What I Did This Weekend...

I'm sure it's not the ONLY thing I got done this weekend, but it's pretty much the most major thing. My dad's Studebaker had been getting a bit tired in the engine leading up to the later part of last year, and he decided to replace the vintage 327 with a fresh 350 crate engine.

He did a nice detail job on the engine compartment. He'd picked up what he thought was some catalyzed black paint at a fair discount, but as you can see, it came out an... INTERESTING shade of brown!!! Good enough, he thought, it rather compliments the yellow outer skin, and I have to agree, not to mention it's something you don't really see. He tends to never show it with the engine compartment open, anyway, as it looks much better with it closed. Not that the engine and compartment aren't on a showable level.

While he had the engine out, he made up a custom recess for the firewall to clear the distributor better, which was always a tight fit. The final touch was the addition of a Dynamat type sound and heat insulator. Two last things once all the parts are back together are going to be the replacement of the air conditioner condenser, which seems to have some seepage, and eliminating the leaks in the power steering system.

It was no small job, but all that was really done was to swing the engine in, bolt it to the transmission, bolt the torque converter to the flexplate, and bolt down the engine mounts and tighten up the transmission. A series of twelve bolts turned.

Anything else??? Yea, spent quite a bit at Big Lots! for their 20% off day, and visited a seafood restaurant my wife had spotted in Glendale.

I'm doing a bit of work for a neighbor. He has a couple of cast bronze lion faces that were originally for a fountain where it squirts from the mouth. The studs were frozen in it, and one snapped off. Spray penetrant loosened 'em up. He's going to mount them and use them as wall hangings. I was thinking of the intense green laser I got for my son, and got the idea that it'd be pretty cool to take the element from one of those (or possibly two), hook it to a wall transformer instead of the batteries, and set it up so the lion would shoot a laser beam from it's mouth!!! Would that not be awesome??? Now I'm thinking of contacting my foundry guy and see about getting a couple duplicates cast up!!! Set 'em up with motion detectors, set up little mirrors and bounce a grid of beam all about the ceiling, set it up with a little motor to make the beam track back and forth... the possibilities are pretty cool!!! If I get anything together, I'll take a picture...

Gusher

Coming home last night, the road opposite ours going up the canyon we live in was blocked off with cones and a parking enforcement vehicle. "Odd", I thought to myself, "Must be some sort of parking emergency!!!" This means I was forced to drive up our street, which is counter to my normal routine, as usually I drive up that side so to be pointed the proper direction to park on the street or pull into the driveway.

As I ascended, there was a flatbed tow truck idling right opposite my driveway. Hmmmm... I get to the top of the street, turn around and park, and go to investigate. In addition to the tow truck, there's parking enforcement and another flatbed tow truck on the opposite street, and cones set up there, too. A few people are milling around over there. I thought maybe someone had wrecked over on that side, or maybe someone managed to drive into the canyon. From the days when my grandfather lived here I'd heard tales of parked cars rolling down into the canyon, yet I've never seen the likes of it.

The property opposite us on that street has some nice river rock retaining walls. I finally notice that the portion by the corner is fallen down into the street, of course followed by much of the dirt behind it. Hmmmmm again!!! I make mention to one of the neighbors out there that it's a shame, I really liked that wall. They agree, and then say something about how there was so much water. ??? It had rained that morning until around noon or so, but nothing serious, only about half an inch at most, I'd guess, and probably less.

Well, you probably guessed from the pictures, I was missing a key element here. Somehow, the fire hydrant over there got sheared off!!! Apparently it was pretty loud and of course went on for a while. My oldest had the presence of mind to take the camera out and get a few shots, as well as a video. Used to be able to post video on here, but I don't see the link for that anymore. The second shot I cropped for effect, you can see the spout is going about three times as high as the basketball hoop!!!

I like the last shot, with the water just cascading off the yard. I still wonder exactly how it happened!!!

Christmas 2 Random

Anyway

Seems like a lot goes on, doesn't it??? Yesterday I had it in my mind to change the master cylinder on the Maverick, as it seems to have developed a leak past the seal. I've been considering various destinations for this coming Summer vacation, and they were having the Los Angeles Travel & Adventure show... down in LONG BEACH!!! So, I was thinking that if I got through the master cylinder job I might go down and check that out.

As plans often change, my wife wanted go go to the Golden Star restaurant in Long Beach for breakfast. It had been a while, and sounded pretty good, so instead of wrenching on the car, we headed there instead, then to the travel show after.

My younger boy was going on quite a while about My Little Ponies. I had to come up with my OC, original character, and I came up with Apple Core, a Pegasus-Unicorn hybrid who launches apple cores at other ponies from his horn. Today I did the drawing & spent entirely too long modifying it in PaintShop Pro.

On the way between those destinations, they had several streets to the West blocked off. Found out, on the news that evening, they were having the MLK day parade. The parade looked pretty ghetto. MLK would have been proud.

For the most part, I found the travel show to be a bust and a waste of money. Did, however, discover that for driving into and out of Canada, you can get by with a Country of origin drivers license or some such instead of having to have a passport, so this may open up a possibility...

