5/22/06

Happy Queen Victoria Day, eh! I need to call Pat and wish him a happy QV day right quick. For a weekend where I didn’t do much, I sure have a lot to tell y’all. I'll start with the end; mom and I saw “The Da Vinci Code” yesterday. It was a pretty good action movie. Not great, but it was pretty good. If it wasn’t such a hot-button pop-culture theme I don’t think it would do so well. What I found the most interesting was the target audience! I was probably the youngest person in the theater and, as you may know, I'm no spring chicken. Holly-weird probably had a tough time with the marketing meetings for this one! Not that it really needed any marketing because of the aforementioned pop-culture hot-button theme. Anyhoo, that’s that. Friday evening I did something. What was it? Seriously, I'm trying to remember. Something had me out of and away from the house for a while. I'll think of it eventually and get back to you. No wait; did I test-drive the xB on Thursday evening? I see that it was Thursday that I did that. Ok, so maybe I didn’t do anything Friday evening after all. Oh, I remember now. During the day Friday I got a call from Marty Smith asking if I was at the shop. I told him I was not and he asked why the door was open. I said someone, who shall remain John, must have forgotten to lock up when he left. I went on to say that I'd swing by that evening and lock it. I need to get Mr. Smith a key to the place sometime. So, while watching “Good Eats” on the Food Channel, I mention it to mom. She freaks out! “We need to go check on the place!” she says. We agree to go lock up the shop and grab some dinner. Oh, my Edelbrock carburetor arrived Friday as well so I thought I'd drop it off while I was there. We head for the shop. I have a quick look ‘round and decide nothing was missing. Mom asked if it looked ok and I said, “No, it looks like the place has been ransacked, but it looks like that all the time.” We laughed and headed out. I stopped for gas at the Mobil station since I discovered that the Summit credit card I applied for is honored there! Mom made some jingoistic comment about not using the major oil companies to which I replied, “It’s all coming from the same places.” I think she’s more concerned with the price to tell the truth. She uses Sam’s regular whereas I use major label premium. Anyhoo, from there we head for Don Pablo’s to find a 45 minute wait. We don’t, wait that is. Next we head for Red Hot and Blue but decide to not even try since we could see the line from outside. We wind up at a little burger joint across Hulen from Arlington Heights High School. We order and find a place to sit. There is a table of young punks sitting there eating and being relatively quiet, for loud young punks. When they were finished eating, they got up to leave and rearranged the tables back to their proper location, threw away their trash, and thanked the lady behind the counter. It pissed me off so much that they were so polite and totally ruined my preconceived notion of their punkitude. The lady behind the counter was the only one working and there were three tables of folks before us waiting for food. About forty-five minutes later our burgers arrive. I have to say it was a very good burger! I'm not sure if it was the wait or if it was really that good, but it was a very, no, it was a damn good burger! We headed home from there. Saturday morning I headed for the shop and played with the new carburetor some. I took it all apart and figured out, mostly, how it worked. When I had it all reassembled I decided I would go to the Motorsport Ranch to get oil and a filter for the Pimpmobile. I was about 1,200 miles past the 5,000-mile oil change interval. Now, before you get on my case, let me ‘splain. The odometer shares the same display as the outside temperature gauge in the Pimpmobile. I usually drive with the outside temperature displayed. The other day I happened to notice the regular odometer and saw that I was late on the oil change. Anyhoo, I go to the Ranch, in the Seven, and see Ray. I ask him if he has a filter and we look it up. He does. He also rounds up the six quarts of oil I need and bags it all. I hang out for a while and have track food with Pat and Ray. We look at some of the vintage cars that are racing that weekend and I finally take my leave. I fill the Seven at the Exxon station there in Cresson, since the Summit card is good there as well, and then head north. I decide to swing by the Toyota dealer and see about the Sciontology meeting the cute sales lady told me about Thursday night. There were a bunch of xB folks there and a live band. It was a meeting of Scion owners, you see. Scion owners, Sciontology, get it? Anyhoo, I decide to keep driving. I go to the house and cool off for a while. When I wake up, I head for the shop to change the oil in the Pimpmobile. That goes well but I discover the waste oil drum is full. I manage to get all of the oil from this change to fit but it is right to the top. I go home and shower then waste the rest of the evening in front of the TV. As I said before, mom and I saw the movie Sunday so I wasted that whole day doing nothing productive. The cute sales lady just called to tell me they have a five-speed hatchback Yaris on the lot if I want to come see it. I told her I'd try to get there before 2100 when they close but it will more likely be tomorrow evening. Oh, I can’t make it tonight because John and I are delivering the red 510 to the muffler dude. They apparently came to an agreement Thursday. I don’t know the details, and I don’t want to know them. Well, it is noon and I have completed everything I was going to say. Have a day.