9/20/07

I'm just going to stop worrying about whether or not y'all get to read this. I'll send it to Spiderman, he’ll either post it or he won’t as he sees fit (he’s a busy man and is doing me a favor by posting this so I'm going to be the last person to complain about free services), Blogspot will either work or it won’t, and y'all will either read it or you won’t. I'm beyond caring at the moment. “What’s with all the negativity man?” I hear you asking. To which I say, “Shut up ya dirty hippie! Get a job, take a shower, eat an animal, and drive a gasoline-powered car with R-12 air conditioning.” It is not so much negativity, well the rant against hippies was I suppose, but a case of indifference. I guess my “whelm” level is beginning to rise on the house thing. I'm realizing what a major undertaking I'm about to get into. Oh, as an aside, I have decided that I want a pool table in the living room and I'm probably going to convert the dining room into a bar. Those rooms will never be used as they are now so I might as well. Besides, I have two nieces who might wind up going to TCU in a few years. They may need a place to bring their sorority sisters for parties and such. You just never know. See, if I cared what y'all thought about me I might not have said that. But back to the house, I think I've decided on the two-car extension to the garage with a drive to the back patio. The drawing of which can be found elsewhere in this laptop as “Burkett Shop 1” in the folder “Burkett Shops” which is in another folder called “Shops” in a folder called “Paint Drawings” in yet another folder called “Dimlight Racing” on the desktop. Um, so drill down in the reverse order of all that. I also think I've decided that (Barbecue Bob) needs to have an L-20b installed so he can be sold. John has given me an engine and transmission that will take just a few weekends of work to get in that car and on the road. I'll sell off all of the V8 stuff as well, I hope. I need to get (Barbara) to Marty sometime and collect a couple dozen sawbucks for that detour. No, it wasn’t a detour. It was a valid project in a similar vein as the rest of my Datsun “Sunny” obsession. No regrets. (Barbecue Bob) was a tad detour-ish, but these things happen. Now I have a valid excuse for the (Mr. Wiggly) detour: I really like that van! Yeah, I think I'm going to keep (Mr. Wiggly) as well. He can park on the back patio with the trailer and not be too much of an eyesore. Worst case, I'll throw a privacy fence up and the neighbors won’t see him unless I drive him around. So there! Oh, speaking of (Barbecue Bob), he could still get a reprieve if the “L” shaped three-car garage were to happen. I just don’t know if it will fit within the “twenty-feet from the property line” restriction now. See, I had a look at the blueprints for the house and on one page there is a drawing of the drainage plan. It shows a line, which we hope is the “fill line” for plot leveling porpoises and not the property line, being 29’ from the back corner of the house. This line slants away from the house toward the front so I'm pretty sure my two-car thingy will be fine. I really need to get the official plot plan from the county to verify these things. Ok, I'm going to stop talking about that for a bit and move on to crazy car ideas. I was watching a thing the other day about some group making motorcycles with helicopter jet turbine engines. Jay Leno has one. It got me thinking that if they can fit one to a bike frame, I could fit one in a Seven! Routing the 1,300 plus degree zorst to the back without cooking the occupants is my stumbling block. I suppose if I built a McSoreley/Locost 442 with an extra large transmission tunnel, and insulated the hell out of said tunnel, the zorst could run through there. For the record, the McSorely 442 design is 4” wider, 4” longer, and 2” taller than a “standard” Locost frame. It allows the use of standard Locost bodywork on a wider-cockpit car while retaining the same basic proportions and lines. It isn’t my favorite version of a Seven, but if it worked it would be really cool. Wasn’t that turbine car that blew away all the competition at Indy a few decades ago a Lotus? So there you have the historical significance of the Turbine Seven. I'll have room out back to park one of the other 1200s while I build this in my new shop. Hey, it looks like I'm back to thinking about goofy projects again! Ok, on that note I think I'm going to call the rant complete. Hopefully someone will read it sometime. Toodles.