3/16/09

Wow, that was some weekend. First off, it turns out they were indeed my panties which bunched and kept us from moving cars Saturday. Here’s what happened. Ok, I guess I'm going to have to go back and tell a little back story here first. Mom is turning 80 next Monday. My oldest brother, Bruce, sent out an e-mail asking if there was anything any of us could think of that we kids could do for her, like something for the house for instance. I wrote back that she and I had discussed buying garage doors and openers, or a new ‘fridge. Unfortunately, the new ‘fridge was going to mean putting down a new tile floor in the kitchen. “Perfect!” my younger/older brother Ted said. “I know how to do tile, let’s tile her floor for her.” Well, that became the plan, until my sister pointed out that Bruce is crowding sixty and is in no shape to be putting down floor tiles, there really isn't enough time for Ted to come up from Austin and do tiles, and I’m just too damned lazy to be of any help with tiles. She suggested we pay her tile dude to come do it. We agreed to that. Well, the tile guy called Friday to say he could do it this Saturday. Of course this meant we had to have the old ‘fridge cleared out and moved by morning! I got home to find mom working on it. Linda, my sister, was on her way to help as were Becky and her son Eric. Becky is mom’s house cleaner lady, by the way. Well, we got the food out of the ‘fridge and Eric, almost singlehandedly, got it out of the hole it has been stuck in for thirty some odd years. He’s a big ol’ boy. We, mostly Linda, cleaned up the kitchen for the tile dudes and then went to dinner and to buy a ‘fridge. We wound up buying the one we’d picked out several weeks ago and scheduled it for delivery on Monday. I called John to tell him I was not going to be available to move cars after all. We settled on “maybe Sunday” as an alternative. Saturday morning we were ready and waiting for the tile guy. Mom asked if I had anything else I needed to do and I said I really ought to go see Ray. He’d sent me a “nasty-gram” invoice asking if I was ever planning to finish paying for those Datsun 1200 parts he'd sold me. It was on red paper so I figured he might just be serious. I took off for the Ranch to pay him. I cut him a cheque and we chatted for a while. We had some lunch and then I took my leave of him. I had brought the shotgun and Space Gun with me so I could go shoosting afterwards but saw that the range in Whiskey Flats was really busy. I decided to stop at Academy and look for a case to hold both of these guns. I found a nice hard case and bought it. Back at the house, the tile guys had the old floor up and were stripping the mastic with carburetor cleaner and acetone. Yeah, the house smelled awesome! We opened up the front and back doors to ventilate the place and pretty soon they were done. He had the tile down in about half the time it probably would have taken us. It was decided that the remaining work, putting down the grout, wouldn’t take too long and that they could do it whenever our schedules would allow. I told mom we really needed to move those cars that weekend so we scheduled the tile guys to come back after mom got home from church. John and I then scheduled how we were going to move cars Sunday. After the tile guys left, mom and I tried to go to Saltgrass Steakhouse for, duh, steaks. Yeah, Saturday at 1800 h is not the time to be looking to eat at chain restaurants. We wound up at Mexican Inn on Camp Bowie. Sunday morning, John picked me up at 0745 h and we rolled to the shop. I brought the shotgun and Space Gun again. At the shop we hooked up the trailer, grabbed the Chickenhawk’s old welded B-210 axle and the cross member, then loaded the 1200. We headed for Lewisville. There, we dropped off the 1200 and picked up the Violet. That was an ordeal. The 1200 was dropped at some dude’s house. Then we picked up the transmission for the Violet at that dude’s storage building. Then we went to another shop to get the actual Violet. Had the engine already been out of the car, I would have walked away but that engine and transmission are what John is getting for his cross member. Of course, I might give him the Violet as well now that I think about it. Anyhoo, we had to move a Mercedes 300E, a Mitsubishi Shyte Box, and a 240SX out of the way before we could even get to the Violet. We got it out finally and put the other cars back where we found them, for the most part. We loaded up the Violet and got paid. Of course he couldn’t find the title. Yet another reason I might give the car to John, tee hee. Anyhoo, we headed back to Fort Worth and decided against unloading the car from the trailer. If it is going to the crusher, there is no point in unloading it. We’ll see. We stopped off at Free Bird’s for a burrito each and then dropped off the trailer. I took John home and then went to the shoosting range. There were several people ahead of me but I finally got in and shot. The shotgun worked well enough but I think I'm going to keep 3” shells in it exclusively. They seemed to feed better. One of the Space Gun’s magazines kept misfeeding so I threw it the fuck away. I almost threw it out in the lane and shot at it but decided to just drop it in the trash can. Perhaps I'll buy another one of these days, we’ll see. From there I went home and collapsed. Eventually mom asked if we could try Saltgrass again. This time there was no wait so we ate there. Ok, I'm through buying the cheap steaks at chain steak places. That filet was almost fork-tender whereas the sirloin is almost always shoe-leather. Yeah, I'm paying the big money from now on. Well, or going to a good steak house for my cow. So, I guess on that note I'm going to call it a rant. Y'all have a day.