Farewell 2024

Welcome to (in all likelihood) the final post of the year!!! I had a few others in me, but they're not ready for prime time as of yet. So, what do I now have in common with my cat???

In 2024 we both have broken a bone related to walking!!!

On Saturday, 4 days ago, I was coming down some stairs, and on the last one I rolled my foot to the inside, and I swore I heard a pop (and, yes, I swore). It was painful, and I was limping around afterwards, but the pain wasn't in my ankle as I would have expected. I went to a local urgent care (which I'd been to once this month already, I had a cough that wasn't going away, and it turned out I had a bacterial infection. The stuff they prescribed did a fine job clearing it up!!!) and was told there was around a 3 hour wait. I expected as much, being a weekend, it wasn't anywhere near that long when I went on a Tuesday. Of course, I work in the evenings on Saturdays, and it was going to be close at best.

After a wait commensurate with the time estimated, they took me in and took my vitals and my story. After a quick visual inspection they took X-rays, and a bit later the doctor comes back and tells me I broke it. Displaced 5th metatarsal fracture, to be exact. They put on a splint (which feels loose to me) and gave me a pair of crutches and referred me to an orthopedic surgeon for further evaluation. Oh yeah, they told me before they put the splint on that I may have to cut off my pants when I got home. No thanks, I'll just take those off now!!! My surrogate son had been driving us around, and I know he had his windbreaker, and I figured I'd fashion it into a kilt. I never did, but that's what I was thinking of doing.

Ended up 45 minutes late to starting work that day. I tried to contact the orthopedic surgeon they had referred me to on Monday, and it put me on hold forever, then put me through to a message machine, which told me it was completely full after it beeped. At any rate, I had been looking them up the day before on the map, and they aren't very highly rated. My wife happens to know a place that does some orthopedic surgery, so I contacted them. The soonest they could get me in is this coming Friday.

I never saw the X-rays, so I don't know exactly the location or extent of the fracture. Most of the information I found was it'll be 6 to 8 weeks if no surgery is required. It honestly doesn't feel that bad, unless I try and walk on it or put pressure on it. There are a few types of fractures it could be, avulsion, Jones, or dancer's. I found a couple of images of them, and one of them was actually from another guy on Blogger, and it sounds like his injury came about similarly to mine, but it looks like his was worse, with some swelling.

This is now my second broken bone, the first one I referred to when it had happened, back in 2005 around when I'd started blogging. I have a couple of mentions and links to the picture, but they were hosted on Geocities (now defunct, if you didn't know), and if I'd posted about it, it was probably on MySpace. You remember MySpace, don't you??? Maybe I'll post about it at some point, I tell people it's where my newest tattoo came from (they injected numbing agents in my knuckles through my greasy dirty hand, and the mark remains) and it's one of my many tales that my younger likes me to share with his friends.

I was thinking of making this into a random post with several bits of the aforementioned possible future posts, but not tonight. One of the things I would have had that carries over is my wife had broken some of her back rods again, and had surgery at the beginning of November to repair and reinforce things. She got out the day before Thanksgiving, and thankfully she's got a good amount of her mobility back, which works out since I now can't drive. It was on my right hand foot.

Still holding the title of Titanium Queen!!!

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!!!

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.

September Random - 13 Shots

As I said, I have a lot I could have made posts on, so I'm going to go a little random to do a recap here!!!

Back at the end of March we had another range day. The night before it was raining, and was precdicted to continue. I thought it was going to get scrubbed, but others weren't to be deterred by a little rain!!!

It had the cool effect that you could see where your bullet was hitting!!!

It started clearing up later on in the day, and turned into a really beautiful day!!! There was a big puddle on the road in and out, and a bunch of rocks had become disloged from the sides on the way out.

