A Most Random Confluence of Events

Since the first time we went, the Renaissance Pleasure Faire has been an annual pilgrimage for at least part of the family. Interestingly, the younger has been the only one to hit it every year. Two years back both the boys and I went, along with the olders' girl. Last year was the first year since I've switched to working the Saturday shift, and it was shortly after the oldest shipped out to boot camp, so that year mom and the younger were the only attendees. This year, mom wasn't interested in going so much, so it was the younger and I. Good times!!!

While we were there, this happened...

We're walking along, and see an apple on the ground off to the side of the road. The boy says, "It looks like there's a smiley face on that apple" I look bit closer, and sure enough, there's indentations on the apple in the shape of a smiley face!!! Just then, an older lady in full Ren Faire garb holding two cabbages comes running up to us. To the boy, she asks, "would you like to play a free game???" Yea, sure!!! A cabbage she hands to him, and says to try and hit the apple with it. From about ten feet, he throws the cabbage at it, and scores a direct hit, fracturing the apple into at least two pieces!!! "You did it!!! Let me get you your prize!!!", she says, and runs off. Quickly she returns, and presents him with a radish!!!

As we were heading off, she has further inspected the apple, and calls after us, "You knocked the smile off his face!!!"

13 Shots from Petersen

I've lived my whole life in the Los Angeles area, and I'm a car guy, but here's something I've never done. A visit to the Petersen Automotive Museum!!!

My dad's car club managed to get a group trip there, including a tour of the vault. It was pretty awesome, but they don't allow photography in the vault. The three things that I remember from that part are one of the three gold DeLorians ever produced, a Pantera owned by Elvis that he put three bullets into when it wouldn't start for him, and a 62-63 Comet that was under construction. The Comet got my attention because one of the cars I'm always looking around for the similar but much cooler 60-61 model.

All the pictures are from the levels above the vault. I considered attempting a sneak vault photo on my phone, but never did.

Right out in the lobby they had this auto show superbike with a Dodge V-10 engine.

This Mercer was pretty cool. Whoever heard of a monocle windshield??? I was a bit mystified by the gear drive to the front wheel. The most likely thing I could think of was a speedometer cable take off.

Motorized bikes were well represented.

I liked the green car with the white hard top. Don't remember what it was named, but it is a trike, has a removable top, and seats four across the bench seat!!!

There was a design school that had done wood mock ups for the next generation Minis. I like that they used a 5 gallon bucket for the center gauge cluster.

A lot of auto show cars that never saw production.

The huge black Rolls Royce in the lobby has a perfectly round door, although it's not so easy to see in the picture.

Finally, on the way out, in the parking lot was a cool dune buggy!!!

Street Cred

A few weeks ago was the younger boys' birthday. He had some friends over and we had pizza, cake and ice cream. He and his friends played around and goofed off. There was even a recreation of the Trololo Sing Along (because that's what you do on your 14th birthday)

As you can see, the cake was styled with the Rooster Teeth logo. This ties in to what he'd decided he wanted for his birthday, a Rooster Teeth skateboard deck!!!

Of course, had to get wheels & trucks to complete the rig. Came out pretty good!!! Unfortunately, it didn't come with hardware to hold the trucks on, so I got them from my work the next day. Stainless fasteners, and some gray grippy tape, too.

He's been getting some practice on it since then, and is getting proficient on it. It's a much better board than the last one he had.

So, last week we'd gone out for some dinner. He brought his board along, because he knew the place we were going to has a parking lot that's usually mostly empty on the one side. After we eat, he's out there skating around.

Around the time we were getting ready to head out, he sees a break in the curbs around the parking area, around a foot wide by three or so long, like for a water drain channel. "Hey, should I try skating through there???" Yeah, sure, go for it!!! He goes... and somehow loses it, and it takes off towards the quite busy main street on the other side!!! Car in the right lane sees it coming and stops. The car in the left lane doesn't. It's rolled all the way to the middle island, and I'm thinking maybe it'll lay sideways along the edge, but no... the next car over rolls over it. Dang!!! He manages to retrieve it, and has had enough skating for the day. I was thinking he was going to have an expensive wall hanging after that, but it fared pretty decent. A couple of splinters coming up, and another area with around an inch long crack. I glued it back where it had been. It also has a tire track across the end now.

Now there's some serious street cred!!!

