The Road Less Traveled

Now the bonds are broken, but they can be re-tied

One more journey to the woods, the holes where spirits hide

~Bob Dylan

I've been trying to lead a less sedentary life. The transition to a desk job at my advanced age has caused me to pack on a few extra pounds. I've managed to get out and go on a walk several days the last couple of weeks. The constant rains ha been making it hard to do so.

At the beginning of the week, I went out to go on a walk. The first portion nearly always starts out the same, with a climb to the top of my street. It gets your heart rate up to start with. There's a little wall up there, and I'll usually take a little rest and catch my breath when I get there. That's how I started off. Just as I'm getting ready to head on, here comes another guy, heading the same way I'd been planning on going. I head on just a little behind, and when he gets to the end, he makes a left, the same way I'd been planning on going again!!! I don't like feeling like I'm trailing after someone, so I decided to go the other direction.

Going that way, you can do a loop on the streets behind our house, but at the end, there's a little short-cut trail to the next street down, and you can head down and across to the next major street over from there, after taking a little stairway down. I've gone that way before, but it feels like it's been a while. It climbs from there, sometimes gradually, sometimes steeply, until it dead ends into a park in a canyon, that I often get to going the other way, but on the downhill end. It has a dirt path through it, with a very steep climb at the end.

The foliage has really liked all the rain!!! The park is fairly overgrown, as are several areas around here. The path had been badly eroded, with a deep groove nearly a foot deep in several areas.

Just before the part where it starts climbing steeply, I came upon this wood nymph!!! Or whatever she was. She had a girl there taking the pictures, and a guy manning the light.

She was up on probably a six foot step ladder, and it was getting to be the part of the evening when it starts getting cool out. All that overgrowth no doubt makes for a great backdrop!!!

Birthday Delay

It's been more than a month since the younger's birthday. He was planning on inviting a bunch of friends over, and hanging out, mostly on the back patio. However, it has been one of the wettest winters in recent memory.

Coming up to the date he'd scheduled, it was going to be non stop buckets of rain that weekend. He let everyone know it was scrubbed, to be rescheduled on a future date. Furthermore, my wife had another surgery coming up, just a few days after the actual date.

Prior to the surgery, the hospital, in keeping up with the covid theater, required my wife to get tested, then isolate, along with the rest of the family until she went in. Not wanting the milestone to go unacknowledged, my wife got a cake mix and made up a cake. It's been a while, but I dusted off my decorating skills. He wanted his alter ego, Catnip, on the cake.

I added the medallion around his neck, because it was yellow cake, get it??? I put his new age in his favorite color, and had a lot of orange left, so I added radiation waves. I know, they are traditionally green, but who's to say they're not orange???

We gave him his gifts. I think it was last year we got him the game, 'Binding of Isaac: Four Souls”, and he's already gotten a couple of expansion packs, and we got him another one. Got him the funny cat shirt, also in his favorite color.

He also wanted this nine tailed fox necktie, and my wife found this other cool shirt.

Since there's been a fairly lengthy recovery going on, the reschedule hasn't occurred yet. More birthday to come!!!

Dean Domino Update

I made mention of meeting this fine looking fellow a while ago. He kind of stuck in my head.

About a month back, I headed back to see if the King of Swing was still hanging around the muffler shop. We pulled around back where I'd seen him, and got out and looked around some. Saw another cat, but Dean Domino was nowhere to be seen.

I was getting ready to head off, when my son said since we were already there, I might as well inquire with the guy from the muffler shop, so I headed in. The guy says, “Oh yeah, the lady at the shop on the end has been taking care of him!!!” and he escorted me over there. He tells the lady why we're there, and she, indeed has been taking care of him!!! She had him behind the counter, and he was curled up on a blanket, snoozing away his best life!!!

She already has several cats at home, and this little dog (I'm not sure if he was a 'shop dog' or if he goes back and forth with her) so Dean stays at the shop. She wasn't keen on taking him home, too, and said she may find someone who will give him an actual home.

Who knows... that someone may be me!!!