Came upon a patch of the rocks strewn across the road, and was unable to avoid one of them as I was rolling through. Predictably, one of them popped one of the tires. Got to see if the spare and the tools in the Matrix (wasn't going to take Scruffy off road!) were up to the task, which gladly they were. We stopped at the strangest Del Taco for some lunch on the way back, and then ducked into the place I usually buy tires these days, and got a replacement put on.

At the beginning of April the boy and I went to an Angels game. It wasn't a particularly wet winter, but a little drizzle started towards the end, so we left early.

At the end of April we went up to Running Springs again for a couple nights.

It was a pretty good low-key vacation.

The boy and I went on a night walk, and we went to Lake Arrowhead and a thrift store in Blue Jay. Of course, we had breakfast both days in the best coffee shop in Running Springs!!!

Just for fun, here's a picture I took of the front of Scruffy reflected pretty nicely in the back of a truck, reminiscent of a shot I took years ago!!!

I noticed that post I've linked has the keyword "potato" for some reason. Guess I'll have to have it in this post, too!!!

Went to the beach for my birthday. Dug holes and made a sand sculpture and splashed around in the water, then went to In-N-Out Burger for a late lunch!!!

Early June my wife went in for back surgery again. They connected everything from the neck to the pelvis!!!

Since it was the second time going in, the surgeon enlisted a plastic surgeon to work on the closing. If that's the result you get from plastic surgery, I don't think it's worth it!!! Told her if she ever wants another tattoo, she could get a zipper pull drawn on the end!!! She was in for both her birthday and the 4th of July. The surgeon wanted her up and moving as soon as possible, and the plastic surgeon wanted bed rest for as long as possible!!! I think she was up and around the quickest I can remember from this surgery!!!

At some point during the summer, my work announced that since things have been economically rough these days since we have clowns running the country, they were going to have a cash profit sharing mid-year this year!!! As always, the man took his chunk, but I still had a good amount of gravy left over!!! I was thinking that since (1) I don't really have a spare car these days, I could pick something up, and (2) since I've never owned a true convertible, I could get one!!! Since they aren't making them anymore and I've always liked the look (not to mention, it would keep with a theme I've had going for a while now) I was thinking of getting a Saturn Sky. The budget range I was thinking I'd like to stay in was around $5,000. You can find 'em around that, but naturally not pristine. Of course, there's the ugly duckling sibling, the Pontiac Solstice. Found this one that was in the range.

My wife made mention that it's not a super-practical car (kinda the point!!!) and kind of a vanity type thing. I considered it, and yeah, kind of. I considered what else there was, the Toyota Solara and it's Lexus twin have that Toyota reliability, if you believe the hype, but if you thought the Solstice was ugly... Then I remembered, they had made a convertible version of the PT Cruiser!!! I know, they have a polarizing style, but my wife and I have always been on the positive end of that polarization, and we liked the rental we had when we went to the Gilroy Garlic Festival. I've always thought the classic was better looking, but I could deal with the convertable!!! A little more practical, and still a drop-top!!! The convertible isn't super common, but almost all of them are below the price threshold I'd set. Found this one that's being offered by a dealer for $3,999 with under 92k miles, and as far as the engine goes, it's the one you'd want!!! Kind of love the color, too!!! Not so much that I've actually called about it, or looked into actually going to see it...

The Month of Not Working Very Much

Happy September!!! Thought I'd do a recap of my last month...

I had the first week of the month off... starting on the Monday on the end of July (actually the Sunday, but that's a normal day off for me anyway) through to the Saturday shift I normally work. That is the week that we had normally gone to family camp, but that has been in flux the last couple of years. Last year we'd ended up going to the San Diego area with the extended family, and this year, it was moved up a week earlier. The youngest got to go, but since I'd scheduled the wrong week at the beginning of the year, I didn't.

Anyway, since I had the time off, thought I'd get some stuff done around the house, as well as try and get some leisure stuff in. Something that's been a burr under my saddle since it was done was the half-assed tiling job that was done a few years back by the most incompetent and crooked contractors shysters I've ever done business with, YYB Construction.

