The Literary Stack

A little over a year ago, I decided that I would no longer be on my phone in the bathroom, and went back to the old ways of taking a book with me instead!!!

The result, unsurprisingly, is that I've read a lot more books!!! Books I'd been given, books I'd picked up because they sounded interesting, books by favorite authors I hadn't gotten to, and in one case, a book that came with the house!!!

That book was “Storm”, published back in the 40's, and was the origin of the naming of storms. I've heard of, but never heard, the song, “They Call the Wind Maria”. It was from the high school my mom had attended, but she has no recollection of reading it.

Speaking of my mom, she loaned me one of the books from the Dean Koontz “Jane Hawk” series, the fourth in the series, “The Forbidden Door”. It was a good book, very readable, and Koontz does a good job of making it so you don't need to have read the previous books to be able to get on board.

That was a hardcover, and once I was started, I wanted to read the rest. I picked up the rest of the series in paperback, and burned through them. Then I gave them to my mom, who also likewise burned through them!!!

Speaking of burning through books, I found this in one of those little free libraries that was in my mom's neighborhood.

I'd heard of “Fahrenheit 451” since I was in school, but had never read it. It's a bit dated (a lot of the future-set Sci-Fi books are), but the idea holds up!!! It had several afterwords including some interviews with Bradbury, and he mentioned in part of it that the mechanical hound was an updating of Doyle's Hound of the Baskervilles. I have a desire to read more Ray Bradbury now.

Another dated Sci-Fi book I picked up from a free library, this time in my neighborhood, was called “Tiger Tiger”. I enjoyed them both.

I think it was at the beginning of the year I picked up Stephen King's “The Outsider”, “Fairy Tale”, and “Holly”. “The Outsider” continues the story of Holly from Bill Hodges (from the Mr. Mercedes series) detective agency and was pretty good.

“Fairy Tale” was a great story, classic King fantasy sci-fi, and I enjoyed it the most of the three.

“Holly” further continues the story of Holly, but... the Wuhan Flu and Donald Trump have destroyed the once great Stephen King. It was practically unreadable. TDS is a powerful thing.

After I'd finished the Jane Hawk series, I had a hankering to read some John Irving again. I've heard him described as the dirty old man of literature, and I find that to be an apt description.

I remember as a teen having several of my friends over when “The World According to Garp” was airing on one of the cable channels. It had Robin Williams, it has to be funny, right??? Sure enough, it had some funny, but I think that we were more traumatized than amused.

The book was much better. Who knows, maybe I just happen to have aged into it!!!

I was reading “The World According to Garp” when we were on our Catalina vacation, and while we were there, we happened on yet another little free library. As always, I had to have a look through to see if there was anything of interest.

I saw the title of this one, “Down at Flathead”, and was intrigued. Of course, the flathead Ford V-8 was an early hot rod staple, a compact V-8 engine offering much improved performance over many of the smaller and bulkier engines of the day, and were often swapped into small, lightweight cars.

I pulled it out, and the cover artwork also got my attention, and the synopsis cemented it. The author lives in Avalon, and this copy happens to have been signed. I'm only about ¼ of the way through, but so far I'm liking it quite a lot!!! They've re-stolen the Lunar Rover from Apollo 17, then stole one of the Catalina Express jet catamarans, and are currently on a large orbiting spacecraft.

A lot of the books are stacked up on the end of the kitchen table, hence the Literary Stack!!! I've got to clear out the bookshelf, and probably distribute several of the books back to the little libraries!!!

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.

Bool Hunt

All of my nonexistent readers are probably well aware that I end up going to the junkyard on a fairly regular basis. This post will cover a few of those trips, as well as filling in a bit of recent history.

About a month ago, I'd finally gotten Scruffy over to an alignment shop to get the rear tires pointed in the right direction. This is the only car I've ever had where I've had a rear tire wear and alignment issue, probably because nearly all of the cars I've owned have had solid rear axles where alignment isn't a thing. The others not in that category, I haven't messed with the ride height, so there's that. As you can see, they were REALLY worn down for about two years of wear!!! The alignment shop had told me that the camber was still a bit out, but to come back when I'd replaced the tires, with a little advance warning, and they would install a camber kit to correct it. Yesterday I finally got a replacement pair.