Saturn 3

Saturn 3. If you were an adolescent in the late 70's & early 80's, perhaps you remember a Science Fiction film of that name, featuring Farrah Fawcett, who couldn't have been hotter at that time. I vaguely recall the commercials for it, and wanting to see it quite badly. I know I was (and still am) very into Sci-Fi, but I couldn't tell you if the real reason was Farrah. Never did see it, and from hearing some of the feedback about it, that may have been a mercy. That could have been due to it having an R rating, or that it didn't last long in theaters, as box office bombs tend to do. Lord knows I saw several fairly bad Sci-Fi movies in that era, I think everyone was trying to glom onto the success of Star Wars: A New Hope.

But I digress.

A completely different kind of Saturn 3 to be discussed some here!!! We'll back it up around a month at this point. Actually, a few months back it actually started up, I guess. The first Saturn I'd bought (all the way back in 2008!!!) started giving me check engine light troubles. Primarily, it was giving me misfire codes, mostly on the #2 cylinder. I tried several things, mostly to no avail. The last thing I'd done, something I'd read on a forum, was replacing the ground wires. I'd cleaned off the ground connections after having read that initially, but hadn't noticed that the ground wire itself up under the battery at some point (before I'd bought the car) had been burnt through by the positive, and only the positive had been replaced. Fast forward 8+ years, and the remaining ground cable is nice and green!!! In the meantime, I'd been putting miles on my wife's, as she's been out of commission (a whole 'nother post could be made of that...) for a few weeks. Finally drove mine in on a Saturday, and as I'm getting off the freeway, I'm hearing a lot of noise. Huh. Sounds for the life of me like a rod knock!!! Strange, it hasn't been getting hot or being run low on oil. Maybe it's the timing chain, after all it's up around 175,000 miles. First thing, pull off the accessory belt to be sure it's not one of them, then off comes the valve cover to check the slack on the timing chain. It really doesn't look bad, but I'm not completely convinced. SO, my thinking goes something like this: if it IS indeed only the timing chain, it's only around $150 for the chain set & gaskets, plus a couple days to do it. But, if I do do it, I've still got an old Saturn block that uses a quart of oil every couple of tanks. Not to mention, if I did the chain & it was still knocking, I'd be out for that. SO, something I'd already been thinking of, find a used wreck or just high miler, yank the engine out of that, and do a full rebuild. Hopefully find one with alloys to put on the wife's. Did I mention I'd just dropped $225 in front end work on her??? Of course. Commence the used car shopping!!!

I'd been looking around for a couple weeks, when I came across this. At the price and miles, it was hardly worth my effort doing all that!!!

2001. A Saturn 3-door, so there's your Saturn 3 tie in!!! That, and it's now our 3rd Saturn. 67,000 miles!!! I thought it was hinkey having a car that old with that few miles, so I ran a CarFax report on it before I jumped.

It has a Texas inspection sticker on the windshield, so I was concerned that it may have been a flood victim. It had been in Midland, Texas, and had it's biggest red flag there, too. It had been stolen, and was recovered two days later. Guess that explains why it has different keys for the door and the ignition switch. For the last ten years, though, it's been in Woodland Hills, and never had a problem passing smog.

Alloy wheels!!! Sunroof!!! Leather interior!!! Pretty much a newer, lower mile carbon copy of my original Saturn!!! That even includes the tore up driver's side seat. Actually, it has a couple of options that one didn't. The aforementioned third door, and ABS & traction control.

A bunch of little things need done, though. First up, the tires are pretty worn, whereas the ones on Baby are in great shape. I like the alloys on her better too, so good. These alloys are going on my wife's. Tire remounting in my future, along with a trip to the locksmith to see about re-keying something. Oh yeah, no remotes, so I can see about getting the ones I've already got programmed to this vehicle. Apparently, you get up into 2001, and you need an expensive device to plug into the OBD2 port to do this. Maybe a locksmith will have that. The lock switch on the inside of the driver's door is gone, but I've seen this before. Twice on mine and once on my wife's I've replaced these. Sunroof isn't working right. It's got window tint (even on the front door windows, illegal) that's quite purple and in pretty bad shape. The speakers in back are shot, and if it's even got any in the front, they're not hooked up. Has the same exhaust leak that the first had, so I want to swap on my 512 labs tailpipe, but I'd like to get a baseline for the mileage first to see if it bumps up on this one, too. Map light buttons aren't working, either. Got a bunch of other little things to swap over, too. I actually like the body style of the first one better, don't care for the newer style headlights, and the backup lights being moved down into the bumper. Conceivably, I COULD unbolt all the body panels (except the 3rd door and quarter panel on that side) on the first one and swap 'em over to the third!!! Nahhhh...

One thing that doesn't need work, it has an awesome radio already installed!!! It has an aux input, but that is actually fairly moot, because it has Bluetooth connectivity, too!!!

Life Hack... MY CAR!!!

The second in a series of at least two Life Hacks, here's another one!!!

