used to gently indicate that the opportunity for change has passed and the circumstances as currently constituted will now persist, or that the effort required to alter them would not be worthwhile; evokes the pouring of cement on a construction site that, once hardened, requires jackhammers or heavy machinery to tear up, as in “Tanya I know you still had outstanding changes on the marketing proposal but the cement is dry on that, we’ll just have to see how it’s received”