The Same Late Season Vacation Where Everything Was Different

Here it is, the typical late season vacation to Catalina again, only different!!!

The first thing that changed, we took the younger's friend. He's a good guy, calls me his father figure, and I call him my surrogate son.

The next, and probably the most significant thing we changed, instead of getting a hotel room, we rented one of the many houses in Avalon!!! There's a lot of them available to rent, but a lot of them are a ways back from Crescent Street, along the front of Avalon.

This one was on the lower end of the price range (but still a little more than the hotel would have been... and without the room credit towards some of the local places, of course) and it was just a little ways from Crescent Street, right down the first street as you come into town.

Almost all the places over there are older construction, and skinny and close together. That was the case with this one. It has a good sized front living room, a skinny kitchen including stairs up to the upper loft room, then a decent sized master bedroom.

Dang, that glare off the bald dome!!!

It has air conditioning (actually several wall mount units and a couple of portable units) but the weather there was perfect, and we didn't need to use any of them.

Upstairs there's a couple of beds and a little bathroom with a shower that is encroached upon by the slant of the roof, a little sitting area, and a tiny but pretty cool little balcony.

Since there was a little kitchen, I brought some bagels and cream cheese so we could have some breakfast or snack chow without having to go out. When we got there and found there was a coffee maker and several filters, we headed over to the store and picked up coffee and creamer, and several other things.

It's a nice place, though far from perfect. 100% would stay there again!!!

There's a washer and dryer on the side of the house (bonus, there was detergent there already!!!), and a shed full of all kinds of beach toys and floats. We were in the ocean swimming 3 of the 4 days, but didn't ever use any of the stuff in the shed.

Here's another thing that was changed, they painted the 1953 Flxable Buses!!! I liked the old style, but this looks good, too, and matches the Catalina Island Company colors. I had wanted to take the Inland Tour again, but apparently they only run that tour when the cruise ships that port in Avalon tell them to or something. Not sure if that's only during the off season.

Here's another thing that was different, surrogate son made dinner one night!!! He's had some chef training, and it came out great!!! Of course, everything over there is more expensive on account of everything having to be shipped over (and there's only one full grocery store, which is the perennially more expensive Vons) but it still came out at a fraction of what we'd been spending most other nights!!!

We did a lot of playing games. For something else different on the games, my boy brought over his Binding of Isaac game, and we played it several times.

There were several games in the closet including Battleship and a weird Cityville version of Monopoly. Didn't get to Battleship, but broke out the Monopoly one night. The end game for this version is to have 4 properties with skyscrapers on them. You can add buildings without having the full set, but you can't complete a skyscraper without the full set, so there's your challenge. I got the equivalent of Boardwalk and Park Place, and was on my way to getting enough capital to build out one of my other properties. Got a couple of hits from the others landing on them (which is how I was able to complete another set of properties).

Didn't quite get the capital together, and ended up losing the game!!! Congratulations to son #3. I had fun, though. Don't 100% remember, but I think I may have not won a single game!!!

We hiked up the left side of Avalon this time instead of the right side, where the Catalina Chimes Tower is. It was a little early in the day (but not that early, I'm on vacation, dammit!!!) maybe around 1:00 PM or so, and it was still a little cloudy out.

As we ascended up the gradual rise, and easy hike, we got further into the clouds, and they were streaming through the gaps in the mountains!!! It was pretty cool!!!

Here's what my goal was for heading up this side this time, it's where Mount Ada is located. It was the home of William Wrigley Jr. and his wife Ada, and has since been converted into one of the most expensive hotels on Catalina. In the pictures I've seen it looks like a nice place, but not nice enough to justify the price, and being separated from most anything else you'd want to do on Catalina!!! A cursory search doesn't show it has an included golf cart or hotel shuttle, but for the price I would think it would.

The one thing I hadn't considered, for such a nice place it naturally is behind closed gates to keep the riff raff such as myself away!!! Nice looking gate...

A slightly related reason I'd wanted to hike up there, there's a couple of Pokemon Go gyms up there. When we vacationed there during the Stupid Times and they had expanded the distance to reach gyms, we put a couple 'Mon in one of gyms up there, and they stayed for weeks on end!!! The Pokemon in the gyms had been there a while, but when we got up there, we had no internet connection. (When we were back in downtown Avalon that afternoon, we still had no internet, it often seems very flaky over there).