Prior to heading over there, on Friday evening, I opened up the back of the two machined look rims I'd picked up, with the idea of getting a full matching set on Scruffy, at which point I realized that the one had a significant abrasion on one opening, where it had peened the metal out, so I decided against using that one, for now. It also had quite a bit of scuffing on other areas, and I took some medium-fine sandpaper and 3M pads to one such area, to see if I could get it looking decent. Looks like all it is is through the clear coat or anodizing, whichever it has. About a half hour's work, and it came out looking quite good!!! Anyway, left that one off for now and now have 3 out of 4 the same.

Now, for a few weeks back background. The second to the last week I was working at the physical building, on Thursday they were doing Wuhan Flu testing. They were having us come in at the time of the testing, wait for the results, then, if negative, report for work. My appointment was for noon, so I got to go in a bit later. Oh yeah, spoiler alert, around 400 employees still working there, and not a single positive!!! Anyway, about a mile from home, it started running really rough, with not much power. I drove it almost to where I get on the freeway, and pulled into a gas station to see if I could see anything. Restarting it had done nothing, but plugging in the OBD scanner showed multiple misfires. I turned around to go home and switch cars, and getting to the uphill area discovered it didn't have enough juice to climb the hill. Called my wife and had her bring her car down. Used her car that day, and did a bit of research. There were several things, but the consensus was to start with the spark plugs and work your way down the systems. No idea when the plugs were last changed, but never hurts to have new ones (so long as they are OEM NGK copper core ones, not any exotic metal ones, as they have a high fail rate in Saturn 1.9 engines, due to the waste spark system they run). Also, while I was getting the plugs, I got a crankshaft position sensor, my reasoning being that the sudden failure seemed consistent with that. Replacing the plugs did nothing, so I headed back up the hill and took the plug wires, coils and ignition control module off 3, and went back down and replaced all the units on Scruffy. Viola!!! No cumbersome crankshaft position sensor replacement, which I was not looking forward to. Just to see what would happen, I put the units from Scruffy back on 3. Moved the issue to that one, as I figured it probably would. I figure it was likely the ignition control module, as I've had coils fail before, and the OBD will show the coil specific to two cylinders missing.

So, now 3 is fairly undriveable. Not like I'm driving it much anyway, but I want to be able to move her around, not to mention I'd rather have everything going if and when I swap the engine out. The ignition control module is around $85, and most of the consensus is that you are better off getting an OEM used replacement from the junkyard anyway, as most of the replacements have a high fail rate. Off to the junkyard!!! Coils are pretty reasonable, but control modules are supposed to be in the $50 to $60 range. Since the double coils mount to the module, I figured I'd pull the whole unit and try and pass it off as a coil array. I also was wondering if they were the same unit for the generation 2 and SHOC models. No one seemed to have that information, but I could probably look up different years and engines and figure that out if I wanted to. I took a look around at earlier SHOC models, and even a generation 1 SC2 and they all appear the same. Anyway, to be safe, I got them off the same year and engine SL2. Funny thing, there didn't seem to be much body damage at all, but both of the airbags had been deployed!!!

When I got to the checkout, the cashier was questioning the pricing, noting that an array would be more expensive, and it was actually two coils, which would be cheaper. He called over a supervisor, who told him to ring it up as two coils, and put the module as a bracket. He noticed it had the wire connector socket, so rang it as a electrical connector. Two coils at around $13.50 (plus $1 core charge) and $2.75 for the ignition control module!!! Score!!! The exhaust manifold was removed from the SL2 I got the goods from, which gave me a chance to get a better shot of the exhaust air injection ports. They look equally as plugged up as Scruffy's had been!!!

And there's that 1st generation SC2. While very little is common to the later ones, they weigh less, and the style is growing on me. I actually like the SC and SC1 front ends with the fixed headlights, which I believe are the same from the doors forward as the sedans.