A few shots of the final 2011 Christmas celebration with my parents, or the Best Christmas Ever. My older boy got a gorgeous acoustic guitar, and the younger got an AirHogs Hawk Eye RC airplane. I 'shopped my arm out of the picture of it.

Funny how they have the MLK day parade on the Saturday before. Is that for the people who would like to attend, but actually have jobs where they have to work on Monday??? Like everyone who doesn't work for a bank or government???

Discovered something quite interesting while checking flight and lodging prices. From here, it costs very nearly the same to fly and stay in Oahu, Hawaii, as it does to fly and stay in Iceland!!! Mind blown!!! Iceland hadn't really been on my travel radar in any serious fashion, but now it really is!!!

I didn't get a chance to finish this post off the day I started it, so some of the references to yesterday and such aren't going to come out exactly right, unless you time travel with me.

The second to the last picture is my mom's ICD implant. Funny thing, all the pictures I took of her showing it off, she's got her eyes closed in. It seems to be suiting her well, but as you can see, it's fairly prominent on her. The heart medicine they've got her on makes her "woozy", but she's getting her strength back, walking around the neighborhood and the park and stuff. The burn on her leg is getting better, but it remains a pretty serious burn. Third degree, it was.

Today I wore a shirt I got from my parents for Christmas for the first time. It's a tie-dye look, but with incredibly vivid colors, and a picture on the front of a smurf (Brainy) sitting on top of a bunch of mushrooms with spots & stars whirling around his head. I call him mind expandy smurf. It got a lot of comments, somewhere around 18, and everyone really liked it.

As always, I'm sure I'm leaving out more than I can remember.

Oh yea, the second picture scan!!! It's just a piece of paper I found with some weird doodles on it.

DropShip Like it's Hot!!!

I had meant to include this one in last night's post, even to the point of expressly posing these pictures before I did, but then completely spaced. That's OK, give me a chance to get a jump on starting this year off. Besides, I think the last post had plenty going on.

This was one of the items high on my younger boys' wish list, the Mega Bloks UNSC Pelican Dropship from the Halo series. Not only is it pretty massive, it's pretty cool and pretty detailed.

Of course, I ended up being the one doing most of the construction. Lego does a much better job of organizing the parts, and much of the assembly process was akin to a jigsaw puzzle where you spend more time searching for the right piece than doing the assembly.

Unfortunately, I was just getting the sick when we started. Went for an hour or so, and my headache became unbearable. The ticking of the animated clock decoration on the Christmas tree and my wife's application of Rapture perfume were both exacerbating this condition. I showered off, then soaked in a hot tub of water, then went to bed for several hours. Woke up in the middle of the night and did a little more, then went back to bed.

Did a lot more the next day, and wrapped it up on the third. By that point I'd gotten a clue and was building both sides of mirror image parts, that worked out much better.

In other news, yesterday got a shipment of things I'd ordered from Focal Price for Christmas. Didn't think I'd get it in time, and I was right, but that's OK, everyone liked their swag. Bought lasers for all the guys, a green one for the youngest (very intense beam, and it goes through the batteries), a purple one for myself, and a red one for the first born. The red isn't too exciting, I know, but it has a second button that gives the presser an electric shock. Got more headphones for the older, as he seems to go through them. Got an MP3 player for the younger boy, he'd been wanting one, and it seems to be pretty nice and fairly rich featured. Found a nice watch for my wife. Focal Price has some great deals and free shipping from Hong Kong. I've already thought of another order I need to place with them!!!

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!!!

Pepper Jack!!!

First time in a while that I've made the time to do some artwork on one of my cups. This one may require a bit of explanation...

At work, there's several different way to get a difficult order. You could get a cut, a big count, something bulky, or something heavy. At some point a month or two back, one of the guys started to announce when he'd get a heavy order by announcing something to the effect of "I got a 122 pounder... With cheese!!!" Kinda like a quarter pounder with cheese, is the idea, if you didn't get that.

So, that became a thing, where a few of the guys would say that. I decided I was going to start calling out all different types of cheese whenever I'd get a bad order. Limburger!!! Gouda!!! Deep fried mozzarella (I particularly liked the way that one rolls off the tongue..)!!!

Then I threw out "Pepper Jack!!!" That struck a chord!!! A play on the term "jacked", and now whenever some of us would get a bad order, we'll say, "I got pepper jacked!!!"

One day I'm working on one of the printers where you're likely to get a difficult order, and I penned this on my cup. Several people got it right off, but some aren't quite clear on what was going on. A couple of people wondered, "what, no funfetti cake???" No, no, I love that stuff. A couple of people thought it had something to do with the Green Bay Packers. Ha ha, closer but no. I'd have used my highlighter and yellowed it some for that.

I used this cup for more than a week.

I like the way the picture I took of it came out, with the shadow and light. This is on the end table I have next to my recliner now, since my older has moved a new desk into the corner here. He's got the best seat in the house, I think.

The connotation attached to pepper jack is unfortunate. I rather like pepper jack.