Nice hike up there, though!!! We went a little further, and there was a similarly gated driveway. There was an overlook point that we explored a little with interesting semi constructed areas, and a nasty looking reservoir. On the way back, I got this shot of the place we stayed, Green Palace Junior, from the back!!! The master bedroom has nothing directly over it, but you can still hear when someone is moving around upstairs, and you can see how the little sitting room area upstairs is the only part that's square to the house.

The clouds had mostly cleared by the time we were heading down, giving a nice before and after of Avalon and the harbor.

The first night we were there, my wife was wanting Italian for dinner. The previous go-to would have been Antonio's on the waterfront, but the last time we had been there it looked like the menu had been gutted and the hours were shortened. It's since been changed to a place called Pier 24 and re opened, and it seems like the menu is back to being fairly robust (but not as much Italian-themed) and the hours restored. So there's another “new” place we went to. The sun had already set, so it was on the cool side outdoors, so we didn't get in on the outdoor seating ambiance.

We also hit some of our previous favorites, the classic Buffalo Nickel and Jack's Country Kitchen.

To round out the week, and for the final something different to round out this post, the last night we went to the Mexican place that's on the first part of the street we were staying on, Mi Casita (visible in the 2 pictures from the balcony shooting towards the beach). Good food, and it was much more enjoyable after the table of drunks left!!! They had a dessert menu, and my wife was wanting to get something from it, but it was close to closing and they only had flan left as an option, as they had shut down the ice cream machine. After we left, my son and I went to Von's for the final time and picked up a 4-pack of Reese's ice cream sandwiches, which were great, and fed all of us for less than a single dessert would have cost at Mi Casita!!!

And here's what I consider to be my prize winner photo from the trip!!!

Bold and Brash

A few months ago while we were out for a walk, the younger and I came across one of those interesting "trash man, take this or if anyone wants any of this *almost too good to throw out" piles. I stopped down to inspect if there was anything I wanted, and the boy spotted this artwork. He laughed, but I had no idea what it was, so he explained. It was a painting that Squidward had done on an episode of Spongebob. It had been raining earlier, and it was a little warped. He took it, and when we got it home I placed it under a couple of cinder blocks to straighten it out.

Fast forward a while, and I discovered it just before his birthday. Mom had several other things she had gotten for him that was going in a gift bag, so I had her wrap it in some tissue and include it. I think all his friends got it, too, and I had them re-enact the scene!!!

The whole thing is pretty good (except for them starting before the video was rolling) but my favorite part may be his friend in the background!!!

Spooky Season

Happy slightly belated Halloween!!!

This year my younger wanted to get a deer skull mask for his costume. There are a few of them out there, but they aren't cheap. I looked around and found a goat skull one instead, with the thought that the horns could be modified into antlers, but he decided that goat was good enough.

I don't know if I've made mention, but I'm back on the weekend shift!!! Since mid-summer, I've been doing 9 hour days Tuesday through Friday, and then 4 hours on Saturday afternoons, 3 to 7, and I like it pretty good, but it can interfere with Saturday evening stuff.

Some friends of the family just recently bought a house, and it's actually fairly close to ours. It's a very cool old place, with lots of rooms. A couple months ago they threw a housewarming party... on a Saturday evening!!! The rest of the family had gone when it had started, and I showed up a few hours in, after I was off. The Saturday before Halloween, they threw a Halloween party, and once again, the rest of the family had gone when it had started, and I showed up a few hours in, after I was off.

When I showed up, they were doing a pumpkin decorating and carving contest. The boy and wife had done a pretty good black cat on one side, and a bear on the other. I arrived, and touched up the standing fur on the cat and zig-zagged the top. It was a good time. Oh, and of course, the only picture I got of the aforementioned goat mask, I'm wearing it!!!

On Halloween, the boy and I dressed up and wandered the neighborhood as we do. The chili house was open for a snack stop. The lady of the house asks, “You just got that cool yellow sports car, didn't you? What is it?” I get that a lot!!!

And, of course, no spooky season would be complete without the early November tradition!!!

Cat Tale

We had been out and about shopping and such today. We bought a big frozen pizza at the store for lunch, and put it in when we got home. Just a little after, my wife gets a call. A friend had been out, and came across a kitten!!!