Looking Back: The Christmas Party

I've got a big ole' backlog of things I could post about!!! I was planning on sitting down and posting about our actual Christmas, but scrolling back through the pictures, I came across some of these, and did a course correction!!! Maybe I'll get to that one eventually, but until then, here's what I've got!!!

Last year, the company had their 'Holiday Party' at one of my favorite buildings, the Westin Bonaventure!!! They had Christmas lights strung up around the tops of the cylinders, very festive!!!

It had been raining, the start of what has shaped up to be a very wet winter, and it was chilly outside.

Got to see a lot of my friends who are still in the warehouse, and a lot of the office crew. It's always nice to see the people I haven't seen in a while!!!

Of course, you can't go to the Bonaventure and not take the epic elevators for a spin!!! The ballroom floor, where the party was being held, doesn't have any elevator stops, so we had to go down a level to catch them.

In the name of security, these days you have to have a room key to get higher than the first few floors. As luck would have it, we caught a ride with someone who did!!! Took it all the way to the top, and got to see the lights up close!!!

On the way out, we went by a wall that had several of the movies that had been filmed there featured.

Good times!!!

Frontier Weekend

Last weekend I did a coolant system flush on my wife's car. Interestingly, when we first went to look at the Matrix, I'd taken my scanner along, and the only code that showed up was for low coolant! Didn't give a check engine light or anything, and I'd never seen a code for that before, but there it was!!! Once, during summer, the coolant was low again, and when the temperature would climb, the A/C would stop working. That was the impetuses for doing a flush, it had gotten very warm out on Saturday, and my son and I were out in it, and the A/C wasn't working, and the temperature was up.

Anyway, apparently it has a very small coolant leak somewhere in the system, to the tune of around every 9 months or so, it needs more coolant. I had the thought to do the pepper trick, and might as well do a flush first. After we got home, I popped the hood to let it cool down, and went out in Scruffy to get a bottle of cooling system flush. Got home, and it was cool enough to drain and add the flush. I grabbed a 5 gallon bucket to add the clear water to the system, and try and rinse the system out some.

The bucket had been stored upside down by the barbecue, and for whatever reason, it was just behind where I've got this cactus, the 'Old Man of the Moutains'. After I wrapped everything up and was putting things away, I put the bucket back where it had come from. I just lobbed it back where I'd gotten it, but it landed kind of caddywompus. I grabbed the handle to the lid of the barbecue, and leaned over to right the bucket, but while I was leaned over, the wood handle broke, and I fell on a cactus!!!

All this took place on Saturday. On Sunday night, I was laying on the couch in the front room, and I heard a coyote yipping, very close. I looked out the window, and it was right on the very corner of the yard. It's on!!! I slip on my shoes, and grab a walking stick. I can open the front door quietly, but the security screen always makes some noise. I throw open the screen, and come out raging and yelling again!!! The coyote is quite spooked, and jumps down around 7 feet to the street and off into the canyon!!! It was a rerun of another time!!!

In retrospect, I realized I had a very western frontier weekend, I fell on a cactus, and chased off a coyote!!!

Snow More

Here's what is apparently a once every 15 years event!!!

This was a couple of days ago. There was a storm system coming in, a cold one with a lot of moisture.

They were saying up to an inch of rain in an hour, and snow levels down to 1,500 feet.

I was telling the family that there was probably a chance of getting a bit of snow in our area. On Thursday, I was making my lunch, and looked out the window, and almost couldn't wrap my head around what I was seeing, even though I'd predicted it myself!!!

My son and I went out and took some pictures. It was pretty wet, and it may have even been sleet, but it sure looked like snow to me!!!

I was out getting some groceries and my son's birthday feast (Oinkster!!!) today, and got a shot of the low snow levels on the mountains!!!

The Fuzz Cometh

It was getting late, and I was thinking of heading off to bed.

I hear a siren approaching, it sounds like a police siren. Moments later, I hear a louder engine climbing the hill, and not long after I see the red and blue light splashes on the windows.

That's unusual around here, but not unheard of. Silence ensues for a while, then here comes the police helicopter, flying low and doing circles.

Not long after, another police car shows up, and pulls into the neighborhood across the canyon.