Now, from quite a while ago when I'd gone to a junkyard near my work, and they had almost exactly the same as 3 on the other side of the wall, I imagine pre being put in the yard, but possibly to be sold. Even has the same rims as 3 originally had!!! In other news, I came across an ad for the same year, color and wheels as 3 with 95K miles, and a busted up front bumper and driver's side fender and mirror, plus a check engine light, asking $1800. I sent them a message that, considering the condition it seemed about $500 to $800 too high. I'd take that deal, if it seemed OK and could pass smog, which of course it won't with that light on.

A couple of the cars of interest there that time were this 60's Mustang with little left but the firewall and the undesirable 6 cylinder engine. It's very rare to see anything that old anymore.

Up next is a early 70's Celica, another of those you never see anywhere anymore!!! Someone had done a terrible job of putting a whale tail spoiler on the trunk, looking like it's about 20 degrees from where it should be. Has the distinction of being similar to the one we had. Of course, it has the unique pull out handles. The steering wheel was removed, but still inside, so I was also reminded of the style of the horn buttons, double circles on each of the three spokes, cheaply made so the ones rotated around it end up upside down!!!

And finally, the junkyard I went to this weekend, a while back there was this pretty nice '64-'66 Suburban in the lot. I noted it because it's similar to my GMC panel truck.

I know I've used the phrase "bool hunt" in previous posts, but I'm not sure I've ever explained it. It's from the Stephen King story, "Lisey's Story". It's where something will be hidden and the other person has to find it. Also in the story is the mention of a "blood bool", so take that for what it's worth. It's been years since I've read that one, maybe I'll dig it out, I quite enjoyed it. Stephen King is a very talented writer, but he's also an old crank who keeps yelling at the Commander in Chief to get off his lawn.

Night Surf

A couple weeks back, we went on a vacation with extended family down towards San Diego. We actually stayed in Encinitas, a ways north of there, just south of Carlsbad. Our hotel was only a block from the ocean, which was a good part of the reason we'd stayed there.

Every single day we did some sort of touristy thing, which was quite a drain on my parents. The second day we went to Legoland, and my parents and my wife had had enough by late afternoon, and were ready to head back. I could keep going, and my youngest and niece and nephew were all good to stay until closing, so they split and we closed that place down. On the way back, we talked a bit about going to the beach. There are houses all along the coast, so I checked and saw that there was a beach access just a couple blocks north of where we were staying, and, of course, that block over. We all decided that the four of us could go for heading over and checking it out when we got back.

It was a bit different than we'd expected. Instead of the block over sloping down to the shore area, it rose up quite a bit. At the end, it came down a bit, but not as much as the rise. From there, it starts off with a concrete path, with areas of steps going down at intervals. From there, it transitioned to wood steps heading down. Straight down, at the end, and DIRECTLY INTO THE OCEAN!!! Well, we weren't expecting THAT!!! Turns out, we caught it right at an extreme high tide!!! The beach has bluffs that rise up from the back of it pretty straight up.

The waves would recede and reveal the sand of the shore, and just to the right around 50 feet, there is a lifeguard tower, backed right up to the bluffs. My niece was the first to decide that she would make a run for it when the waves receded. She made it, of course getting splashed a bit in the process. The rest of us headed over, and stashed our gear on the tower and did a bit of shore wading. The water was very mild, and the evening was pretty warm, too. My niece had brought her purse (go figure), and among the things contained therein was a GoPro camera, which she broke out to shoot a little bit of video. Don't know how that came out, but I'd like to see.

Of course, I didn't bring a camera, so the two actual "beach" pictures are stolen from the web, and the first pic is image searching the title of this post. By the way, said title was lifted from the Stephen King short story that spawned "The Stand". Grandview Beach is what this beach is called... I cannot attest to the view, but even from the shore area, you could see a lot more stars than back home.

Good times!!!

In Memoriam

Leo the Cat

August 2nd, 2010 ~ December 10, 2015

He was obediant.

Leo wasn’t in the least obedient, of course; he was a cat, for heaven’s sake. That doesn't change how we feel for him, though. We loved that handsome devil. As cats go, he was a good one. We had him fairly well trained where he [mostly] stayed off forbidden areas, and we'd even taught him to stand up on his hind legs and sit down on cue, with varying degrees of success. He could be very affectionate, and was especially fond of giving belly kneads.

