It's always fascinating watching professionals at work...

Those of you who have been to our house may remember the big ugly warehouse across the street. (Many of you have parked in its parking lot.) As of Tuesday morning, it no longer exists.

The process has been impressively efficient. Monday night, there was still a warehouse there; by last night, there was simply a big pile of rubble. I do note that they haven't yet taken down the Extremely Tall Brick Chimney that has dominated the landscape for decades: presumably that requires extra care, lest it crush somebody's house.

Currently, the gigantic backhoe doing the lion's share of the work is demonstrating that it is a tool-using creature. It has taken a particularly large I-beam, bent it into a V shape, picked that up in its claw, and is using that to "sweep" all of the rubble away from the street, thence to be sorted into piles -- steel here, concrete there. It looks like nothing so much as a particularly impressive and dexterous animal, and all the kids are coming out to watch it at work.

(The land where the warehouse used to be is becoming a 25-unit condo complex. This is Somerville, and the hunger for More Condos is voracious. Overall it's probably an improvement, save that on-street parking around here is likely to become even more insane...)