Gotta Find a Geekier Neighborhood...

So last Monday was Halloween. As we often do, we went to my parents' neighborhood to trick or treat, as it's much flatter lands with sidewalks there.

First up is the youngest. He changed his costume idea from Assassin's Creed to Minecraft. The diamond sword was the trickiest part of the costume to come up with. The rest of the costume was just getting the boxes cut to shape and colored. One other kid recognized it for what it was supposed to be.

Next up is my older boy. His original idea was to be a Halloween decoration. I thought that'd be great, to get a large circle, cut a hole in the middle and put a tablecloth on it and stick his head through the middle. He'd changed it to Discorda from My Little Pony, but finally went with Dr. Who. Bow tie, and a light stick fashioned into a sonic screwdriver, and he was set. He'd trick or treat, then tell people he was the doctor. Only one customer had the proper response, "Dr. who?" To which he responds, "Precisely!!!" I don't know if anyone got it.

For my own, I already had a mask (don't know where it came from or how long we've had it, but it's been a decoration in our basement for years) and was easily able to fashion a mohawk from the leftover foam I'd made the boy's diamond sword from. Used a piece of cardboard to make the name tag, and my wife had some beads to complete the look, and I was Geoff from Craig Ferguson's The Late Late Show!!! A few people called me by name, but I'm not sure if I was recognized for the costume or the name tag. Balls!!!

Yep, definitely have to find a geekier neighborhood to get the references!!!

More Rage (At Work)

Another true story of real life adventures made into a Rage Comic. This time from my work life. Funny how you get into something like the Rage Comics, and suddenly you filter all your experiences through that filter!!! Once again, click on the image & hopefully it'll enlarge enough to be readable.

The Catalina Zip Line

What is widely regarded as the high point of our vacation this year was the Catalina Eco Tours Zip Line.







It was over $100 a person, but it's 5 different lines on the course, and some of the best scenery, so it's money well spent!!!






The younger boy didn't meet the weight requirement to go solo, so him & I went tandem. I was a bit concerned that he'd be too apprehensive, but he was the first to step up on more than one of the courses.



In the group shot, you can see the Casino in the background.





















The last shot is where the course ends up, the beautiful Descanto Beach Club. Five Stars!!!

Night of the Coyotes

Did I ever post here that my son got himself a pet chicken??? I don't know that I have, but he's had her since before his last birthday (actually, he bought her as a chick and she was pretty well full grown by then) and I may have a picture of her in that post.


Anyway, I made this Rage Comic up about the true story of how coyotes came calling one night & how I felt about our encounter afterwards. I've submitted it to that site, but I never even see my submissions on the voting pages, so who knows. I have a feeling the image may come out too small to easily read here, try clicking on it to see it larger!!! Better yet, hold your ctrl key and roll your scroll wheel up.

Zippy!!!

I've got more pics from when we went on the zip line, but I thought I'd post the on ride video that my boy shot. It's not a great video, as he couldn't hold the camera real well, but it gets the point across.



More to follow...

OM NOM NOM Every Day!!!

Here it is, almost a month after our vacation & I haven't posted any follow ups yet!!! Just tonight I finally copied all the pictures off my old camera, which my son has inherited.



One thing he did on a fairly regular basis while we were on vacation was to take pictures of what we ate. Just yesterday I got the charge card statement with almost $700 worth of meal charges on it, and this reminded me. Also, the interwebs were out tonight, so it gave me something to do. Never never NEVER get AT&T for a broadband provider, they SUCK ASS!!!






The first & third shots are of the Awesome Burger from Coyote Joe's right off the main drag in Avalon. It consists of three 1/3 pound angus burgers (LOL spellcheck wants to change angus to anus, hehehe). See his eyes glazed over??? He was running out of steam towards the end, but he triumphed.




The next couple of shots are from Antonio's right on the harbor in Avalon. Oh, it was good!!! Everything over there was rather spendy, but I was never disappointed.



Good thing he was taking pictures, I couldn't remember everything we had... We had a bucket of onion strings for appetizer there.







The next three shots are from the Descanso Beach Club, after we'd done the zip line tour. I'd seen a place right by the Casio that had Nathan's hot dogs, and had been wanting to try, but they turned out to have them there. If I'm not mistaken, we had nachos at four different places!!!



The Descanso Beach Club, it's AMAZING!!! There had been talk of building another five star resort on the property, but for now they've got the zip line there. The rest of the property is five star caliber. One of those places where, when we'd arrived, I kept expecting someone to come up and tell us "Excuse me, I don't believe you belong here".



The last couple of shots are the only mainland shots. This was near to the site of our breakdown, Joe's Crab Shack. Excellent food all around!!!



At our last hotel (actually, it bills itself as a resort, but I couldn't bring myself to type "last resort") the night we got there, they had happy hour going on there, and we were able to get four or five appetizers (more nachos!!!) at half price, probably the best deal on high end food we got the whole trip.

My boy was talking of starting a food blog. I either beat him to it, or have given him a template to copy with this post!!!