11/21/07

It is suicidally slow here today. I am also having a little trouble with my eyes. I just don’t see me staying until 1700 h today. I might make it to 1500 h but even that isn’t looking too promising. We’ll see what the place looks like after lunch and make a call then. Some more e-Bay purchases showed up yesterday. The two “Datsun 1300” badges from Thailand arrived. They are much longer than I expected. I think they’ll still work though. I'll probably go to the shop Friday and try to get some work done on George. Coincidentally, these badges are for George so there you have it. I'll also probably install the… wait, did I ever confess to the purchase that might cause me to paint George a “flamboyant” color? I don’t feel like looking back so I'll just come right out and say it. I bought a pink “Hello Kitty” horn button that I think I'm going to use in George. The pink horn button got me thinking about painting the car pink. I saw a BMW in Grassroots Motorsports which reminded me how bad pastel pink actually looks on a car though. Now I'm thinking about that metallic salmon color that Ford used on some pickup trucks. Amy’s husband Sam has a metallic salmon F-150 and we always give him a hard time for having a pink truck. I've also seen this color on a Suzuki Samurai or Diahatsu Rocky or some such micro-SUV thing. Of course the easiest thing to do would be to buy a can of white paint and a can of red paint then mix them together for a pastel pink. O’Reilley’s has “ready to spray” automotive paint in those, as well as other, colors. We’ll see. But I was talking about what I was thinking about doing Friday. So, I'll probably install the HK horn button and the badges on George Friday. I'll also probably finish installing the welded 4.11:1 third member and poke in a driveshaft. I hope I have some driveshaft bolts. That will annoy me if I don’t. I'm not going to start saying “then I'll do this, and then I'll do that” because I never get done the big long list of things I say I'll do when I do. I think if I can get the rear axle back together I'll consider the day a success. There, now I've jinxed it and I won’t even get that much done. Are you happy now? Oh, the other day I was helping the Sarbanes/Oxley group get set up for a training session. The theme for the session was Star Wars, since it was for the technology crowd this time and therefore going to be populated with geeks. They handed out candy. Some of the candy came in these little Darth Vader heads. I was looking at one and thought it might make a cool shift knob for a Datsun. I'm thinking that I'll fill it with JB Weld to make it solid and drill a hole in the bottom. “What car,” I thought to myself, “would be the most appropriate for a Darth Vader theme?” Then I remembered the Darth Vader 510 box flares we got with Marty’s new wheels! With the 3.3 liter V6 in the back and those flares painted a menacing black; the Chickenhawk could become the Sith Lord’s ride. I'm beginning to think the Chickenhawk might get a new name, perhaps some personalized plates as well. I'll bet “D VADER,” “DRTVDR,” and “DARTH V” are already taken though. Maybe “DRTHSN” for Darthsun would work. Then there’s “DRTSUN” for Dartsun, but I'm not sure I like that very much. I wonder if “DV1200” is available. Perhaps I could get “DAT VDR.” That one I kind of like, more so than the other combinations of “Darth Vader” and “Datsun.” Of course the Chickenhawk is in line behind George, Barbecue Bob, and Marty so the plan will most likely change five or six times before I turn a wrench on it. That’s just the way I roll. I'm not sure what to say now. I took off for a bit to drop a deuce and then took a ride on the shuttle bus to kill some time. I'm back at my desk waiting for noon so I can go to lunch now. Mom just called to say that my brother from Austin will be headed this way in a little while with his family. We were expecting them but weren’t sure when. It looks like 1500 h to so now. I'll see if I can’t cut out of here around then and try to beat them to the house. We’ll see how that turns out. Ok, I've stared at the screen for five minutes trying to think of stuff to tell y'all. I have nothing. I guess I'll call it a rant and shut up. Have a day. Woo hoo! Four day weekend!