. Normally we would have worked until 8 pm, but by 5 o'clock I was fried. Stick a fork in me done. By the end of the day I was staggering around, eyes hurting from getting sweat in them too many times. I fell asleep on the family room floor.  I'm going to sleep like a rock tonight.