It followed her, and she couldn't locate the mother. She has a dog, so there's no way she could keep it. She knew we had lost our cat at the beginning of the year, and had fostered a little ginger. We agreed to take it. We went over and got it.

We think it's another tom cat, but we've been wrong before!!! Anyway, it's a good looking kitten, with no eye gloop, and no sneezing. He's eating and drinking well.

It mostly slept when we got it home. It climbed up on my son's neck and slept. It climbed my wife's neck and slept. It climbed my neck and slept.

It seems to like being a shoulder cat. I like the idea of a cat that rides your shoulder like a parrot.

It's tentatively named Sidney, a good name that can go for either gender. When it gets rowdy while playing, we can call it Sid Vicious!!!

Sidney. Sidney HowsYerPie.

Ginger Foster

Last weekend was Memorial Day. On Monday we went to a picnic with a bunch of friends. Very shortly after we arrived, the sister of one of my son's friends calls us over, and bundled up in a blanket, she has this little ginger kitten!!!

There was a cargo storage container there, and apparently there was a litter of them under there, crying out. This was the only one they were able to get out, as it's eyes were gooped shut. She was able to get one cleaned and open. She also said that the others were spooky feral, but this one was glad to be rescued!!! When we first met him (she says he's a tomcat, but from previous experience, it can be tricky with kittens!!!) she had named him Frankincense, or Frank for short, which is also her brother's name. It was a rather cool day out, and the little guy was shivering. Later on, she'd changed his name to Colby. Colby Jack. I rather like that much better!!! Around the time everybody was getting ready to leave, she asks us if we could take him “for a few days, while I work on my mom”. I don't mind, even though, who knows, it could turn into a permanent situation.

He's a spooky little guy, but that's to be expected. We took him home wrapped in the blanket, and kept him like that for a while. We unwrapped him, and he pretty quick found the secluded area below the drawers on my desk. He did come out after a while for some food that we had laid out for him. The next day, he was still under there while I was working, and since he was somewhat trapped by me being there working, I eventually pulled the drawer out and extracted him, and put him in the kitchen. He's mostly taken up residence in the corner behind the refrigerator, but he's been getting out a little bit more as he's gotten used to it. I made up a box bed for him, and he got in it once. I left the blanket in the corner, thinking he may like it since he had some history with it. He logged on it, but has since figured out what a litter box is for. A couple of times (once, in the midst of writing this up), I've been able to get some pets in, and he does head snuggles, purrs, kneads a little, and rolls over on his back, I'm not sure if he's looking for belly rubs, or if he wants to play. Oh, and he's VERY vocal, especially when someone comes into the room. My wife and son have taken to calling him Gloopy, as his eyes still have some discharge, even though they are better. Now there's a unique name for a cat!!!

8 Weeks

It's been a while since I've done any updates about work. The last time I'd mentioned anything, I was the only person doing sourcing for information for our CAD builds. That wasn't a lot different than what they do for photography for the catalog, so they added me to the photography & art direction team for doing that kind of thing, too!!! Towards the end of last year, they started discussing returning to the office. The plan was to have various teams come in for a few days each month on a rotating schedule. The only thing is, the rest of my team is located back east. I don't mind, I'll head back a few times a year!!! Instead of doing that, though, they decided to transfer me to a department that is represented locally. They trained me for a customer service position, dealing with e-mail and text contacts. Since the beginning of the year I trained in that department, and then was working doing that. April was my first rotation coming into the office for three days of the week. The second day, they called me in, and told me that they've been struggling in my old department, and asked if I could, on a temporary basis, come back and help out.

This is one of the first of my old friends that I saw when I came back. He's the one that I'd gone to see Brian Fallon with a few years back, and he wanted to get a selfie with me to send to his girlfriend, who occasionally asks after me!!!

The opinion of several of my co-workers was that I would probably be there longer than the time they had specified, the 8 weeks mentioned in the title. They took a couple of days an re antiquated me with the process and show me the changes. After that, I was able to get back into my old role fairly easy. I told my co-workers it was like getting back on the world's worst bicycle!!! All the old aches and pains came back to me, too!!! Since I wasn't working from home, I wasn't seeing the cat, and one day on break I spotted this shaggy fellow out in the quad, so I got a picture of it!!!

