3/12/07

I forgot my laptop today. I’m sort of at a loss as to what to do here at work. I’m typing this on my work computer with the intention of sending it to Spiderman and myself later. Ok, so here’s what has been going on in my life for the last few days. Friday I had Jury Duty. Tee hee, I said dooty! Three weeks ago when the summons arrived, I requested coverage for the day from the home office. He showed up Thursday afternoon to get the phone and pager and stuff and sent me on my way. John and I decided against going to the shop in favor of watching a DVD at my house. We watched “Heavy Metal” and ate Pizza Hut chicken wings. Friday morning I went downtown to sit on the jury. I was resigned to being selected so I just went in expecting it. I sat in the big room and they started with the assignments. I was the third name called. They lined us up and handed out the court assignment boarding pass thingies. Once all thirty or so of us were lined up they said, “Report to the eighth floor of this building at 0900 h Monday. Have a nice weekend.” We all left and I called my replacement guy here at the railroad to give him the news. He was ecstatic because covering for me is like a day off for him. I called the home office to tell them. Now, if someone is called for jury duty (tee hee) on a Friday, wouldn’t you assume they might have to come back on Monday? I would. Well, my douche-bag boss had the nerve to yell at me saying, “You sure picked a fine time to call and tell me this. I book the schedule weeks in advance!” I told him I literally got the assignment five minutes before calling him. Seriously, what else was I supposed to do? Invent time travel so I could go back and tell him three weeks ago that I had jury duty? Oh wait, I did tell him three weeks ago that I had jury duty! I was seriously pissed off then. I drove on home to try and relax. Once at the house I began to watch the last of those Dean Martin spy movies. I get a call from the court saying I did not have to come in on Monday after all and that I had completed my service. I called my guy at the railroad again and he said that I might as well go ahead and take the day. I agreed since I was still pissed off at the boss. Besides, it gave Jeff another day off as well and the almighty schedule had already been changed. Oh my, I might have gotten fired if I had called back to have it changed again! Good thing I let sleeping dogs lie! I got a call from Gregg while taking a nap. He was wondering if he could come get Cave In. I told him about being through with jury duty (tee hee) for the day and agreed to meet him at the shop. He shows up as I’m dragging the air hose out to the truck. I air up the flat and round up the battery charger jump box thingy. I hook that up and it reads 12.5 volts. Gregg gives it a few cranks and it fires right up. They, oh yeah he brought a dude along with him fortunately, tried to load it on the trailer they brought but it was about five inches too wide. The other dude drove it and followed Gregg back across town. I never heard from them that it had broken down or anything so I’m assuming they made it. I played with stuff on George for a bit and called it a day. John had a line on a car he wanted to look at Saturday morning so we agreed that he’d pick me up at my house. About 0915 h, while I sat on the throne, he called to say he was out front. I told him to come on in, not into the bathroom of course, just into the house. I finish up and we head out. We find the place, which was the Car Toys on Bryant Irvin road, and have a look at the car. We decide to go have breakfast and discuss it. We go to Mimi’s. We decide that he needs to go look at the car Steve/John has for sale and I say I want to drop off Mr. Wiggly so they can replace the clutch. Yes, I am just exactly lazy enough to have someone else do the clutch. John heads over from my house while I go get Mr. Wiggly. I head that way, babying the clutch the whole time. They say they will bang it out on Monday so I leave the keys. We stand around and talk for a bit then John takes me back home. I call Marty Smith to see if he has any need to come to the west side of town and give me a ride to the shop. He’s in Arlington helping someone move. I tell him it’s cool and settle in for a bit at the house. After a while I say, “Screw it” and head for the shop in mom’s car. I notice she’s really low on gas so I plan to fill it up and run it through the car wash as I’m leaving. I start working on the throttle cable on George some more. Marty calls and says he’s on the west side of town now and asks if I still need a ride. I tell him it will be twenty to thirty minutes before I can get back to the house and he says that it will take him that long as well. We agree to that and I wash up to head