2/4/08

I'm almost “finished” modifying Darth Versa. I've had it two weeks so far and, well, y'all already know what all I have done to it. This last weekend John and I, mostly John to be perfectly honest, installed the AEM Cold Air Intake. Here’s how it went. I told y'all what the plan was for Saturday the other day. Well, that plan went out the window, as DLR plans are wont to do. Friday evening I finally got totally fed up with using the numeric keypad for texting. I don’t even think I was texting at the time though, which is the weird part. I grabbed the phone and texted John asking if he'd like to get new phones in the morning. He enthusiastically said yes and asked if I'd come pick him up in the morning. I asked about his window tint and he told me why he wasn’t going to do it that day after all. I don’t remember his reason though. [ Because I needed the money to buy a Crackberry... - SM ] Perhaps he’ll interject here. Anyhoo, I agreed to do that and we set 0830 h as our meeting time. I got there around 0845 h I believe and we headed to the AT&T store we always deal with. I know, the correct grammar there should have been “… with which we always deal” but I'm not going back. Oh sure, I wasted even more time ‘splaining it and retyping it than it would have taken to fix it. But hey, that’s just how I roll. Ok, I seem to have gotten lost already. Alright, I've got it now. We get to the store after 0900 h and they are not open yet. He says the website lied to him. They open at 1000 h. We decide to grab some breakfast. We go to Denny’s. This Denny’s actually had good-ish service and we got out in less than an hour. Back at the AT&T store there was already a line of folks waiting to get in the door. “Someone else had the same idea,” John said. We waited and were about the third people through the door. We signed in and had a look at phones. We decided on the Dingleberry. I'm not sure which model it is because it doesn’t say on the front. I think it is the Curve, or the Swerve, or Chicane, or something like that. But I could be wrong. Anyhoo, a sales dude approaches and asks what we want. John tells him and he takes us to the counter to work it all out. I pick the tungsten colored jobbie and John gets a red one. The dude does all the machinations for setting us up and we pay. Back in the car I synch mine to the Blue-Tool system in the car and we roll to the shop. I don’t think John heard a word I said the whole way there because he was playing with his new toy the whole time. We stopped in at the dealer and picked up my license plates then headed out again. We got to the shop and rolled Marty out. I had John drive Darth Versa around the building so I could hear it. I'd never heard Matilda until I sold her to Enrique. Darth Versa sounds nice and rumbly from the outside. I was pleased. In the bay I jacked up the driver’s front wheel and removed it. I began popping out the retainers on the splash guard while John got cracking on the under-hood work. We had the whole shebang done in under thirty minutes, I believe. Pat called to ask if Fifi and I would be available to help move a refrigerator in the morning. John took the call and gave me the message. Enrique called to say he was on his way with some dude and they eventually showed up. They had a look around at things while John and I finished with Darth Versa. We rolled Marty back in and I “repossessed” the Datsun roundels, Datsun emblem, and Sunny Coupe emblem from Matilda. Enrique wants to run the car badgeless with only the Datsun at the top of the windshield. I'm cool with that because I wanted those things for my 1200s anyway. Well, not the roundels so much, but the emblems. John installed my plates and I stuck the window sticker on. Darth Versa is all legal and stuff. I even dropped an insurance card in the console. So, what do I still have planned for Darth Versa that causes me to say I'm almost finished? I bought a set of Watanabe center caps from e-Bay today. I think that once I have those on, I can safely say Darth Versa is finished. I can say it, I don’t necessarily mean it. Ok, back to the narrative. With all that work done, we push Marty back into the shop and head out. Enrique and the other dude take off in Matilda to go do their rat killin’ while John and I head to his house. I can’t remember if we did anything else on the way though. I don’t believe we did. Oh yeah, we stopped and ate some Pho. It was tasty. I wasted the rest of the evening playing with my new Dingleberry. I set up a couple e-mail accounts which direct to it (dimlight65@att.blackberry.net and tim@dimlightracing.com but I'm not sure if the second one is going to work), loaded some custom ringtones (the James Bond theme from “Dr. No,” the “Mission Impossible” theme, the “Hawaii Five-O” theme, and Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy”), loaded a couple games (Tetris and Chuzzle), and probably did some other things. I finally called Pat to set a time for getting the refrigerator. We set 0900 h I believe. I headed his way at 0900 h Sunday morning and we went to the Home Despot. We had to run to the shop to get his furniture dolly first and saw that they are building a Genghis Grill on Bryant Irvin Road in the Lowe’s parking lot! I was so excited I had to e-mail John on the Dingleberry. Of course I sent it to the wrong address. I have since edited his contact information so I can tell which e-mail I'm sending to. I know, “… to which I am sending” is the proper grammar. Thing it, I bugs me but it dudn’t bother me that much. That was for John by the way. Don’t ask. Anyhoo, we decide to stop for some brunch somewhere. Mimi’s looks too crowded so we continue on. There are a bunch of cars in front of Hooter’s so we stop. They look open so we try to go in. It was 1000 h by now but they don’t open until 1100 h. We continue on our way. At Home Despot it starts to look like this refrigerator is going to be Pat’s Ashley Furniture sofa and love seat. We find a lady on oxygen, literally, who redirects us back to the service desk up front. The lady there, there were no men working because of some bowling thing going on somewhere apparently, didn’t know how to help so she just walked away. Finally another lady got on the horn and arranged for someone to get the thing. We meet them at the fridge and they take us back to the service desk to sign for the fridge. I get Fifi while they are signing and then we load it in the back. I toss the keys to Pat because I'm not going to be the one who dumps his new fridge out the back of the truck. We stop for lunch at Sticker Shock Mexican Food, aka Caro’s, and eat. I'm not sure how they get their food glowing hot, but they somehow do. We get the fridge to his house and out of the truck. It won’t fit through the front door. We remove the doors from the fridge and get it in. In the kitchen he excuses me to go watch my Corner Gas marathon on WGN. I bid them farewell and wish them luck with the fridge. I head home and watch three hours of Corner Gas. Ok, I sleep through a couple episodes I'd seen before. One that hit pretty close to home for me was when Hank and Brent started “blogging.” I had to laugh at myself. Of course they took the thing way more seriously than I do. But it was still a pretty near miss. Later on, my brother Bruce calls to say they are at the Zoo, it is closing, and they are on their way to see us. Mom tells me this information, he didn’t call me. Bruce, Mel, and Peggy show up and hang out for a while. Eventually we go to Don Pablo’s for dinner. It looks like they aren’t even open because the parking lot is so empty. Apparently that bowling thing on TV was pretty popular. Who knew? We get a booth and order. Peggy behaves herself and a general good time is had by all. Peggy is like two or something, by the way. Oh, and her name is really Margaret, but I call her Peggy to annoy her parents. Ok, so we eat and then go back to the house. Bruce, Mel, and Peggy leave and I sleep through a few more shows. I miss my evening Corner Gas because they run it half an hour earlier on Sunday night. I was annoyed and went to bed. I had some terrible indigestion and it led me to have some really weird dreams. I just erased the description of the dream because I couldn’t really get a grip on the true weirdness of it. Maybe someday I'll pull an Akira Kurisawa and make a movie of some of my more interesting dreams. Well, I think I've had just about all I can take of this for today. I'm afeared this week’s entries aren’t going to be as long as last week’s. Wasting a whole weekend without doing much doesn’t leave me with much to talk about. I suppose I could debate the “Who is stretchier: Stretch Armstrong or Plasticman?” issue, but I won’t.