I don't know if I've ever made mention, but one of the break rooms features a cool curved glass block wall. It used to have a couch, but they took it out on account of the Wuhan. One day I went in and both the chairs were taken, and I asked if I was going to have to sit on the floor. One of the girls I work with said they would lay back with their legs up the wall, and it would give them a good stretch on your back and legs. That sounded good, so I tried it, and after that, almost every day I'd do that on my afternoon break!!!

Of course, I was finally getting my steps in every day, so I would get my Pokemon GO buddy out. One day, I tried getting my buddy out while reclined against the glass block wall, and this is what a mamoswine looks like from underneath!!!

And the same mamoswine down one of the asiles.

The second week I had a vacation scheduled, which I have yet to post anything about. My wife is having another surgery this coming week, so I recently asked how they were doing on getting things staffed. I could tell that things have been better than they had been at the start. I told them that since the recovery is an uncertain process, it would be great if I could return to the customer service position and go back to working from home, and they arranged to get that taken care of, so I held them to the eight weeks that they said to begin with!!! It was honestly a nice change, other than commuting during the worst gas prices ever, but I don't mind being back to working from home!!!

Crazy Bikes Revisited

Way back when I made the Tribute post, I made mention of a couple of my creations. The other day I was at my parents house, and took a couple of pictures of the pictures mentioned therein.

First up was the chopper bike I'd made by welding in six foot fence posts. The original thought was to use the forks on my 20" BMX bike, possibly with a smaller wheel on the front end. It was highly unstable, and impossible to drive. Since I had come upon this 16" kids bike, complete with training wheels, and the head tube was the correct size, on the forks went to it. The training wheels made it so it could be stood up, at least, although it was tilted way back!!!

The second shot is the April Fool's trick where my sidehack ended up on the diving board of the pool.

Dang, I was a dorky looking kid!!!

The Wayback Machine

I've kinda been on a roll of late with me blogging. I'm going to try and keep it going!!! I've got a lot of things I could go on about, but for now I'm taking this fork. Something I've wanted to do for a while. All the cars I've owned!!!

I did one post, back in 2009, about the first car I ever purchased, and just today I went back and added web-sourced pictures and another paragraph. Way previous to that, I'd done a tiny little post of my first actual car. Much more could be said there.

Anyway, fast forward a few years from the Dinosaur, and here's the first car I ever owned that would have had two names on the title!!! Would have, mind you, as we were never actually able to get it titled in our name. We bought it for $750 without first having the owner smog check it. I have been wary of doing so ever since, but still haven't let that stop me!!! I'm usually too antsy to jump on a "deal". Took it to a smog check center, and it had three places in the exhaust system that had leaks. Can't smog it if you can't detect anything at the end of the pipe!!! 1975, if I remember the year correctly. Seems to me it had the rear edge of one of the fenders crinkled, as though the door had met it at some point.

Anyway, this was back when we were poor. Probably 1989 or 1990 is when this all went down, and we'd saved up to buy something. I don't remember ever having to use one car between us, so I'm thinking this was while we were using the Gremlin. If you're poor, my advice to you is to stop being poor, it sucks. My wife had ridden in someone's Celica once, and liked it, so the hunt was on to see if we could find one in the price range we could afford. One of my friends growing up had a later fastback, and spun it on the freeway into the guard rail, totaling it. He'd sold the engine from it to someone he knew that had a coupe of the same color as his, swap included, and I helped him swap it. Actually, we both swung the engines (and transmissions) from the one to the other, and he flaked, so I ended up finishing everything off. I believe the girl we were doing it for ended up paying me some amount more than I was expecting, likely stiffing him for the rest of the cost. His was manual and the recipient was automatic. If you've driven an econobox of this vintage with an automatic, you'll likely agree that manual transmissions are the best option. ANyway, I was impressed with some of the innovation of those clever Japanese.

Ours was similar to these web sourced pictures I found, in that it was a red coupe. I preferred the fastback style, in most generations of the Celica, but apparently there were none to be had in our price range. Also, ours had a strange vinyl top, not the decent looking full top black pictured in the first shot, but tan, and only covering the rear half, landau style, and it looked like the color had been refreshed by spray painting. I seem to recall it wasn't fastened to the roof especially well, and would billow up at highway speed. My plan, if I'd ever gotten to it, was to strip off the vinyl, sand down the rust that was likely hiding under it (primary reason I don't like vinyl tops) and getting some black wrinkle finish paint to spray on the area.