As you can see, they'd done a lame transition from the original yellow tile on 45° angles to white 90°.

Not only that, but the switch for the overhead light on that end of the kitchen, they moved from by the door entering the room where God intended it to be, to over by the sink!!! I opened up the old junction box, and put it back where it belongs.

Next thing, clean up that door jamb and get some fresh paint on it...

Oh, and since I'd moved that light, I was able to put a super bright LED strip over the sink, where they'd taken out a light that used to be up there (and not even bothered to fix the hole it left!!!) I'm quite pleased with the results.

Prior to this week, my wife had been seeing a specialist about some pains she's been having, and he said he was going to do a disc replacement surgery on her. An outpatient deal, in by 10, out by 2, no muss, no fuss. I had a feeling they'd want someone to take her home and such, so I told her to see if she could get in the week I was off. Ended up being a couple of pre-op appointments on Wednesday and Thursday, with the procedure on Friday. Cool!!!

Show up on Friday, and the doctor says he's going to do a fusion between a few of the vertebrae on the inside to keep the discs from collapsing. Huh. OK. He also says, "Later on, we're going to do another surgery and add some reinforcement to the outside, too." Well, that sounds like more!!!

So they wheel her off to surgery, wait over here, we'll call and let you know what's what... hours go by, well past the out by 2 I was told. Finally, they give me the room they're going to bring her to post-op, and I head up there. She arrives a bit later, and after a while it becomes apparent she's not going home that day. That day... which was the last day of my vacation, and I'm supposed to be back at work on Saturday early on. It's a bit late to call in, so I clear with the crew at the hospital that she can be there until I'm off, and I head there straight after. I don't know what they gave her for pain medicine, but it tweaked her melon!!! She had it in her head that they had moved her somewhere else, and she didn't have any of her clothes or effects there. I'd left her phone with her, and she'd sent a few not very coherent texts, and she called my parents and told them of the move, and the mean nurse at night. After getting up early that morning (barely on time to make it with no shave or shower) and working all day, I was burnt. I went straight to the hospital until late and then headed home that night again, as they weren't letting her go home just yet. When I get there the next day, she told me how the mean nurse had come back again, and wanted to put her hand in some fluid or something, then cut it into a shape... They had a sitter with her from that point on. The doctor came and saw her, and asked why she was still there!!! I told him I think she's still quite out of it, and he tells them nothing but Tylenol. BUT!!! They'd just given her something, and she ended up sleeping several hours more, until late that afternoon

So far, we're up to almost the first week in August!!! The doctor wanted to see her on Monday for a follow up appointment, see how she's doing. First thing on Monday, I call into work and tell them I'm going to need to drive her to an appointment, and help her with food and cleaning and getting around for a few days, probably. No problem, they say, keep us posted. We go to the follow up, and everything is good, and hey, you know that other procedure for the outside??? We're doing that on Wednesday!!! Outpatient surgery, in by 10, out by 2. Cool. Plays out just about like the last time they said that!!! I don't believe that doctor when he says that kinda thing anymore!!! She was in the hospital until Saturday morning. At least I was prepared this time. They had the pain medication dialed in a lot better, and must have gotten Nurse Ratchet back down to the Psych ward. This time, I'm able to call out before my Saturday shift.

One day they had a therapy dog come make a visit. He was so chill!!!

All the rest of the weekend I kept asking her how she was doing, are you going to be OK if I go back to work on Monday??? Yea, I'll be OK. That, and the younger is still out of school, so he can help out. Before I go in, I let her know if she needs me there, just call in and I'll be there. At work they tell me pretty much the same thing, just let us know if you need to go home. They're good about that kind of thing.

So, I go in that week, but this is my Birthday week. Another of the vacation days I'd signed up for was my Birthday, so there's a day off in the midst of that week.

