1/24/12

I was going to have a screaming fit about how every time I loan Fifi to someone the shift knob gets broken. But I sent it to John in an e-mail last night while I was still mad about it and I don’t really want to piss myself off again trying to remember what I said. Suffices to say, when I got home and found Fifi parked within fucking inches of the fucking garage door, a location which grinds my fucking gears like a mother fucker, it pissed me off. Then when I got in to move it around back and found the knob loose again… well, I'm surprised y'all didn’t hear the stream of expletives at that point. So I back the bastard around back and can’t get the front tires to roll up onto the concrete. I do a big smoky burnout until the ass end of the truck gets too close to the wall. I take another rolling run at it and get the damned thing parked. By now I'm fucking livid. I go inside and yell, “Every time someone uses that truck, the shift knob gets broken!” Mom says that the Chinaman said something about it and was really sorry. Fuck that! Don’t break my fucking truck every goddamned time you use it! How does that sound? I just keep walking. At this point I'm too mad to even pee. I storm into my room and fire up the laptop. I send yesterday’s rant and rant to John about the knob. He manages to calm me down by shifting the conversation to incredulity over his not jumping in the driver’s seat of the B-310 while I was pulling it out of the field on Saturday. Remember how I had to slip the clutch so he could keep up with me? Yeah, then. I told him that at the time I thought he just didn’t want to get dirty from that car’s seat forgetting that he had just been rolling around in donkey poo changing tires. After reading the two or three web sites I always read in the evening I was un-mad and went down to have dinner with mom. She was mad… at me for being mad about someone breaking my truck. I did not apologize but acted as if I was over it. She was cold and distant all through dinner. What the fuck ever. I'm thinking that I'll just fill that shift ball with grease so it has some resistance to falling off and vibrating, but take the mother fucker with me so anyone borrowing the truck gets a big-assed handful of schmort when they go to shift. That’ll learn ‘em. Ok, on to other matters. Sunday, while on my hoon, I managed to drop a wheel off in a turn. It made a horrible scraping noise as… well, something hit the pavement. I'm hoping it was just the plastic undertray but haven’t crawled to look at the suspension arms. It doesn’t handle weird or pull or anything so I doubt I did any damage. Well, we’ll see on Saturday… if my brake ducts arrive by then that is. I think they otter be here tomorrow or Thursday. John sent me a text earlier saying he saw 5 acres with a 5,000 square foot barn for sale north of Roanoke. I asked if there was a number but he said he went by too fast to catch it. I'm hoping it isn’t actually on 377 because that would be a little too frontage for my taste. That is one of the problems I'm having with Boyd actually. I'd prefer to be a little off the beaten path because it might afford some twisty bits getting to and from the place. Also, the further it is away from other people, the more likely I'll be able to set up a shooting range of sorts… I hope. According to my math, one acre being 208.7 feet square, gives almost seventy yards per side. Five acres would be… um, ok that’s giving me a headache. Suffices to say that if one acre is almost seventy yards, five acres otter be enough for a full 100 yard rifle range. I'm thinking that if it were dug in so that the targets were lower than the shooting bench, and there were a significant berm behind it, there shouldn’t be any stray bullets getting away. Also, I'd design the shooting station such that Juan would have to really work at it to point the muzzle upward without hitting something up close. It works in my head. Ok, I couldn’t leave it alone. I went ahead and fingered out how many yards per side of a five acre square plot: 155.6 yards. So, yeah I could probably do a 100 yard range with a bit of a safety margin. My eyes are so shitty that any more than that would be a waste of time. I really want a place where I can shoot my Saiga 12 and 7.62x39. Of course setting up a pistol and shotgun range wouldn’t be any great shakes, I wouldn’t think, but making it safe to pop off 7.62x39 ammo could be problematic. Anyhoo, I guess that’s about all I've got for today.