Inside, the fun continued with a headliner hanging down. Not long after we got it, I made up an aluminum plate about 2 inches larger than the dome light all the way around, and used that to hold it up a little better. Seems to me it had some strangeness with the electrical system, and I'm pretty sure the air conditioning didn't work.

Mechanically, it had the manual transmission, and if I recall, a leaky clutch master cylinder. I seem to recall at some point filling the reservoir and opening the slave cylinder to do a "gravity bleed". Another time I was heading to my parent's house, and it stalled on the off ramp. I don't think I even opened up the cool forward-flip hood, just took off the mile or so to my parent's house. No one was home there, so I went to Sean's and we took his '68 Mustang with similar red paint and vinyl top, as well as his toolbox, to see if we can figure out what was up. Upon opening the hood, I quickly discovered the hot wire to the coil had broken off, so it was a fairly easy fix. Sean, meanwhile, found the sprinklers along the off ramp had a little plastic sign that said, "WARNING: These premises irrigated with reclaimed waste water", so he removed one and hung it by the sink in his bathroom!!! I remember some wonkiness with the windows, them not quite rolling up all the way. Pretty sure at one point one of the regulators gave out and I opened up the door panel and fashioned a 1x2" piece of wood to hold it in the closed position. I remember in the short time we had it, it rained quite a bit. It had 5-slot mag wheels, the same as my first car had, so we had two cars with the same style rims at the time. I think it had some kind of aftermarket stereo, but don't remember for sure.

It was a fun car, front engine rear drive with a fairly tight suspension, and of course that stick shift!!! Go-kart handling, and while it probably wasn't especially quick, it sure felt like it was.

I can't remember how long we had it, long enough that I remember it pretty well and fondly, but in my head I can't imagine it was more than six months. Certainly a car I kinda wished I still had. If you are able to find any of them anymore, they are either complete junk or are ridiculously priced, or both. So, here's how it ended...

We were living in North Long Beach at the time. As is the case, you end up finding short cuts to get home. Ours was to cut through the residential area before where we lived, avoiding a left turn light, then an uncontrolled left across a busy street. There were a couple of cross streets with a stop sign going crosswise to the one we'd be on, but they had deep rain gutters on either side going our way. Hence, a lot of people going our way would come to practically a stop, but we had no such respect for our suspensions, just slow enough to not bottom out. Since most people going our way would be going very slow, a lot of people rolled the stop signs. You can probably see where this is going. One afternoon I come home to my wife talking on the phone to the insurance company. Hmmm, that doesn't sound good... I look out the window into the parking lot, and see the front end basically flat. She gets off the phone and breaks down crying, and for a while I can't understand what she's saying. Come to find out, pretty much exactly what you'd guess from the intro to this paragraph!!! Some guy in a full size van rolled through the stop sign, never suspecting my wife, and she cleanly T-bones him!!! His insurance ends up paying us off to the tune of $1400 or so, if I recall, and we get to retain the hulk of the poor Celica. The cool looking front end was closed up in the middle of the grille, with the hood bent down and the bumper bent up. Since we were having trouble getting it smogged, we were more than happy with the payoff!!! I remember getting a replacement fender from half price day at the pick your part, but don't remember if that was before or after the wreck. Know I never put it on. I also remember pulling the bumper mounts and straightening 'em, but not ever getting it back together. Couldn't find a replacement hood. I'm pretty sure the radiator was leaking afterwards, but somehow I got it to my parent's house and had it in their side yard for a while. Don't remember for how long, but after the wreck I was finally able to get a salvage slip in our name, after clearing up some strangeness with the previous owner's actual name. Ended up selling it off, maybe for $100, maybe for $200, but not before I took the rims off for our next car (bought, of course, with the insurance payoff money!!!) That is, possibly, a story for another day. I've already got the images for it from the 'web!!!

Tribute

As usual, I've got a bunch I could go on about. This takes precedence.