Of course, by this time it's got my attention. A little after, four more police cars show up. There's now two on the far side of the hillside behind the neighborhood across the street, and two that had headed to the top of the hill come back down. The first one goes past the street across the way, and then is backing up, and the other one comes down and turns into that street. As I figured, the one backing up turns down that street, too.

There's a wild area behind the houses across the canyon, and I imagine that whoever they were after is hiding out over there.

It's been more than an hour. That helicopter is going to have to refuel soon!!! I know how these things go, I'll probably never hear what happened. (I'll post an update in the comments if I actually do)

Anyway, here's some blurry pics for you!!!

Sorry Substitute

The vet's office sent a sympathy card last week. I cried like a baby.

A lot of things will remind me of that boy. Pictures. His things. Sometimes I'll hear a song that will make me think of him.

I had a dream around a week after we'd said good bye. We were vacationing with the extended family up in the mountains, but I wasn't feeling it, and was off by myself. My dad (still around in the dream world, apparently) came out to find me, and was telling me that mom would really appreciate it if I'd spend some time with the family. I was telling him that I wasn't feeling like it, then I told him, “My f'ing cat died!!!”

I've seen a couple of the neighborhood cats since, but they're not sociable. I have been wanting to be around a friendly cat that I could pet and feel the purrs.

A couple years back, my son had seen a stuffed Halloween cat in a claw machine. He like it enough that he took a picture of it, but didn't try and get it. He said, “I should have tried to get it, it was right on the edge, it would have been easy!!!”

A couple of weeks after we said good bye, he located the same stuffed animal that someone was selling on Ebay.

He bought it, and he's pleased with his purchase!!!

Onto an interesting confluence of events: Last week, my wife's car (Kutcher!) was stalling. I've suspected the fuel pump isn't up to the task, it acts like it's fuel starving sometimes under hard acceleration. I ordered a new one from Rock Auto, and in the meantime, we've been rolling in Scruffy.

Of course, it sits a little lower with the whole crew in it. One thing I should have mentioned in the Car Stuff post, I had fabricated a hanger loop – skid plate rig around the end of the tailpipe. It wasn't fully fleshed out, but I had a couple angles screwed to the floor pan, and a flat with the ends bent up. It would scrape occasionally, but if it wasn't that, it would have been the tailpipe!!! Anyway, on Saturday we were out, and came out of a driveway with a scrape... that just kept on going!!! I pulled over, and the front end had come undone, and the plate was vertical to the ground, wedged into the ground, and the tailpipe just hanging (the inside hanger had come off it's hook, too. That always seems to happen when the outside comes loose). Called a tow truck, and located a muffler shop that could take care of us.

They put a mount almost exactly like the one that the very first side exit exhaust I'd had made up had on the outside, and tacked on a couple washers on the inside hooks to keep the hanger in place. It's solid!!! Bonus, they did it for a reasonable price, I think I've finally found a new exhaust shop!!!

While it was up on the lift, I finally got a good shot of a little repair I'd done to the bottom of the front bumper. It was coming to a point in the middle, where it would drag backing out of the driveway, so I drilled a series of holes and tapped a piece of angle aluminum to flatten the whole area. I'd taken a picture of it when I'd done it, but accidentally deleted it.

But this was the highlight of our trip to the muffler shop!!! The dad told my wife that this cat had recently been dropped off by the shop. There's several feral cats around the area, but this one is domesticated. My wife was sitting out back petting him (or maybe her, I didn't even try and find out), and after the car was done, I pulled around and gave him some pets, too. Got my pets and purrs that I've been craving. I'd walked over towards the back of the parked cars there, and he came right over to me!!!

He had the softest, silky fur, and those orange eyes!!! My wife was wondering what you'd name a cat like that, and every time I see a black & white cat like this, I always think “Domino”. My son makes mention of a character from Fallout: New Vegas, Dean Domino, the King of Swing!!! Of course, if you have a pet, you need a one syllable name, so Dean works, or you could call him “D. D.” for brevity's sake. He seemed to have some kind of bump – protrusion on one of his flanks, and when I touched it, he meowed, so he might have some kind of injury.

