1/11/11

No, I'm not going to remark on it, other than to say I'm not going to remark on it. If you don't know, or can't finger out, about what I am talking, then you don't know me as well as you thought. So, Saturday morning I slept in. John called as I was about to drop the kids off at the pool and asked what my status was. I told him I'd be at the shop in fifteen minutes, knowing damned well it would be at least half an hour or more. Oh well, what are you going to do? When I arrived, in Lil' Wiggly, we got to work trying to finger out what the hell was wrong with the high beam circuit. The more we messed with it, the weirder it got. Nothing we did would make the high beams light. Nothing. We jumped directly from the battery and still couldn't make them work. We tried grounding stuff, putting power to stuff, disconnecting stuff, reconnecting stuff... nothing worked. I began to worry that Kevin’s jumper wire, while effective at making the low beams come on, was wired incorrectly. See, Datsuns don't run a hot wire to each individual element and use a common ground. No, they run a common hot and then ground the individual elements through the dimmer switch. I think we just extremely lucky that the jumper didn't short out the car and burn it to the ground. Anyhoo, we finally decided to say, “Fuck it” for now and run the thing as is. Yeah, therein lies the rub. Now the car won't crank unless the battery charger/jumper box is connected and pumping mega-amps into the system. Even then, it sounds weird. Once the engine fires it sounds fine... until you try to turn on the headlights. That is like cutting the power to the coil. The thing just dies. Oh, and killing the headlights while the engine is spinning down does not cause it to fire back up. No, you have to reconnect the jumper and pump in the amps again. Needless to say, we’ve got something screwed up. I decided we’d just park the thing and have a look again next week... or sometime. John is keeping me under control and not letting me think about going for the L-series swap right now. He’s right of course. But I did say that when the car takes a dump, I'm doing the swap. I'm just saying. You don't want to make a liar out of me do you? Anyhoo, once we parked it and cleaned up, we headed out to eat lunch and look at a car in Bridgeport. About halfway to the freeway, I looked at my wrist and noticed I wasn't wearing my watch. I made the comment that I must have taken it off when I washed my hands. Which, of course is what I did. John asked if we needed to go back for it and I said I'd do it later. We rolled on. The car in Bridgeport was a pretty clean B-210 two-door notch back. Not my favorite, but it wasn't going to be for me. I won't be surprised if John buys it. We'll see. John dropped me off at my house and I decided to forgo heading back to the shop for my watch. I wasted the rest of Saturday. Sunday, I waited for mom to get home from church and we headed out to lunch. I asked if she’d mind me running down to the shop to get my watch. She didn't. The whole way there... well, most of the way there, I was thinking, “I’m paying a shitload of money every month for this inconvenient-assed shop. You can't get to the motherfucker easily from ANYWHERE. I've got to get out from under thins thing.” I didn't voice that opinion, but I think mom knows it. I pulled up to the shop and went inside. “Hmm,” thought I, “The watch isn't next to the hand cleaner like I thought it would be.” I looked at the fan because that would be the next most likely spot. Nope. Just as I was turning to look at the faucet, knowing damned well it wouldn't be there, I also checked the pocket of my pants. Yes, I had it the whole time. I put it on and hopped back in the car. Mom asked if it was where I expected it to be and I told her, “No... it was in my pocket.” She gave me the incredulous, slow head turn glare. “I wish you hadn't told me that,” she said. I shrugged and we went to lunch. It was snowing its ass off! Nothing was sticking, but the flakes were huge and plentiful. After lunch I sent John a text saying I was thinking of going to the Shooster’s Club. He finally replied a few hours later and apologized. I had fallen asleep in my chair anyway so it didn't really matter. I did finally go to On Target in Whiskey Flats and burned through 100 rounds of 9mm in Katey. She’s had around 130-150 rounds through her and goes “BANG” every time I pull the trigger. I think I can call her “Broke In” and trust her as my carry gun. Now, while she isn't the LEAST accurate gun I've ever owned, she is certainly no “tack driver.” Almost every round was on the target but the spread at 7 yards was nothing to brag about. Sure, I can be blamed for some of it because I'm sure I do “flinch” a little due to (tee hee, I said doo doo) the long trigger pull. But I think for close up work, she’ll do fine. I took her home and gave her a cursory “cleaning” then settled in to waste the rest of the day. Yesterday and today I've been tweaking the dome house/shop drawing some more. John said that having separate rooms for him and Pat made no sense and that bunk beds would be pretty cool in the guest room. I agreed and decided to knock off one more $32,000.00 dome bringing the price down to just over $265,000.00 total. Yes, that is a shitload of money. But it is half of where I started! So, I guess that about wraps it up for today. Smell ya later.