At the end of last month, I came home from my Saturday shift to a message from a friend I'd grown up with to give him a call. I hadn't heard from him in a while, and returned the call. He tells me that our friend Sean had recently died, and there's a celebration of life the next day. It's a couple hours drive north of me, in the high desert. It was a pleasant drive, but I was stuck with my thoughts. It had been years since I'd seen him.

I arrived a few minutes in, and there was a large crowd. A good portion are in wheelchairs. His second wife has a daughter with spina bifida, and he had taken his fabrication skills in the direction of making custom wheelchairs.

Back when we were kids, we were always making things with Lego bricks, then we transitioned to modifying our bikes, then our cars. He'd bought a sidehack for his bike, which someone welded on. I liked the way it looked, as well as the change in the handling dynamics of the bike. I got a little torch set for my birthday that year, which was supposed to be able to do light duty welding. It sucked it's little oxygen cylinder dry before I was able to complete half the braze of the head tube on my own sidehack. My father was able to borrow an arc welder. If the first was undersize, the second was way oversize!!! I burned many a hole through thin tubing, but got good at filling them back in and making giant booger welds that almost always held. My parents have a couple of pictures in photo collages in their house of these creations. One year Sean and Steve (the guy who'd told me of his passing) found an IRS letterhead envelope and paper and dropped it in our mailbox on April 1st, addressed to the fictitious company Crazy Bikes Inc. that I had mailed out to companies with. They put the message "April Fools!!! Look for your sidehack!!!", with the intention of playing the funny trick on me off taking the wheels and leaving it up on blocks. Joke was on them, though, it didn't have any wheels on it at that time!!! Well, with that plan foiled, they improvised and set it up on the diving board on a chair with a life preserver around the handlebars and a foam ring around the seat, and that's one of the pictures. Another shot is a 16" kids bike I'd modified into a chopper... by cutting the front forks and welding in six foot long fence posts!!! It was terribly unstable, and required training wheels to ride at all. That's another picture on the wall, me attempting to ride it while Sean looks on from beside.

When we started in with cars, his dad bought him a '61 Ranchero. I had the old family car '76 Maverick. We lowered 'em. We shaved the door handles. We converted them from column shift to floor shift. He chopped about 6" out of the top of his, and added in an offset snorkel hood scoop, to line up with the intake of the 144 cubic inch six. I cut a targa top in mine. He never did find someone to cut down the windshield glass, so it never really got roadworthy again. Of course, sound system upgrades were made. That's where Sean really got his start, doing stereo and alarm installations for people. It helped both of us that my mom was working for Pioneer Electronics. Of course, this was around the time when mini trucks were getting big, and he started a groundbreaking and ground scraping suspension shop. I had stopped by one of these and he was showing me a truck he was putting an air suspension on, one of the first to do that. Come to find out, he was inducted into the Mini Truck Hall of Fame. I would link to it, but it appears they've let their domain lapse. Anyway, he was quite the fabricator, and it was pretty amazing how his stuff would come out. I would also fabricate things, but our approaches were different. I would meticulously plan things out in detail ahead of time, then start in, and usually the results would be not be to my satisfaction, and I'd end up coming back weeks or months later and dialing it in better. He took more of a banzai approach, diving right in, and more often than not coming up with a nice finished product in short order.

He was a daredevil. I remember the time he broke his collarbone doing a bunny hop on his bike over a planter at the college where we were always riding our bikes, and jamming over to the nearby fire station to get him help. At another visit to one of his shops, he shows me a picture of a flying Subaru, which he told me he'd recently bought and taken it out to see what it could do. The guy who'd taken the picture was at the celebration, and related the story.

Just a couple weeks prior to finding out, my younger son was saying he's probably the most sensitive person to spicy food. I told him no, I knew someone more so. Sean used to order pizzas with no tomato sauce because he couldn't handle it. Another guy spoke at the celebration with the same story.

Here's a shot of his daughter in her custom chair. There were so many cool chairs there, I kinda wanted to take shots of them all, but didn't feel comfortable asking all these people to get pictures. Fortunately, there's a lot of images at the website of his company. Come to find out, he'd done the one 2 Chainz used when he broke his leg. I was able to see and talk to his parents, and meet his widow. I overheard her telling someone she wants to keep the company going, I hope she's able to find a fabricator that's up to the task.

Funny how there's a few parallels in our lives. We both have versions of our first cars, we both sport mustache and goatees (although his went quite a bit more wild than mine has) and we both have red haired wives.

