4/11/2011

Well, Lil' Wiggly is engine-less at the moment. As I mentioned Friday, I picked John up at 0915 h or so and we headed to the shop. Once there, we got to work on Lil' Wiggly. He jacked up the nose and we set some stands under the frame. He drained the oil while I got to work cutting the zorst. Yes, I actually crawled under my own car and did some work. Oh, wait. Before he jacked the nose up we rolled it out and carried the engine hoist over from the paint booth. I'm not sure I needed to be that pedantic, but that’s just how I roll. Anyhoo, with the zorst cut and the oil drained, we set the car back on its wheels and connected the hoist. It lifted up and out with very little drama. With the engine hangine dangerously high in the air, ‘cuz we’re daredevils like that, I removed the oil pan while John removed the alternator and bracket. With a sacrificial oil pan in place, we lowed the engine onto a tire and shoved it under the bench. We folded up the hoist and pushed it “out of the way” then shoved Lil' Wiggly in far enough to close the door. We cleaned up and headed out to the junkyard for John's mission. We stopped at Benito’s and had lunch “on the way.” At the junkyard, John removed the rear suspension from the 510 he’d scouted a few days earlier while I scoped out a few other nearby cars. I found a four-plug NAPS-Z electronic distributor and pulled it. Nothing else struck my fancy. Once we had the suspension on the dolly thing, we headed back to the cashier. John paid for his parts and we drug them out to Fifi. A little “He-Manning” and we had the unit in the back of the truck. From there we went to John's house, stopping along the way for a much needed Route 44 Ocean Water at Sonic. At his house, we dropped the suspension in his garage and hung out chatting for a bit. Eventually, I went home and cleaned up. OK, this next bit of the story is going to require a bit of reminiscing. Wow, that word does not look right. Anyhoo, remember the other day when I said I wanted to start reading again? Well, after saying that I went to Amazon dot com and looked at their “Ken Doll” e-reader thing... or whatever the hell they call it. I decided against buying it then because mom has a Sharper Image reader thing that I figured I ort to check out before jumping in the deep end. Oh, and I asked my “friends” on the Face Space what they thought of the Ken Doll but didn't really get much help. OK, so after taking a shower, I asked mom about her reader thingy and she told me my sister is really disappointed with hers, another Sharper Image unit, and was thinking of getting rid of it. My brother had tried to get mom’s to work with little to no success so there is no way in hell I was ever going to finger it out. I told mom my intention to look at the Ken Doll again, which I then logged on and did. I think I sort of half-assed offered to buy her one as well but she refused. She likes her paperbacks. So, I pick a Ken Doll and a case for it and put them in my virtual shopping cart then went ahead and bought them. As I'm finishing up with the transaction, John calls to talk about car stuff. While we’re talking, another call tries to beep in. I look at the number to see if it is important enough to blow John off. I don't know anyone with an 800 number so I blow it off instead. Well, it turns out the call was from the credit card people wanting to know about some suspicious activity on my card. Oh, I called them back this morning because mom had received a message on the home phone asking me to contact them. Yeah, turns out if you don't use a card for a long time, then buy a smallish item on one web site one day and a bigger ticket item a few days later, it raises eyebrows. I ‘splained that they were all legitimate and now everyone is happy. So, hopefully in the next few days I'll be getting my new Ken Doll and can start loading books on it. I sure hope the rest of the Luddites don't find out, I might get kicked out of the group. Oh well, what are you going to do? I'm going to call it a rant for today. I'll tell y'all about the gun show tomorrow.