I had heard about on the Woody Show Jack in the Box has some new items, the Munchie Mash Ups, hash browns with white cheese sauce... Jack'd Jalapeno Hash with jalapenos and bacon, Wakey Bakey Hash with fried egg and bacon, or my favorite Hangry Hash with chicken nuggets and buffalo sauce. That was breakfast for my birthday, and then we went to see The Dark Tower movie. Remember how that first week I'd wanted to do some sort of leisure activity??? Mostly the only thing in that vein I got some in of was breaking out the last book of the Dark Tower series and starting in on it again. The last 3 (and book 4.5, if you will) I've only read through once, and for a while I've been meaning to hit 'em again, but when I attempted to do so, I could only find book 7. I'm most of the way through, and have located the other three. ANyway, the movie was pretty good, but when they say "Based on the book series", I think they should have been required to make it "Based LOOSELY on the book series". The younger was going into it completely cold, and my wife apparently hadn't retained much of it, and they both enjoyed it quite a bit. I went in expecting as much, and kind of went in with the mindset that it was on another, heretofore unvisited, level of the Tower, so to speak.

The week after that, my wife had another follow up appointment, so I took the day off to take her to that, too. So, if you're counting, that's one day of the first couple of weeks I worked, and 4 of 5 for the next couple.

I picked up a couple of phone holders for the cars that came up on one of the merchants that E-mails me daily. It looked like they would be able to mount in the blank area of the dash above the vents to the right of the instrument cluster. There was almost no explanation on the site, and it turns out it was supposed to be a vent-mount unit. I find those, and the CD slot mount phone holders to be about the stupidest things!!! I really don't want to sacrifice the functionality of either of those for a phone holder, or pretty much anything else!!!

With only a little modification, however, I was able to modify them to mount right in the area I was thinking of!!! Ran a couple of 6-32 screws through the legs, with rubber bumpers on the ends, and hooked the vent clip on the top of the dash plastic just under the dash cap!!! I'm pleased with how they came out.

The last weekday of the month that I would have worked, I checked the available days, and was able to take it. Took the boy down to Go-Cart World for good times!!! It was the least crowded I've ever seen there, we mostly had the place to ourselves!!!

23 days is how many I would have worked if I had not taken any time. 12 is what I ended up doing.

Gender Dysphoria Cat

Back around a year and a half ago, my wife & I became grandparents to our grand-kitten. At the time, we thought it was a boy cat. There is a lot going on on the back end. A few months later, he got sick. He was very lethargic, and we took him to an emergency vet. They said he's very dehydrated, and if nothing is done, he's going to die. Oh yea, one other thing, he is a she. I told my son I'd cover the cost if he'll pay me back, and I believe his then-girlfriend told him that if he didn't, she'd never talk to him again. For the relative bargain price of around $700, they re-hydrated her and kept her overnight. That turned out to be all it took to get her back in the pink, so to speak. She's been fine ever since.

Ever since then, we've had a girl cat. I'd look at her from the back, and think to myself that if that's a girl cat, she's mighty lippy!!! Well, she's a pretty girl, and I used to call Leo a handsome fellow, so for a feminine counter to that, I'd call her a sexy beast. Truth be told, all cats, regardless of gender, are pretty sexy, I think it has to do with the way they have their shoulders.

When we'd first gotten her, my boy would keep her in his room, because Leo didn't seem very social towards her. He would growl at her, and he was pretty vicious, so it didn't seem safe. After a few months, we started getting them acclimated to each other, and he was actually pretty good with her. As the months went on, the younger and more playful one would attack him, to which he wouldn't do much, just howl about it. That's where I came up with the line about him being in an abusive arranged marriage.

We sometimes would discuss getting her fixed, but since Leo already was and she is an indoor cat, it was never a real pressing issue.

Then, I walk in on him with his dink pointing out, & he's playing with it. Looked quite a bit like this picture of a mixer nozzle here, only all pink. If she's really a girl cat, she's got a hell of a clitoris.

We'll just call him/her an "it".