This one may just fix your car. I sometimes tell people, just like the human body, one of the keys to keeping your car alive is to keep the insides wet!!! If you've got an oil leak, better put more in at a corresponding rate or do something to stem the flow. Coolant can be even trickier, as you don't want to be opening a hot cooling system, nor be putting cold coolant into an overheating engine. Especially with the aluminum block and head engines these days, overheating can rapidly destroy an engine. Lack of a good seal in the cooling system will cause a pressure loss, which in turn lowers the boiling point, further exacerbating the problem. Whenever I'm looking through used car ads and come across one where they list several new cooling system components recently installed, that's an automatic pass.

So, if there's a small leak in your cooling system, like a pinhole leak in a radiator or heater core, here's a simple fix that has worked for me on several occasions.

Add a tablespoon or so of black pepper to your cooling system (while it's cold, of course) next time you're adding coolant!!! It doesn't seem like it would do anything, and I can't remember where I heard it from at first, but it works more often than not!!! Of course, it won't fix a leaking seal on a water pump or a bullet hole from a .45 through your radiator, but for a pinhole leak, it'll do. The theory is that the pepper granules will lodge in the hole, and when heated and exposed to air, will swell up and seal the hole.

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".

Lichtenstein Revisited

Back almost four years ago I happened on Roy Lichtenstein and his campy Pop Art. I like the look of the "I can see the whole room" artwork, and here have modified it into a size fitting to using as a computer wallpaper.

A bit after that, if you recall, I did up my interpretation as cup art, with work related text, which I've reposted here.

I don't remember how the inspiration for it came about, but I decided that I needed to use it as a wallpaper image again. That's how the modified image here came about.

Also, I was in need of a new artwork for my board at work, which is where I do my expressions these days. I had tried to do a snowflake (to go with the frigid weather we've been having these days) but that quickly spiraled out of control.

So, I thought I'd try my hand at this image again. I wasn't thrilled with how the first one I'd tried had come out. Taking a little more time and care, it came out better, but still not quite there. Primarily, in the original only one eye is visible.

My final attempt came out quite good, I thought, so far!!! I'm going to add some more black around it. Co-workers got a kick out of it last time, and we've got a lot of new ones these days, so this ought to entertain!!!

While looking around for a good version to morph into a wallpaper, it also occurred to me that these days phone wallpaper is more often in demand, and I was also in need of a new lock screen for mine, so I morphed it that way, too.

And how does one go about getting a Roy Lichtenstein image morphed into a wallpaper or lock screen size??? With an Image Duplicator, of course!!!

I'll be over here, waiting for my cease & desist...

A Brush with Fame

Living in Los Angeles on occasion has those moments when you encounter the famous. You may pull up to a traffic light and look over and see a renowned actor in the car next to you, or find yourself dining a few tables away from a popular singer. I remember attending a party and being introduced to a local radio personality. When I was in my early twenties I also remember the guy my parents had hired to paint their house telling me how he met Arnold Schwarzenegger working out at the gym he goes to. "He's a lot shorter than I thought he was", he tells me. My own wife has done a bit of extra work on Unsolved Mysteries and on a Twix commercial that only aired in the UK, and always just a bit less than enough to get into the SAG.

Here's my latest such incident. Came in a roundabout way, but here's how it went. Around a month back I had turned onto a local street, that at the time had the end the way I was heading away from blocked by a fire truck. It is a smaller residential street, on a bit of a rise, on which I was heading downward. I say smaller, but it's wide enough that two cars can pass each other even when there are cars parked on either side... provided each one stays towards their respective sides. Well, since the street was blocked, a giant truck coming the other way had made the obvious choice and stopped in the road. Naturally, they were taking up about 2/3 of the road, leaving not nearly enough room to get past. Whenever I see such a thing, I always think to myself, "If it's too big for you to drive properly, you SHOULDN'T BE DRIVING IT!!!" Anyway, I call out to them and motion for them to make some room, and they SLOWLY begin to creep forward and over, until I've got a little bit of room to get by, and I'm creeping by watching my side mirror, which is clearing the back end of the truck my maybe an inch, and as soon as I'm clear I start getting to going... Since I'd been watching the left side, I somehow forgot to pay attention to the right side, and BAM!!! Clipped a parked car's mirror with mine on that side!!! Dang!!! Knocked mine clean off, if it wasn't for the wire to the power motors, it would have been on the road!!! Pulled up around the corner and headed back to see what kind of damage I'd done to my victim.