His death keeps hitting me in different ways. To exacerbate the situation, I've had a couple more deaths since then, and that Vegas business went down on the night of the celebration.

So, a couple weeks before, I was looking at the hardtop versions of the Saturn SCs, and was thinking that without the sunroof, it would be an interesting candidate to make into a true gullwing door car, none of this lame attaching the hinge to the top of the door frame, but cutting to the center of the roof and hinging it in the middle. Hmmm.... might work out good, with some reinforcement along the spine and those lightweight plastic door skins. Meanwhile... I've been keeping an eye out for a replacement for Scruffy. She keeps on ticking, but is now pushing 190K miles, and if you let it go, that ticking will be the engine running low on oil!!! I've got the replacement body panels for her, but kind of want to sand down the roof where the clear coat is in terrible condition, and shoot it with white spray paint. I've got the idea to 3-tone her, with a white roof, gloss black on the window rails and A pillar, and similar to the factory green from the greenhouse down. I think it'd look nice. Ran the idea past my dad, who has more car painting experience than most, and he comes up with, "Nahhh... primer black!!!" Now, I know my wife wouldn't care much for it, BUT!!! My younger boy is closing in on 16 and showing more interest in getting his license than the older had at his age. Find a suitable replacement for my wife (all the power doodads, and maybe find her something with a sunroof this time, too!!! Oh, and looks pretty) and yank the engine out of Scruffy and do the build I've been dreaming of in it (.040" overbore to 2.0, early crank with later rods, some work on the exhaust ports, and a stud kit is probably all, but that should be enough for improvements and longevity). That primer black sounds like the scheme it could use, but I'm picturing a few other tweaks... Steelies painted red (or orange) with moon hub caps, probably get some lowering springs, maybe some matching red or orange pin stripes, and of course, the realization of making her into a sedan delivery as I envisioned when we first got her!!! Probably seal in the back doors, so some coupe seats that flip forward would be in order. Now, while I'm going crazy with the mods, why not gullwing doors on a phantom sedan delivery??? Don't think I haven't been thinking about it, even to the point of having preliminary ideas on how to reinforce the body and roof and engineer the roof hinges. Of course, by the time I do any or all of these tweaks, I think it'll be mine and the boy would have to settle for 3.

Told one of the car guys at work about it, how I'd thought of it before I'd heard, and now I kinda have to.

You know, as a tribute.

It's Getting Manny Down Here

My older boy has a group of friends who get together usually monthly or so for a sleepover. Around ten of them. Don't know how much sleeping goes on, they snack & game & watch DVDs & such. He wanted to host next weekend, but I heard how many and nixed that.

He persisted, if he could get the basement somewhat cleared out, could they hold it down there??? Well, two birds with one stone, get some clearing out done and have an area capable of holding 'em all!!! So, he had a few of the guys come over & I bought 'em a giant pizza. Probably can't tell so well, but the first picture is the pizza box pretty much taking up my trunk from wall to wall!!!

The back story on the basement pretty much is that if you have an empty space, you end up storing all kinds of things, things too good to just toss. In other words, of dubious value. I'd always kind of had the idea of cleaning it up and setting it up as the man cave down there.

On the other hand, a lot of the stuff end up damaged or totally obsolete, and aren't much worth anything anymore. Case in point, that sweet super 8 camera down there. Can you even get film for that anymore??? If so, have you got a projector??? Or you could just record & edit it with compact flash memory!!!

I liked the guys who were cleaning out!!! They had an appreciation & love for much of the vintage stuff down there!!! They found my long missing Super Mario Brothers 3 cartridge, then took an hour break to play it on the NES I'd pulled out & hooked up a few months back.

Personally, I wouldn't call it anywhere near useable yet, but it's a start. We've got many cool decorations set up now!!!!

My old Ferrari wall art....

My old lava lamp...

The TV case I'd had the old tube TV mounted in, with a vintage 70's knob tuner TV on top of it, and a old CRT monitor in it...

And a couple of old computer cases on a high shelf...

Not really so useable, but there's a cool built in desk, made back in the 60's probably, but like it was made to set up a desktop computer on!!!

And, finally, a thermoformed plastic head!!! Looks a bit like a mannequin, doesn't it??? Told you it was getting manny down there!!!