1/6/14

I am having a lot of trouble with my “Give a Damn” level.  It is very, VERY, low right about now… funk soul brother.  Sorry, I was channeling… wait, who does that song anyway?  Is it Moby?  I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter because… I don’t give a damn!  Ok, it was bugging me so I looked it up.  Fatboy Slim is the “artist” of whom I speak.  So, moving on… oh, you don’t know how hard it is to resist making a seventies big-rig trucker reference right now!  Anyhoo, I guess I'll talk about the weekend’s activities.  Saturday morning I slept in a bit.  Eventually I made it to the shop to find John hard at work on his engine.  I tucked in to building the zorst for Lil' Wiggly.  I drilled the holes in the flanges to fit the bolts I'd bought and cut the flared piece of tubing to start the mockup on the driver’s side.  I kept trimming the straight flared pipe until the curved section fit up to it in an acceptable manner.  Then I zooked them together.  While looking at routing the pipe under the cross member, I noticed that it would fit nicely twixt the pan and motor mount and probably clear everything.  The passenger side will have a starter in the way so it would be a single exhaust rather than duals.  I began fiddling with that idea.  I dragged John away from his engine build long enough to ask his opinion of a single 2.5” zorst for the car.  We discussed it and decided it would be fine if we could “Y” the two down pipes together.  I decided to burn that bridge later and got cracking on making the driver’s side.  I trimmed a piece of pipe with half a “U” bend still attached to it until I liked the routing.  I marked it and took it to the welder.  Fortunately, I only tack welded it, because when I refitted it to the car I noticed the flaw in the plan.  The steering arm hits it at full lock… um, left I believe.  Doesn’t really matter, suffices to say it won't work going over the cross member.  So, we’re back to squashed pipes passing under the cross member.  By this time it was noon so we broke for lunch.  After stopping at a store for John, we had bait at an Arlington bait buffet.  I ate too much, as I am wont to do at an buffet.  From there we took our leave of each other and I went home.  I took a shower and dressed for the evening.  Mom had told me that Yizhong, the Chinaman from the church, actually he’s at another church now but that really isn’t all that important, was coming over with his family in the evening.  I napped for a while and waited for them.  When they did arrive, we all chatted about stuff for a bit then went to Pappadeaux for dinner.  I ate too much, as I am wont to do when the group shares entrees and appetizers as freely as this group did.  Oh, Yizhong is a massive gun nut, like me, and was interested to hear about all my guns… especially the Tavor.  I showed it to him and he seemed impressed.  He told me about his guns and we had a grand old time.  He wants to go shooting sometime.  I said I'd give him a call.  His family is going back to China later in the month and invited me to go along.  I thought, “Wow, that would show the railroad a thing or two. ‘Don’t hire me, eh?  Well I'll just run off to China!  That’ll learn ya!’”  I asked mom if she would support me while I look for a new job on my return.  She said, “No.”  I was not surprised.  Meh, I don’t have a passport anyway so I can't leave the country… not to mention I can NOT afford a trip to the other side of the planet.  When we’d finished dinner, I took mom home and went on line to look for a DVD of that movie, “Mao’s Last Dancer” which John and I had helped film, sort of, a few years back.  See, Yizhong has been in the US long enough that he is worried about going back to China.  It reminded me about that movie.  I found it on Amazon and ordered it along with Ralph Bakshi’s “Wizards” and an odd little French ‘toon called “Fantastic Planet.”  Sunday I went online and ordered a starter, shift lever, and shift ball for Lil' Wiggly from Summit.  And yes, that is pretty much the ONLY thing I did Sunday.  Oh, I burned some soup and got Fifi inspected as well as went for a long hoon… but nothing really productive.  This morning the temperature was 13° so the TPS warning light was on in Fiona and the ass-end felt all squirrely like the left rear was flat.  I think it might be time for new tires.  These have 30,000 miles on them so, yeah.  I've got about $1,300.00 credit with Disco Tire so I might look at a set of Drag DR-37 wheels as well.  We’ll see… especially after John reads that last bit about wheels!