5/6/13

No, I'm not going into my usual “Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexico’s ‘Fourth of July’” bit this year mainly because it was yesterday and I just don’t want to.  So there.  John, being the voice of reason (dang him to heck!), talked me out of going to look at either the van or the Alfa this last weekend.  Instead we worked on stuff at the shop.  I arrived to find him tucked in to his rear brake installation and watched for a few moments.  When he had a chance, I asked if we could shift Lil' Wiggly and George, position wise.  This we did.  Once George was in the door, John went back to his car while I got cracking on the engine removal.  I… well I took a bunch of shit off and got it ready to come out basically.  At some point John wanted to turn his car around so we did that.  When he was done with his car for the day, he got to work with me on George.  We got the zorst off, a dual system I'm particularly proud of I might add, and all the under-car bits disconnected.  Ok, I got the zorst off while John got the under-car bits disconnected.  We hooked up the hoist and began the removal.  “We forgot the shifter,” John said.  “Damn it!  That’s twice now!” I said in reference to the removal of the engine from his 210 a few weeks ago where we forgot to… well, you get the idea.  I fought the shifter out and we yanked the donk and tranny.  We found a spot to “store” it and moved George back to his spot outside to await the dude from Florida… which sounds like we waited for the dude from Florida to arrive.  No, George now sits awaiting the EVENTUAL arrival of the dude from Florida… you know what?  Never mind.  With Lil' Wiggly back inside we called it a day.  At lunch John made it clear that while he wasn’t against the Alfa, he was not on board either.  So I guess I'm not going to be a true “Petrol Head” by the “Top Gear” definition any time soon.  We discussed the fact that next weekend is Mother’s Day so going to the shop is not looking likely.  We also discussed vans… not the shoes, of course, but the vehicles.  Turns out, John has the hots for a cabover van!  I said it was time for him to find us a pair of cabover vans then.  So hopefully he’s on the hunt.  We’ll see how that turns out.  We eventually called it a day and went our separate ways.  I went home, showered, napped with the cat, and then wasted the evening watching TV.  Sunday, Larry and I went to the gun show.  I had almost $500.00 on me and was on the hunt for a Whitney Wolverine .22 caliber pistol.  I think I mentioned that the other day but I'm not going back to check.  I was also going to buy a new knife since the Browning knife I've been carrying… well, I have issues with it.  I'm not going to go into them, suffices to say I just don’t like it as a carrier.  When we got to the knife guy… well, A knife guy at least, I picked out a purple Spyderco Endura with a smooth blade and bought it.  No John, you may NOT borrow it to pry something, thankyouforasking.  We walked on.  I never saw any Whitney Wolverines but did find a Ruger Mk III I liked.  It has Hogue grips and the 6” bull barrelwhich is threaded for a suppressor and fitted with a flash hider reminiscent of the Sandman guns from “Logan’s Run.”  [ And has this thing in the stock which tells time... - SM ] I decided to walk the rest of the show just in case.  Once we made it to the end of all the rows, it was time to poop or get out of the Ganges.  We sat outside and discussed stuff.  I argued, with myself of course because Larry had his own dilemma, that it made more sense to buy the $10.00 Chinese 7.62x39 stripper-clip chest rig, the $50.00 sight mount for the Saiga 12, and a bunch of magazines for the two Bullpup guns… but the Mk III was SO COOL!  Yeah, we all know where this is headed.  I bought the Mk III.  AND IT IS SO COOL‼‼‼  Larry wound up buying yet another 5.45x39 AK-74 by the way.  I didn’t talk him out of it because I really thought the guy was going to throw in the $50.00 sight mount I wanted before the deal went down.  When he didn’t, I fought the urge to borrow the money from Larry to get it.  There is another show in three weeks, I'll buy it then.  By this time they were throwing us out of the hall so we left.  I hauled ass home so I could grok my new gun before I had to head out to the monthly car show thing.  I arrived at the garage and met Jeff.  “%@&# ^#@%*!” he shouted over The Seven's zorst echoing around in the garage.  I pulled out my ear plugs and shut off the engine then said, “What?”  “They moved,” he repeated.  We fingered out where the new location was, got directions from “Google John", and headed out.  We found it and got parked.  We looked at the cars for a while then went in to Beef ‘O Brady’s to eat.  Then we hung out next to The Seven for a little while longer.  At about 2100 h we’d had alls we could stands and headed out.  And now I'm here at work talking to y'all.  Which I'm about to NOT be doing because…