5/29/07

And that was another long weekend totally wasted. Saturday morning I called Ray to see if A) he had any Amsoil so I could change the oil in Matilda and 2) I could use the lift to change the oil in Matilda. He didn’t and the Porsche was in pieces on the lift. I said I would use Mobil 1 and do it at my shop, no big deal. I stopped off at O’Reilley’s and bought six quarts and a filter then drove to the shop. Oh, it was raining. I pulled the nose of the car in and put it up on stands then crawled under to get to work. I debated removing the splashguard completely, and leaving it off, but once I had the front bolts out I found I could reach the filter just fine. I dumped the old oil and changed the filter, after filling it with fresh oil of course. I poured in five quarts and checked the level. It was nice. I fired the car up and looked for leaks. There were none. I checked the level again. It was still nice. I declared the oil change done. Next I decided to give my “cold air” intake some “ram air.” I grabbed the drill and started drilling out the dimples in the driver’s side fog light hole cover. The outer row looked nice. The next row in looked ok. The inner row was where I screwed it up. I should have used a smaller drill bit for each row as I moved inward. I decided to go ahead and open the thing all the way up. I cut through the gaps between the holes and then “smoothed out” the edge. When I had it pretty close to round, I stepped back to have a look. I could see blue inside the hole. I took some black spray paint and shot it in from very close range so it only hit the stuff inside the fender. Yeah John, that was probably the weird feeling you had Saturday morning that someone was doing something wrong with paint. When I deemed that job done I took the car down to the lake for a mini hoon. I couldn’t really tell if the ram air made any difference. Oh well. I got back to the shop and had a look at George. I am out of argon for the TIG welder so I knew I couldn’t do anything about the rear support hangers. Well, I could gas weld them with the oxygen/acetylene setup I suppose. Anyhoo, I had a look at it even though I knew all of that stuff I just said. I found a section of rubber bungee cord thing that was missing its hooks. I found a pair of bolts I could thread through the ends. I found nuts for the bolts and came up with a plan. I'd drill and mount that bungee under the mufflers to support them temporarily while I worked out how I wanted to do the actual hangers. This I did. When I had the system hanging without the help of the jack, I deemed it sufficient work for the day and went home. Oh, at some point during the day I went out back for a pee. It itched like hell coming out. Not a burning “Oh, you have gonorrhea,” sort of sensation but an uncomfortable itching inside sort of thing. The same sensation I had when I actually passed that stone back in 2001. I didn’t search the ground to see if I had actually passed a stone though. So, when I had done enough work to satisfy myself that I had accomplished something, I went home. No, wait. Before I did anything with George, Marty Smith called to ask if I would help him put his racecar back on the trailer. This I did then we went to Nicky D’s for a burger. It was really greasy and set my gall bladder off. When I was finished with George I had to take off to the house to release a hostage, in addition to the itchy urethra. So, I spend the evening clearing out the old intestines while having eye-wateringly itchy pees. I'm in such great shape don’t you know. In between trips to the bathroom I watched “Monty Python & the Holy Grail.” I watched it once with the “killer rabbit” feature turned on. That is a feature that shows production notes along the way throughout the film. I watched it again with Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones’s commentary turned on. I was about to watch it a third time with Michael Palin, John Cleese, and Eric Idle’s commentary turned on but it was midnight by this time so I went to bed. Sunday I left the house once to go to lunch with mom. The rest of the day was totally wasted. I did finally watch MP&THG with MP, JC, and EI’s commentary on. I began to feel feverish and finally admitted to mom that I thought something was going on in the old urinary tract so she’d be ready to haul me to the emergency room in the middle of the night if necessary. Monday morning I felt a bit better. I went to the BoP for the muffler hangers to do the zorst on George. Well, I say Monday morning. I didn’t get out of bed until 1000 h then mom and I went to the drugstore and Don Pablo’s before I actually got around to doing anything productive. I got to the shop around 1430 h and got to work. I figured out how I wanted to hang the zorst and did it. I left the bungee thing in place for the time being but will probably remove it before actually firing the car. Pat showed up for a bit and then we both left. I saw John going the other way and turned back. I showed him some of the stuff I'd been working on and then we left. Last night I went to bed anticipating having to come back to work. About 2330 h I awoke to a good deal of pain in my lower back. Now, with the itchy penis action going on, I assumed it to be my kidneys. I didn’t have any trouble peeing though, well, apart from the itching of course. I went back to bed. Nope, not going to get any sleep with that pain going on. Thinking back on it though, it wasn’t really as bad as the kidney stone pain. I'm beginning to think it was a muscle spasm. After tossing and turning for a few hours, I finally decided to take a Vicodin left over from the stone in 2001. My thinking was I could go to the emergency room for a morphine shot and leave the railroad folks out in the cold, or take the Vicodin and see if it helps. Worst case, I'd still have to go to the emergency room later. Well, the Vicodin took hold after about thirty minutes and the next thing I knew it was morning. My back felt fine too. It still itches like hell when I pee though. I came into work and made a beeline for the boss’s office. I told the story of the stone in 2001 and how that was the source of the Vicodin. I told him of the “infection” causing the itchiness. I told him of the kidney pain in the night. I told him I took a Vicodin. He looked at me like, “So?” I said if something happened this week and I had to go have a drug test, I was going to test positive for narcotics and wanted to have the story out in the open ahead of time, just in case. I mean, sure the supermodel is a psycho pain in the ass, but come on, she’s still a supermodel! I really don’t want to lose this gig! Well, that gets y'all caught up with me. I think I'm going to call it a rant. Buh bye.