6/6/07

I don’t really have a whole lot to say today. I feel the need to say it though since I'm not sure when Spiderman is leaving to go to the Datsun thing in Canby this weekend. I'm sure he won’t be leaving until tomorrow evening at the earliest though. So, y'all might get another day of my ranting this week and you may not. Let’s see, what can I say today? Oh, I know. Monday I got a call from Gregg saying that the hot rod shop with “our” 240Z engine and stuff has finally cleared out the area in front of it and he could go pick it up. He did that and called me back when he had it in his truck. It was around 1530 h and he was close enough to the west side of town that he wondered if I could cut out and meet him at the shop to unload it. I said I could and we both headed that way. We met at my shop and began the process of unloading. As an aside, I need to either replace or rebuild my engine hoist. We hooked the chain to the engine and started to lift. The handle would pump the hoist up but then it came right back down again. I found that if you held the handle in the down position after making a pump it would finally “catch” and allow another pump. We got the thing up off the bed of the truck eventually and out. With it on the floor, we stood there and grokked it a bit. Finally we had enough and both left. I got home about 1700 h after that. Yesterday I left here around 1600 h and noticed a B-52 doing touch and go landings at Carswell Air Force Base, er, I mean NAS Fort Worth, JRB (Naval Air Station Fort Worth, Joint Reserve Base). I decided to stop at the little cloverleaf where White Settlement Road intersects, um, that road that goes into General Dynamics, er, I mean Lockheed. I sit and watch as he comes around for an approach. When he’s over Lake Worth, I turn off my radio and roll down my window, so I can hear the eight turbo-jets roaring. He touches down and powers up again. He’s back off the ground and pulling up his landing gear as he passes in front of me. I roll my window back up and watch as he goes around for another pass. This time I hop out of the car as he’s approaching from the lake. There are two big puffs of white smoke as the landing gear hit the tarmac and he’s down. After a couple plane’s lengths, he pours the coal to it again and is back in the air right in front of me. It really is cool how that many tons of aluminum and stuff can get off the ground like that. Mind-boggling almost. I hop back in Matilda and turn around to leave. I jump back onto the cloverleaf and head towards the gat to General Dynamics, I mean Lockheed. I head for the house and mom and I discuss what we want for dinner. I lobby for Mexican Inn, but not very hard. She halfheartedly votes for Don Pablo’s or Olive Garden, neither of which sounds all that good to me at the time. We head out on a quest for food and wind up at the West Side Café, which is not to be confused with the West Side Steakhouse which is some people’s code for New Orleans Nights, I strip club near Ridgemar Mall. We walk in and are asked, “Smoking or Non?” I notice that it really makes no difference as the place reeks of smoke but say, “Non,” nonetheless. We’re seated next to the Plexiglas partition between the sections and I can see the smoke pouring over the top. I shrug and decide it is part of the ambiance. We each have a Chicken Fried Steak. Now, I have come to expect disappointment when ordering CFS in a restaurant. It keeps me from being actually disappointed when the tough piece of breaded shoe-leather comes and I have to gnaw through it. This CFS was ok. Oh it was tough, but it had also been properly “cubed” and was thus semi-shredded to the point of faux-tenderness. Also, the batter wasn’t so thick as to drown out the meaty goodness inside. Of course the whole meal barely breaking into double digits didn’t hurt either. It was rather reminiscent of an old time diner experience. About the only thing missing was Flo telling Mel to “Kiss my grits!” Come to think of it, like Linda Lavin as the lead character in “Alice,” our waitress was not totally unattractive in that way that some unattractive women can be, if you can fathom that concept. Perhaps it is a “lesser of two weevils” sort of thing, which never made any sense to me. Ok, I'm just wasting time now. I think I'll call this rant complete and go grab a bite in the cafeteria. They’re probably having Chicken Fried Steak!