Later on in the day, when we got home my wife was tidying up and found her cat ears!!!

Farewell, My Friend

“Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward.” Job 5:7

In this life there will be trouble, but you will overcome. I'm glad for the times when there isn't much trouble, or what I have is minor, and count myself fortunate.

Over the weekend, it seemed like our grandkitten was having problems. I had taken Monday off, and after calling around and finding one that was open and could see him, packed the boy up to go to a veterinarian to get him checked out.

It turns out he was having kidney issues, not a lot different than what Leo had, but instead of his urethra being blocked, the ureters from the kidneys to the bladder seemed to be having trouble. These are very fine, and if that is the case, the surgical fix is to replace them with shunts with a port to clean them out as necessary. Not surprisingly, this is an expensive procedure.

The other option is to hydrate and treat the infection, and perhaps it will clear once the inflammation is reduced, and he could recover.

We decided to give that a chance. He was eating OK, and with the pain medicine he seemed to be doing OK. We visited him at the veterinarian's office a couple times. On Wednesday, his numbers hadn't gone up, but hadn't gone down either. Thursday his numbers were even higher. We had to let him go. We visited him again, taking a little bag of the Temptations dairy treats, the only kind he'll eat, and treated him to a last meal and said our good byes.

We have a lot of good memories of the boy. I remember when he was a kitten, he would eat anything!!! He was always trying to get into your food, and one time after we'd had Tommy Burgers, he got the paper tray that the chili fries came in, and ate about ¼ of it!!!

My wife's favorite was at Christmas a couple years ago. My sister and nephew were over, and they don't have an indoor voice, and kept trying to get him to play. My younger warned them, he said he could see his eyes getting huge, but they kept on, and he attacked them both on their heads!!! I tell people the story and say it was the best Christmas ever!!!

He's gotten a lot mellower as he's aged, and he was very friendly to me, giving me head butt snuggles and curling up on me. Recently, he had started doing the same thing with my younger, and even a few times with my wife.

We will miss you, sweet boy.

Car Stuff '22 Recap

It's been far too long. I've put together this post with a recap of the car stuff that's happened over the last year or so.

Back in December of 2021 the starter had gone out on the Matrix. It had rained, and it went out right after that! Just a little after that, one of the coils went out, also after it had rained. Or maybe it was the other way around, it's been a while. Anyway, it doesn't seem to do well in the rain.

The air conditioning went out on Scruffy back in May or June. I was sitting at a red light with the windows down, when there was a very strong acrid smell. I had no idea what it was, until I tried the AC a bit later, and it didn't work at all. Apparently the line to the condenser blew. Of course, I don't have the equipment to do A/C work, so I had a shop doing it. While everything was being worked on anyway, I bought a new condenser and a seal kit.

In May I took Scruffy back to the shop that I had the tint done at all those years ago to get the two back side windows and the hatch glass tint redone. I had found the receipt when I'd moved my office into the corner a couple years back. The side window tint has been getting wrinkled at the top edge, and the back window had developed a bunch of bubbles. It has been bugging me for a while, and I finally got around to getting it done. They were at a new location. This was while I had been going into work, so it was a bit of a hassle, but got it handled.

Near the beginning of summer, the battery in the Matrix began acting up. This was one of the things I'd had an eye on since we'd bought it. The battery it came with was crusty looking, and one of the battery terminals was breaking apart back when I'd done the starter replacement. I held the terminal on with a C clamp. Had a couple of times where it was low to where it needed a jump start, but it worked OK after that. Also had a few times driving with the A/C running where the radio started acting up. Anyway, bought a new battery, and things went OK for a while, then the battery died again. Got it tested at AutoZone, and they said it was too low to judge the condition, so I charged it up and went back. Everything was working fine, but the guy said we had a bad battery and replaced it. I was suspecting alternator issues, and was wanting to get it checked, too, but they said both times that the battery was too low. Oh yeah, I also replaced the battery terminals while I had the battery out.

The registrations were due to be renewed for both cars in September, and they both needed their smog checks. As is always my custom, I did an oil change for both cars before taking them in to be tested, as well as a new air filter for the Matrix and a cleaning and re-oiling for the K&N filter in Scruffy. Things got interesting on the Matrix, when I went to check the oil level, the dipstick tube was broken!!!