Shaved Pussy

As mentioned in my previous post, our cat had some medical issues. Apparently, tom cats have a rather Hank Hill-esque narrow urethra, and are susceptible to it getting clogged up. We've never had a tom cat before, so this was news to us. Another first, this is really the first time I've ever been in a position to be able to do anything for a gravely ill animal other than having it put down. As also previously stated, 2013 is still an expensive year. Well, he is a beloved member of the family, so I did what must be done. He'd better not make a habit of it.

So there's the shot of his shaved forearm (forepaw???). When we first brought him home, he had a blue bandage around it. My older got a picture of that, it's probably on his tumblr somewhere. On the estimates from the veterinarians they listed Elizabethan collars, AKA the Cone of Shame. For spending more on the kitty than I spent on my wife's latest car, I was looking forward to posting embarrassing photos of that here, but if he ever got one, it was off by the time he was sent home. Likely would not have fit inside the cat carrier with it on. So all I get is a shot of him with the bald spot where the IV was. They said he was rather uncooperative. If you've already got a swollen full bladder and they're trying to catheter your achey urethra, see how cooperative you are!!!

The second shot here is just a cute pose. He was playing one of his favorite games with me when I took the shot, Big Cat in a Cage!!! Bonus, when we got him back, his claws had been nicely trimmed, making the game more enjoyable for the hooman involved.

I have to get some amusement out of this situation. If I don't get it from getting to see him in that cone of shame or from the increased traffic from this posts' title, I'll close with a little joke at his expense:

A cat walks through the double doors of an old west saloon. His front leg is bandaged from the wrist down. He declares, "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw!!!"

Maybe This Year Will Be Better Than the Last

SO much to blog!!! I keep thinking I'll do better, but there's always something else, it seems. Oh well, it is the way of life.

Welcome to my year end wrap up!!! If I finish before 12 tonight, I'll have one more in for 2011!!! I'll go over a little of this & that interspersed with the pictures from this year's Christmas.

Completely unrelated thought, know how some stores (most, I would estimate) shun using the actual word "Christmas" in any of their advertisements and promotions??? Perhaps all us consumers should thusly shun doing any of our actual Christmas shopping at their establishments...

I like the way my son caught my wife giving me the sideways eyes in the first shot.

I think I did all my Christmas shopping online this year...

Bought our cat a catnip apple for Christmas. It's always lost. He never tells where it's at, if he knows.

Seems like work was busy all year. Goodie day came and went, and our department didn't do the T-shirt exchange that we usually do. Kept me from having to find one for a co-worker, usually with only a week or so of shopping time. Gravy day elicited a roar of approval from packing when it was announced to them, moments before our department. Biggest one I've ever had, bigger than everyone was thinking it was going to be, much to our delight. Not too far below the amount it was the one year prior to my arrival that the employees ended up shutting down the local branch of the bank the checks were drawn on because they ran out of cash!!! Signs so far tend to indicate this coming year will be at least as good!!!

Too much zoom in the shot of my wife getting the DVD set of Dexter season 5, boy. Actually, it came out a pretty good effect, though!!!

Now, to get on to non-Christmas related news, and in relation to the post title... Two weeks ago today I was actually up fairly early for a Saturday, when I got a call from my dad. He found my mom keeled over & unresponsive when he got up. She was already on her way to the hospital, and he was heading over.

They managed to bring her around, and the thing everyone (including myself) goes to is a stroke, so that was what they were treating her like. Turned out not to be the case. Arrhythmia and cardiac arrest was what was actually going on. Of course, we visited her that day, but she was heavily sedated and had, among many others, a tube down her throat. Somewhere between 13 and 30 times they've had to defibrillate her to get her going again. THEN she gets infected where they had the IV inserted in her hand, so it was later before they could implant the ICD... Pretty impressive device, they're able to externally adjust it, which they had to do a couple times in the next days. She seems to finally be in fairly good shape.