While he was living with us, he only used up two, maybe three, of his nine lives. Either he got shortchanged, or he had a very wild and misspent youth. We are grateful for the slightly more than two additional years we were able to add to his life.

He is survived by his human family and his abusive wife from his arranged marriage. He will be mourned and missed.

Trick or Treat!!!

Happy Halloween!!!



One of the fun things they always do on Runescape is have special events for Halloween, Christmas, and Easter.



This year's event is especially cool, because in addition to the little task to do to get some cool costume, there is a quest you can do, too!!!



I actually have three accounts on Runescape, but usually play with just my main. I've completed the quest with my second, Newt One Eye (so named because there is one quest that you need to get an eye of newt for. I thought it was clever.), and am part way through with my main and third character.



The top picture in the black robes and hood is my third, Walter O'dim (AKA Randall Flagg or The Walkin' Dude, from several Stephen King stories). The hood was last year's item, and it completes his costume very nicely!!! He's with my younger boy, helping him on the quest. The zombie mask is on my main character, a random event item.



The pumpkin head mask is from two years ago, and it also came with a skeleton costume, too. I don't have a picture of it, but I've got a chicken costume for Newt, an Easter item.

Don't you think the witches this year are kind of cute??? Hey, are you a good witch, or a bad witch???

Yarrr!!! Cupdate!!!

Yarrr!!! Iffen ye not be knowin', Friday bewas 'Talk like a Pirate' day!!! Bein as Aye is a good an' proper name for thissen pirate, thought I'da be a-sharen' some of the inkwerk of the day. Aye, Aye started out by inscribblin' the likeness of one of them there flesh-eatin' plants from "Little Shop of Horrors". One of the scurvy wenches was a-sayin' how Aye could be a-designin' tattoos fer me mates. Now iffen ye not been havin' figgered by now, me werkload was a consid'ble tad lighter than the nermal today (an' yar, the deck wern't gettin' any mer cleaner fer all 't swabbin' it were gettin'), and aye, Aye had a chance to do yet more!!!

On t'the nother side, in honour of the times, aye, Aye sceetch'd yer ol' pal Gasher!!! Iffen ye can't make it out with yer one good eye, it be sayin', "Now, woulja be havin' any lines fer yer ol' pal Gasher???" Yar, a fine day 'twas to be a pirate!!!

cUpDate Part Two

Haven't made mention of my cup or shared any from it recently. As before, I'm still not having a lot of spare time to doodle on it, but last Friday I had a chance to do a little bit. It was a bit of a snoozy day, so after doing the classic 512 logo, I did a series of Z's in alternating colors. Later on, I did the flag of Stephen King's Crimson King.



I was using the same cup the next day, and we went to the bank in the morning. There was a bit of a wait, and as I was sitting there I added in several other things. First was a shadow to the flag pole, then at the younger's suggestion I added in the porcupine. One of my previous cups had the porcupine saying, "I AM THAT TIME TRAVELLER!!!", and he wanted that again, but I had other ideas. In this one, he is holding a magnifying glass, and saying, "Elementary, my dear Watson. It is a sigul!!!"



Next, I added the killer satellite from Asteroids Deluxe, and then a flying saucer complete with space alien. The alien says, "The truth is out here", in a nod to X Files. The last thing I added was a video camera coming out of the bottom of the 512 logo. It bears the letters N.C.P., standing for North Central Positronics, in another nod to Stephen King. Next to it is the inscription, "The camera eye does not blink". My older son did an Aperture Science logo, with the words, "I'm doing science and I'm still live" on it, which I believe to be from the Portal video game.

XIII. Lisey and Amanda (The Sister Thing)

An excerpt from Stephen King's Lisey's Story

Image stolen from GardenWeb user name Kentuck_8b

Lisey's car was the only car in the parking lot, and the picnic area was deserted-not even a single backpacker getting high on nature (or Montpelier Gold). Amanda walked toward one of the picnic tables. The soles of her feet were very pink, and even with the sun hidden, she was clearly nude under the green pajamas.