The tube seemed to set back into place, so I tried cleaning both sides off and using some epoxy to stick it back together, but that didn't work. Needless to say, the lower portion that was still attached to the engine wasn't very easy to clean off. RockAuto sells a replacement dipstick tube for a quite reasonable price, so I ordered that. It was still giving charging issues occasionally throughout this time, so I went ahead and bought a replacement alternator, figuring that was the issue. The recommendation for replacing the dipstick tube was to remove the intake manifold. Since I had the alternator off, I went in from the side instead, which to me was a much easier way to go... except for it requires taking the serpentine belt off. Of course, I was putting a new belt on while I had all that apart, and that was honestly the most difficult part of the job!!!

The Matrix passed smog without any issue. I took Scruffy over the next week, and the computer wasn't completely ready. The check engine light that I usually get is for a small evaporative system leak, and I'd reset it not long before I'd taken it in. The tech told me to look up the driving procedure to get all the monitors set.

I looked up the driving procedure to get the monitors ready. Had things like start the car and let it run two minutes, drive for around 5 minutes with no more than half throttle, from a stop accelerate to 50 MPH with ¾ throttle, drive for 10 minutes at 50 MPH, then let off the accelerator and coast to 20 MPH without hitting the brakes or shifting, and things like that. I went out around 2 AM to do the sequence so there wouldn't be much traffic to impede. Did the sequence as best I could (it hardly coasts down to the 20 MPH, it'll stay around 35), turned around and did everything but the warm up on the way back, and checked the computer. It didn't have the monitors ready, so I did it again, out and back. Still wasn't showing ready, so I gave up for the night. Did some normal driving over the next weekend, and after that the monitors were ready. Took it back to the smog place, and finally passed with no issues.

I had the thought that Scruffy may be having coolant temperature issues, which was causing it to idle higher that it should. The engine coolant temperature sensor on S series Saturns can be a sore point, causing all kinds of driveability issues. While I was checking into this as a possibility, I came across several owners who had replaced the factory thermostat with a higher temperature unit, with good effect to their MPG. I went ahead and purchased a higher temperature thermostat and a new engine coolant temperature sensor from RockAuto. I had previously replaced the temperature sensor, but they're cheap. I had bought a new connector for the sensor on 3, which had deteriorated, but never had a chance to install it. I flushed the cooling system and installed everything, and filled the system. The next day, I topped off the coolant. From then on, every time I drove it, it would lose enough coolant that the low coolant light would start flashing. I've seen this before... could the higher temperatures have over stressed somewhere else? It looked like it might be leaking from the water pump and slinging it around the belt, so I took the one I had left from the swap back to the store and exchanged it, with the thought that I'd go ahead and replace it. When I jacked her up to drain the system go to work on it, I crawled under and found the hose to the thermostat was a little wet. I found a different hose clamp, and replaced the one that was on there. Seems to have taken care of it!!! Oh, as far as I can tell, it hasn't improved the mileage at all!!!

A couple months ago I was driving Scruffy on the freeway. It felt like there was a little vibration going on. As we were driving along, there was an under body thump, like I'd run over something. I checked the rear view, but there was nothing to see. I noticed that the vibration had stopped, though. I did an under body inspection when I got home, and the front panel under the radiator and A/C condenser had gone missing. I wonder if it didn't get put back on well when I'd had the A/C work done. I don't miss it, but I think it would probably be a good idea to fabricate something for protection down there!!!

The rear driver's side window on Scruffy has developed an issue. I've got a replacement slider that I suspect is all that needs to be done to get it back in shape, but of course that will require taking it apart.

Just last weekend, I went back to the tire place and bought another front tire for the Matrix, the one opposite the one I'd replaced back in March was getting rounded off on the outside, and it's been raining on and off.

The roof on Scruffy is looking pretty bad. It's losing paint in patches. Of course, a lot of the area around the ribs never got a proper sanding. I'm plannng on repainting the roof, quite possibly with a couple of white stripes, making it into the Skunk Mobile!!!