One bad thing, though, there's been illness within my household, so we haven't been able to visit much. I've called my dad most every day, and my mom several times also. My dad's been there every day, of course. Best Christmas ever, he says. I agree. My oldest sister has been there a lot, too, which is also a good thing.

I'm sure I could say much more, but don't want this post to be nothing but. I think I've covered most of the salient points. Oh, a little insult to injury, she went out with her leg on the little electric heater. Looks nasty, but it's healing up. Oh, another one, one of her rooms at the hospital got flooded out by the toilet. My dad was the one who discovered the extent of that one.

Got my boys a night vision viewer with video capabilities. It's pretty sweet, for the money I paid. I think they managed to delete the one pretty hilaras video of the older boy spooking the younger by coming forth from the darkness.

Massive windstorm last month. Knocked out power for something like four days and blew a sizable branch off the tree, narrowly missing the Falcon. My wife finally finished the book she was working on for a year or more. Had to use watches and phones to wake up. It was an adventure. I was very glad we have a gas heater.

I don't think I saw a single movie in the past year, with the exception of the documentary "Born to be Wild" when we were vacationing in San Diego at the Science Center's domed IMAX theater, and that was included with admission. It's about orphaned orangutans and elephants and the people who rescue them. It was narrated by Morgan Freeman, which was pretty epic. The movie was pretty decent, but you could tell it wasn't designed to be projected onto a dome, it didn't come out right around the edges. Much like facial piercings, I found that to be... distracting. They had another movie coming on after that one that I'd wished I'd opted for instead about storm chasers (which may have been the title of the movie, as well).

The couple of pretty good books I got in this year were one we'd got from my mom, John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany". Had that for a long time before I got to reading it. My wife started on it, but found it too dark. Got Stephen King's 11/22/63 when it came out, and went through that in fairly short order. It ended, I though, surprisingly upbeat for a King novel. I certainly enjoyed it. I'm currently going through Douglas Adams' HG2G books. I'd long ago gone through at least the first three (and in the middle of the third is where I currently at) but know I never made it through the final one. A couple years back, I think it was, I bought the five in one ultimate one for my first born, and that's the one I'm currently in. The one the seller shipped at first was a collectors edition with photos and such, but not all five books. They made it right, though.

Hey, it's already 2012 on the Eastside!!! Happy New Year!!!

Car news. The last week my wife was working this year, the traitorous starter on Janice went out again, less than three month later. Do NOT buy your starters from Auto Zone, their rebuilders suck. That was what I was going to be doing the weekend my mom went down, so that was delayed. Oh yea, we had been planning on doing the family Christmas the following Monday (I had it off, along with the Tuesday after Christmas as my last personal days) so needless to say that has yet to happen.

The Wednesday following THAT, Baby started showing some problems... First sign was she stalled right after starting up!!! That never happens... Had to two-foot her when coming to a stop and such. Checked forums and it sounded like (along with a previous symptom I'd noticed) a bad coolant temperature sensor. Bought a new one, as well as a fresh set of plugs and wires, the next day. When I went to install it, made the mistake of giving it one too many cranks tightening it down and snapped it off down in the hole.

Didn't want to try and get it out in such an awkward area, so I JB welded it back together. That seems to be doing fine, and it seemed to be working fine until it warmed up, then it was worse than before!!! Limped her home again, and popped the hood and heard what sounded like a major vacuum leak. Turns out both ends of the PCV hose has elbows that were both cracked open. Of course, no one makes anything like that, so I've fabricated a lengthy section of hose and an elbow from one of Janices' repairs. So far it seems fine, but I've yet to drive her any distance. At this rate, that won't happen this year!!!

Counting Crows' "A Long December", in case you didn't get the title reference!!!

And, finally, a little Christmas something for all you that read or happen across my low traffic blog, a shot of my wife's boobs (or at least cleavage) in her Christmas Victoria's Secret push-up bra and pajamas!!!

And to all a good night!!!