11/28/11

Well, here we are again, back at work. I'll skim over Thursday and Friday as I've already told y'all about them. They went exactly the way I said they would. Mom and I went to Aunt Margaret’s for lunch. My cousin Rob and his family were duly impressed with Fiona. We ate and went home. A few hours later my brother and his family showed up at the house and we hung out for about an hour. They left and Thanksgiving 2011 was officially over. Huzzah! If I can get through Christmas as easily I'll be truly happy… of course if I'm ever truly “Truly Happy” I'll probably drop dead, that’s the way of the universe I'll bet. Anyhoo, Friday I took the Mare's Leg to the range to try it out. It is going to be a devastating weapon if I ever have to use it. “Why?” you ask. Well, I have no way to accurately aim the thing out past three to five yards. Anyone… um, I mean anything getting hit at that range by a 230 grain, jacketed hollow point, .45 Colt round is going to be in a world of hurt. It is definitely a “last line of defense” weapon for sure. Otter bust up a zombie’s head pretty good though. I'll just have to watch out for overspray. But I digress. So after the range I cleaned the two guns… oh yeah, I took the Judge as well. I'm a little more accurate with that guy, although my accuracy was nothing to write home about. My target looked like a shotgun, or machine gun, had hit it rather than controlled fire. Of course most of that was due to (tee hee, I said "doo doo!") the Mare's Leg. Ok, so after cleaning the guns I goofed off the rest of the day. I think I might have gone for a hoon in Fiona, but I'm not 100% sure of that. Saturday morning I woke up dreading fingering out why the headlights in Lil' Wiggly didn’t work when we tried the fuel pump last week. I got up and went to fly a bombing mission. I got involved in reading a story by E. E. Smith on my Amazing Ken Doll and lost track of time. When I noticed my legs were asleep I looked at the clock. I'd been on the can for an hour! I did the post mission paperwork and texted John to see what his status was. He was already at the shop! Crap! I dressed and hauled ass down there. I brought a one gallon gas can with me from home and filled it on the way. We dumped it in the tank and hooked up the battery. Nothing. I went back for five more gallons and dumped that in the tank. Surely we should get something now. Nope. We pulled the inlet hose from the feed line before the fuel pump and nothing came out. We blew air up it to make sure it wasn’t blocked. It wasn’t. Finally we primed the fuel pump and tried again. This time we were successful. John set the fuel pressure and we gave the started a kick. It spun a few rounds and then began to struggle. We charged the battery for a while and worked on his 1200’s rear suspension. I guess all he needed was a little passive/aggressive prodding to get him motivated on that project again. He has made a lot of progress. I'm quite proud of him. When we had Lil' Wiggly's battery up to 13.3 volts, we hit the starter again. She fired! A little messing with some settings and she settles into a nice idle… well, as nice as that cam will idle. We re-clocked the distributor and John set the timing. Ooh, it sounds so nice. I piddled with the dash, sort of, for a bit while he finished up what he was doing on his car and we went to lunch. Benito’s, flaming cheese, one taco de barbacoa, and too much Dr. Pepper. I spent the rest of the evening wanting to go back to the shop and work on the dash but didn’t. Sunday, after lunch with mom at Papadeaux’s, I did go back to the shop. I cut out the holes for the speedo and tachometer. Unfortunately, the hole saw I had is just a hair too small. I spent a few hours with a file trying to open the holes. Eventually I found the die grinder and made quick work of it. After a test fit in the car, it began to get dark. I went home. And now, as I said at the beginning, we’re back at work. So there.