home again. I hop in mom’s car and remember the fuel situation. I lock her car up again and hop in Matilda. I race home and find Marty waiting for me. We hop in his truck and head back to the shop. I help him park the trailer and we go to dinner at Panda Express. By now it is way dark so I call it a night. I shower and watch TV for a while. Sunday morning I decide I’m going to stop at the Boys of Pep to price 185/60-14 tires. They have a selection so I wait for a counter person to give me some prices. She tells me about several, the priciest being about $55.00 a tire. We go look at the ones she mentioned and have to ask where the closeout rack was. The dude points them out. Now, all of the other tires had been the typical all-season, multiple sipe, high void to tread ration, passenger car tires. None inspired me. The closeout tires actually had a decent looking, semi aggressive tread pattern. Not to mention they were only $28.00 a tire! I bought four. I had to ‘splain that the wheels were out by Benbrook Lake at my shop so I would have to carry them out. They were cool with that. I loaded them into the back of Matilda and headed for the shop. I called Ray on the way to see if he could mount them but got his machine. I loaded the turbine wheels, after looking them over real good, and headed out to find a place who would mount them. My Kreblechistani tire store was closed so I went to the McCart BoP. I told the dude I had just bought the tires at the Hwy 80 store but didn’t have the wheels with me. He was cool with that and charged me $40.00 to mount and balance them. I watched as they were being done and the only thing that worried me, other than the use of hammer-on weights, was the fact that only one tire “popped” onto the beads. The rest just sort of aired up. Oh well, what are you going to do? I paid up and headed back to the shop to mount them on George. They look pretty good. I still think the suspension needs to settle to know for sure, but I think they will work. I play with the throttle cable some more and finally get one installed. I get about half throttle when the pedal is to the floor. I sit back to grok it and do some thinking. I go out back and steal the gas pedal assembly from the junkyard car and grok it. I set it aside and go steal the throttle cable from the HL-A10 510 wagon out back and grok it. I decide that it will be easier to bend the pedal so the foot pad has more travel than reengineer the cable mount and routing and stuff. I heat and bend the orange car’s pedal then have a look at removing George’s pedal. I get the “C” clip off and remove the pedal then install the bent one. I leave out the pedal’s return spring in the hopes that the one on the carburetor will suffice. I reconnect it all and give it a test mash. It appears as though I now have full throttle capability! Woo hoo! With that done, I decide to remove the front bumper. I take it off and reinstall the license plate down really low on the core support. I mean, the bottom of the plate is like two or three inches off the floor! It is really low. We’ll see how long it remains down there. I clean up and go home. This morning I slept in for a bit then went to return the court’s boarding pass thingy. I drive downtown and cruise the block looking for parking meter spaces. Finally one opens up and I parallel park, poorly I might add. I feed the meter a nickel and head in. I dropped the two knives I usually carry in the seat of the car just in case I have to take the thing all the way into the jury selection room. Fortunately, the dude manning the metal detector took it for me and I was free to go. I headed back to the car and was off. Oh, I forgot to mention that Friday I got a call from my coverage dude asking if I could cut my Monday off short and cover for him while he went on a job interview. I agreed to come in at noon today. So, from the courthouse I started in to work. It was only 1100 h so I decided to stop and visit Mr. Wiggly. They had him on the hoist with the transmission out and were waiting for the clutch to arrive. The parts runner walked in right behind me. We had a look at the new clutch compared to the old one and it was ¼” smaller in diameter. Steve/John showed me that he had in fact measured the clutch disc that came out and it was indeed 10” but the new clutch was 9 ¾” in diameter. He sent it back with the old disc and apologized to me. I said it was cool, which it is because I won’t be able to pay for it until Wednesday anyway but I didn’t tell him that. We talked for a bit and I came in to work. As I was driving in I realized I had forgotten my laptop which brings us right back to where we started today. Well, I think since I have filled two and a half pages I’m going to call this rant complete. Y’all have a day.