Portrait Gone RONG!!!

It's been a while since I've done a self-portrait. Way back I'd done one and two, and I've probably done something in between, but here's the third!!!

For the back story, a while ago I came across the tale of 9-year old Alice, who came up with some great captions for the New Yorker cartoon caption contest. Apparently they do the art for some cartoons, then you can submit your caption. Of all of them, this is the one that stuck with me!!! One day at work all the label printers and the wireless had all gone out, and no one could get anything to work. I checked on Slack, and a bunch of people were informing via that of the problems. One of my old time friends who's been there about as long as me was across the conveyor, and he posted something to the effect of "Everything is broken!!!" I seriously LOL'ed. When I got a free moment, I found this and showed it to him.

Eventually I made up a new card for my tray, and did my best to copy the artwork, and change it just a bit to make it a self-portrait!!! Changed the text to make it more palatable to myself, and the guy to be me, complete with 'skinned head, glasses, changed the smoke to a pen, and, of course, my 512 shirt!!! Not long after I finished it, I realized that, with the exception of the shirt, there's about a half dozen of us fillers that it could be!!!

Scruffy Gets 'Skinned

Happy Birthday to ME!!!

Yeah, my birthday. 50 years old!!! That's like, 89 in bin filler years!!! So what did I do for my birthday??? It was a little low key, actually, but it was good. I'd scheduled it as a day off, like I often do, at the end of last year. I'll usually go to the beach or something, but the week before my wife got her new hip!!! The first few days were some of the worst post operation days (physically, at least, the one before she had a tough mental time from the pain medicine they had her on) and our home is one of the worst arrangements for having a new hip in. Consequently, we didn't do much. My younger boy and I went to the 99 cent store to refill my candy drawer, I bought a Little Caesar Extra Most Bestest pizza and breadsticks, and got an Unbound energy drink and two $2 lottery scratchers from the AM/PM (one winner, another ticket, as yet not changed, YAY!!!)

I bought myself a radio for Scruffy. That shortcoming had been honestly one of the more annoying parts of driving her. Since it's the same arrangement as in Saturn 3, I was going to get the same one, or at least the same style, as the one I've got in there. Found the newer models of it for a reasonable price, then started looking for the double DIN install kit to fit it in. For basically a flat rectangle of plastic, they wanted over $20!!! At my previous job, I would have just made one up in around 10 minutes, but since I'm not there any longer, I just looked for comparable ones in the single DIN size instead!!! The one I got has the same features, but in a size that fits the install kit already in there, for about $11 less. I made up a side-by-side picture of before and after, since that's not all I did!!!

Since I already had the dash board apart, I was giving everything that could be got at a good wiping down. Under the fuel gauge there was still a lot of glass fragments from the windshield incident!!! Several months back I'd gotten another dashcam-back-up cam mirror from Woot, and a 12v to USB converter to run it. Installed the converter and ran the wires up to the mirror, as well as pulling the cable for the back camera to the rear. I still have to come up with where that's going to mount and connect the reverse signal wire to it.

Remember when I got the console to put in Jade??? One unforeseen issue, the window switches have a different arrangement in the new style. Next time I hit the junkyard I'll check to see if the connector looks the same, and pick up one of those if it does. Anyway, I swapped the new black one into Scruffy, and the tan one will go better with the interior of Jade. Tightened up the parking brake a bit while I had things apart, but went overboard and when I tried to drive it to work the next morning, it was tight to where it wouldn't start rolling with just your foot off the brake. Put that back where it was after work that day. In the before and after, you can see four things: the new radio, the black center console, a USB port added right below the temperature control, and the microphone mounted in the slot under the radio. Oh, and it's a lot cleaner.

A couple weeks before, Woot had a bunch of shirts in purple. I have three purple shirts, but one is getting a hole in it, so one of these will replace it!!! Several were previous designs (including one he'd had for Christmas 7 years ago), only with a different shirt color behind them. My younger son had a tree design he liked, and I found the "My cat went to Space Camp" (apparently the best loser in the Sci-Fi Kawaii derby) design I liked. I'd made mention of the date they were on sale until to the boy, and he remembered right before it ended, and I hit the "Buy" button on both of them before it ended. Showed up the day after my birthday!!!

Some weeks back I'd gone to Wal Mart, and happened to be by the locked up spray paint while there was an employee there. I asked how long to get it unlocked, and he replied, "Not too long", so I ended up buying three 16-oz. cans of Krylon satin black. Over the next few weeks I finally got the body panels for Scruffy painted. At first I'd scuffed them up with some sandpaper, and it was too coarse, all the scratches showed through. Not to mention, I'd laid it on too thick and it came out with several runs. Sanded it down with progressively finer paper and shot it again. This time it came out splotchy, flat in some areas and glossy in others. More sanding, and a final attempt before I ran out of paint. Third time is a charm!!! Finally got all the door and quarter panel skins put on after work yesterday!!! I'm not sure if the sub structure of the drivers' door is tweaked or what, but it has a big gap to the outside on the back and to the inside on the front. Didn't look damaged, and functions fine. Guess I'll just have to make it gull wing to fix that!!!

Oh, and apparently having the dash all apart caused at least one of the instrument lights to burn out, as well as the odometer, so that's all got to come apart again. Even though I never had that area taken apart. Sigh. Gave me an excuse to order some LED lights for it.

The Other Tower

For several years we've been going to a family camp with my parents. Some years my niece and nephew and sister have been along, some years I haven't been able to make it. This year was one that I made it.

Quite close to where we go, there' a fire service lookout tower. Most every year, we swing by for a visit. Several of the high angle pictures are from there in previous posts. Like many slightly developed mountain peaks, it has a lot of antenna and dishes.

I think I'd heard of this one before, around 15 miles from the one we normally go to. Keller Peak, it's called, and we all agreed, it's a much nicer location!!!

It's a lot farther out from "civilization", and most of the drive is on a narrow little strip of paving. Also, the antenna and dishes are not right up on the tower, so the view around is better.

Off a little way from where we parked was this large slab of rock, and underneath it was a naturally occurring tunnel.

Pretty much everywhere you look, there's a view!!!

The tower volunteer told us of a B-26 that had crashed in a snow storm back in WWII. On the road back there was a plaque commemerating the crew, and at the tower they had several bits of debris, photos and newspaper articles.

And the last shot: Is it bigfoot??? No, it's my firstborn!!!