It was a newer Honda sedan, in good condition, and it appeared to have those fold-away mirrors, a brilliant device to avoid the fate of my dangling mirror. I folded it back to where it belonged and was checking it for scrapes or other damage, and discovered that either I'd gotten it good enough, or it wasn't designed to go that way, but it had broken off a good portion of the bottom of the outer portion. I got a scrap of paper and left a note with my phone number and said for them to get it repaired and I'd take care of it.

A few days later the owner had left a message, and a week or more later I finally got back in touch with her. I kept forgetting until late in the evening, after what I would consider a decent hour to return her call. She hadn't gotten a quote yet (probably not wanting to waste the time in case I'd left a bogus number) but she took my E-mail address and sent me a copy of the quote a couple days later. I replied for her to give me her an address to mail a check to, and I'd see to it.

When we had talked, I asked her if she lived in the area so I could get a copy of the bill or quote and write out a check, and she said no, she'd been in the area for a shoot. Once I'd written the check and mailed it off, I was curious if she was anyone I might have seen, and it turns out I more than likely have!!! She's done parts in NCIS Los Angeles, New Girl, and How I Met Your Mother, among several others. I don't know what else she does (it would be cliche to say all up and coming actors are also waiters) but best of luck and wishes to Anisha Adusumilli!!!

Oh, and a little postscript, while it looked like my car had fared far worse, I was able to epoxy the posts for the mirror mount back together and it appears as good as new!!!

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.

Random Recap

Random Recap... Have I used that title before??? It seems like I may have. A cursory search doesn't show up that exact title, though, so it stays.

Anyway, as usual, a lot happens, so here I'm cramming it all into one post. Of course, Halloween happened. First up is Wilsons' German cousin, Voit, in his costume.

I did the same pumpkin as last year, but got a bit further on the interior. Made up a Charmander out of modeling clay with a candle holder for his tail. The clay was staying a bit pliable, so I stuck it in the oven to try & set it up. That was a mistake, it caved in on itself. Stole a gargoyle statue decoration from the boys' room & stuck it inside instead. It rotted to mush before I could throw it down.

The costumes for this year. My wife stayed with the feline theme. The only child boy went as a security guard from Five Nights at Freddy's, which other kids understood. His badge says "Freddy Fazbears Entertainment". I finally did a costume I've been saying to do for a while, aggressive panhandler. The boy was greatly entertained by my spiel, I'd roll up on people and go, "Hey, can you help me out??? I'm just trying to get a little money together to get some food..." and usually they'd put some candy into my can. I'd look at it, then tell them, "That's no good to me, I can't exchange it for booze or drugs!!!"

Of course, I worked that day, then we went to my parents' to trick or treat. An interesting side note, I've got an app that counts my steps on my phone. On a typical work day, I'll do anywhere from around 15,000 to 20,000 steps. On this Halloween, I ended up with around 28,500 steps, which comes out to about 19.5 miles. It is the highest amount of steps I've done in a day since I got the app.

The Friday before my wife & I made a run up to Magic Mountain again. Got there, and rode the best two rides in the park, then went home. Giant creepy Jack in the Box.

They had done a good amount of theming for the Halloween time.

And, fittingly, the best ride in the park is declared Satan's Domain.

Ever since our anniversary four years back, the wife & I make a long weekend vacation out of it. This year we headed up to Reno!!! It was a good trip, but it was colder than we're used to!!! Saw our quota of snow for the year, none of it actually in Reno.

The first day we headed over to Virginia City, which dates back to the 1800's silver rush, the Comstock Lode. On the way we headed through the state capital, Carson City, just because for all the times we've been in Nevada we've never been there. Rolled through the hilariously named Mound House, and drove past several whorehouses.

There's the pistol packing preacher of Virginia City.

If you make it though there, get lunch or dinner at the Virginia City Jerky Company. We'd already eaten, but stopped in because, who doesn't like jerky??? It smelled amazing in there!!! They had chili on the menu, and I'm always curious to see how other peoples' chili is, so I got a small side. I think it was about the best chili I've ever had that wasn't made in someone's house!!!

The last day we headed over to see Lake Tahoe. It was amazing, but windy and cold!!!

Slots seem looser in Reno than Tahoe. I came up with a fairly profitable method to usually win at roulette.

Just a week ago we headed to the local Slater's 50/50. I like the boy's pose in the background.

And finally, just last night, the boy had heard of this trick. Balancing a fork and spoon on the edge of a glass by a toothpick.

It's an old Jedi center of gravity trick, my boy!!!