"Amanda, do you really think that's-"

"If anyone comes I'll nip right back into the car." Manda looked back over her shoulder and flashed a grin. "Try it-the grass feels positively slinky."

Lisey walked to the edge of the pavement on the balls of her feet, then stepped up into the green. Amanda was right, slinky was the one, the perfect fish from Scott's pool of words. And the view to the west was a straight shot to the eye and the heart. Thunderheads were pouring toward them through the ragged teeth of the White Mountains, and Lisey counted seven dark spot where the high slopes had been smudged away by cauls of rain. Brilliant lightnings flashed inside those stormbags and between two of them, connecting them like some fantastic fairy bridge, was a double rainbow that arched over Mount Cranmore in a frayed loophole of blue. As Lisey watched that hole closed and another, over some mountain whose name she did not know, opened, and the rainbow reappeared. Below them Castle Lake was a dirty dark gray and Little Kin Pond beyond it a dead black goose-eye. The wind was rising but it was improbably warm, and when her hair lifted from her temples, Lisey lifted her arms as though she would fly-not on a magic carpet but on the ordinary alchemy of a summer storm.

"Manda!" she said. "I'm glad I'm alive!"

"So am I," Amanda said seriously, and held out her hands. The wind blew back her graying hair and made it fly like a child's. Lisey closed her fingers carefully around her sister's, trying to be mindful of Amanda's cuts but aware of a rising wildness in herself all the same. Thunder cracked overhead, the warm wind blew harder, and ninety miles to the west, thunderheads streamed through the ancient mountain passes. Amanda began to dance and Lisey danced with her, their bare feet in the grass, their linked hands in the sky.

"Yes!" Thunder cracked and Lisey had to yell it.

"Yes, what?" Manda hollered back. She was laughing again.

"Yes, I mean to kill him!"

"That's what I said! I'll help you!" Amanda shouted, and then the rain began and they ran back to the car, both of them laughing and holding their hands over their heads.

The Gunslinger

"The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed"

I'm not fanatical about many things, but I have a few. Stephen King stories happen to be one of them. I've been to opening nights of movies adapted from his stories, and eventually I get to reading most everything he (or his dark half Richard Bachman) writes. Last Friday I saw an article about a series of graphic novels (read: comic books) based on his Dark Tower series. Appropriately enough, several comic book stores are having special midnight release events. Cool. I'm not sure of the quantity to be printed, but I was not going to miss out!!! Probably they will print millions. The Dark Tower series are some of my favorites, and of those "Wizard and Glass" is my number one. The comic that came out as issue one (of seven, same as the books, strangely enough) is entitled "The Gunslinger Born", and focuses on his early years as chronicled in the first book. Wizard and Glass also covers his youth, so I think I will enjoy the whole series. The comics seem to promise more than was in the books, so I'm looking forward to that.

I set out for the local store in Pasadena at around 11:40, not knowing what exactly to expect. I arrived around 5 minutes until midnight. There were probably around fifty people there already, and probably 10 or more showed up while I was waiting. One of the guy from the store was handing out a sketch book showing some of the artwork in black and white, as well as the coloring process. Cool. A few minutes after midnight they opened up and started letting customers in. As we filed in, a worker was handing out raffle style tickets. Apparently one of the two artists, Richard Isanove, was in attendance signing the comics. Cool. The staff informed us that they had a few copies of variant cover editions that they were going to raffle off. I had no idea what that meant, probably means something to comic book aficionados. My number ended in 521. Near to being a lucky number. It was after 12:30 before they got to doing the raffle. I had to stay, I figured my odds were pretty good with that few people there. I think they had something like 10 of the first variant, and I got not even close to my number. The second variant they only had three of. Second number, 521!!! Whoo hoo!!! (I actually said that) I got that one signed, too, and headed on home. I must be crazy staying out that late on a work night. Why do they do cool stuff like that and concerts during the week???

I got home after 1, and was too buzzed to sleep. Read the whole thing before I attempted to go to bed. Very cool, not exactly by the book, but very faithful to it. I had pictured Gabrielle as a blond, though. I can hardly wait until the next one comes out!!!