At Long Last, My Search is Over

Back when I was around 11 to 13 years old, my father was working as a field serviceman for an electronics company. Sometimes during summer vacation he would take me along on service calls. This one time we were out on a call in West L.A., and around lunch time my dad asks me what I'd like to eat. Pizza, I reply. Can't go wrong with pizza, right??? One of the guys at the customers' place says, "There's a good pizza place a couple blocks up called Chicago Pizza Works, you should go there." It came recommended, so that's where we went. At my tender young age, I didn't know from Chicago pizza, I though pizza was pizza. Little did I know. I learned that day, and my world was forever changed. Chicago deep dish, thick as a cake, with just a skin of crust, with cheese, sauce and toppings swimming within. Angels wept. Quite simply, it was the best pizza I'd ever had.

Around the time my firstborn was about the age I was at the time of my pizza awakening, it occurred to me that with the advent of the internet, I could find the place and return. I easily found the address, and packed up the family for an amazing lunch. We made it out there, only to discover that it was long since closed. I had built it up to them pretty much like the first paragraph, and I was disappointed. That seemed to set off a pattern of disappointment, with every place claiming to have deep dish pizza actually having fill-up-on-bread thick crust.

So, this was another huge attraction for this year's vacation trip to Chicago!!! We're going to go to a get a genuine Chicago deep dish pizza in Chicago!!! More than one to choose from, but from the Yelp stars and proximity to our lodging, Giordano's won out.

Ended up being the evening of the day we'd gone up to Milwaukee to see The Fonz. I'll give a bit of the back story, since I've not done a lot besides high points and the Six Flags Great America fail. The night we got there, we ended up about two hours later that the time we had planned on, thanks to the crap bag car rental I'd booked, Payless. Do not rent from them. Rat bastards stranded us at the airport for more than an hour, and told baldfaced lies every time we phoned them. It ended up being around 2 in the morning when we finally got checked into our room. The next morning was the pass in review ceremony, fairly bright and early to get there on time and get parked, in the hall and everything. After that, the man-boy had liberty until 1900 hours. We went to lunch with my parents and him, he selected Steak & Shake, which we had enjoyed on our last Florida trip. Following that, we went to see Jurassic World. The wife & I both dozed off a little bit during that, and we ended up bailing out a few minutes before the actual end, because showing up AWOL on his first day would have been a bad thing. One other main thing the fresh faced sailor wanted was his laptop and his MP3 player. It was not allowed in boot camp, and subsequently could not be handed off to him on base, but could be given to him at the airport before his departure to South Carolina... at zero dark 30!!! After the few hours of sleep the night before and the theater nap, I got another couple hours in, then back to O'Hare. Thank you to the USO for having a lounge there were I was able to meet up with him for the hand-off!!! Turns out that military families are allowed to pass airport security to be with the servicemen until they actually depart, so I ended up hanging out with him until around 0600, then Chicago traffic back to our lodging and FINALLY a bit of sleep. Another sleep deprivation experiment!!! Got up around 2:00 in the afternoon, and headed up to Wisconsin. Got turned a bit on the way back, and added probably another hour or so to the drive, and finally made it to the famed Giordano's. It had started raining on the final part of the drive, after being overcast all day.

One thing to know about a true deep dish pizza, it will take a while in the oven. After the side trip short cut detour, everyone was already hungry. In addition to the pizzas, we also got an order of mozzarella sticks and cheese garlic bread. I don't know if I've ever seen this kind of perfection in mozzarella sticks, not in the flavor or construction, but in the serving temperature. Usually they come out flaming hot and, unable to be resisted, burn the taste buds off your tongue and the skin off the roof of your mouth, but these were perfection in edibility!!!

That first pizza pic is now the lock screen on my phone.

My parents got a small Chicago Classic, that has pepperoni, mushrooms, green peppers & onions. I could take or leave the 'shrooms, but I don't do green peppers, they have a lingering after effect on me for a day, quite unpleasant, even if I'm fine with them while downing them.

We got a medium Meat & More Meat, that has pepperoni, salami, sausage & bacon, and a small Bacon BBQ Chicken with BBQ-basted chicken, bacon & balsamic onions, with BBQ sauce instead of tomato sauce. Oh. Oh yes!!! Truly AMAZING!!! It was SO good, but it's a lot. I may have only had one slice of each, or perhaps I split a second slice of the meat masterpiece with my wife... or maybe I put away a whole second slice by myself!!! It was a pizza lovers' utopia!!!

We had enough leftovers for something like three more meals, and reheating didn't diminish the magic!!! They also will ship out frozen pizzas for a fairly reasonable price (considering they aren't that cheap to begin with, and if you were to factor in airfare to Chicago, it's a relative bargain), something I will likely do at some special occasion in the future.

So what was the verdict of the rest of the family??? After hearing me go on about Chicago deep dish pizza in such glowing prose for so many years, they agree that I did not oversell it!!!