2/10/14

FIRE SALE!  FIRE SALE!  FIRE SALE!  EVERYTHING MUST GO!  Is what I might have been saying the other day when I paid bills and discovered that my paycheck is almost all gone already… after fiddling about at the shop and discovering that the zorst pretty much has to go under the cross member on Lil' Wiggly as well.  But let me start from the beginning.  You see, about fourteen billion years ago… wait, I don’t need to go that far back.  So, as I mentioned in the rant Friday, I was in a bit of a funk.  It was alleviated a little by discussing possible re-routing of the zorst in Lil' Wiggly.  When I finally got to the shop Saturday and had a look though, while it might have been possible to re-route the zorst around the front of the engine and through the passenger compartment, it would be difficult.  We set the car down off of the jack stands so I could see how much actual ground clearance the pipes would have.  If I consider the clearance to be an SEP, “Somebody Else’s Problem,” then they are fine.  I'm going to move ahead with that idea in mind.  Let the next owner worry about driving over things.  I will, probably, cut ¼” out of the pipe to tuck them up just a cunt-hair more but I'm always going to hate it.  At that point, I moved back to John's wiring harness.  I disassembled the under-dash harness and removed the super flu us wiring from it.  We got distracted by something so I set the harni aside to do whatever it was we did next.  Eventually we called it a day and went to a little Soul Food Joint out in the middle of nowhere.  I had a huge Chicken Fried Steak while John had catfish.  It was pretty tasty.  I'll go back.  We were easily the whitest people in the place.  The next closest thing to us was the Hispanic gentleman from the construction crew who came in to get the owner to look at something outside… oh, and the Hispanic fellow in the kitchen/behind the serving line.  Anyhoo, after dining, we went our separate ways.  I went home and got online to pay my phone bill and insurance.  It was then that I noticed that the paycheck I'd just received was almost totally gone.  If it wouldn’t have screwed John so totally on that wiring harness, I was just about ready to see what a 12 gauge barrel tasted like.  Then I had the thought that I could try to sell the Tavor to Larry.  That prospect relaxed me a little and I made it through the evening.  Sunday, after a failed text message and phone call to Larry, I packed up the gun, all of the magazines, and all of the ammo then headed to his house.  To make a short story long, he wound up buying most of the ammo to bail me out.  This really relieved my anxiety… and I still have a Tavor!  I took the long way home through Boyd and out around Lake Weatherford.  When I got to the Aledo/Iona Road turnoff, a Lexus SC400 turned in front of the car in front of me.  I heard the zorst roar as he took off up the hill.  I passed the car in front of me and opened the taps on Fiona to catch the Lex.  When I eventually did, after a 100 MPH blat, I noticed the “Bigs and Littles” he had on the thing and thought, “Hillbilly Drag Drag Queen!”  He turned onto Markum Ranch Road in front of me and took off… sort of.  As I suspected, he waited until he was past the slight curves at the beginning of MRR before giving it the beans.  Beans were given to Fiona as well.  He did not pull away even though I could hear his car downshift and really try.  When we got to the twisty bit and he cut across the lanes to “straighten out the corner” and lose me, I thought, “Psh, I'll keep up while staying in my lane.”  This was not to be.  The “Hillbilly Drag Queen” could turn!  And the hillbilly driving it could… well, drive!  I was initially caught off guard and stepped up my game but am ashamed to admit that I drove like a pussy compared to him.  I caught him again as he was negotiating the right onto the freeway on-ramp.  We rolled up onto the freeway and I think he expected me to try and pass him.  I did not.  We ran nose to tail to the northbound 820 exit where he once again rolled into the power.  This time I was ready and followed him through the long sweeper at over 80 miles per hour.  We whipped through “traffic” to the fast lane and he tried to leave me behind.  I heard his slush box drop at least one, maybe two gears and the engine howl as he accelerated.  I left Fiona in sixth and kept right behind him up to about 110 when we had to slow for traffic.  I moved over and took my exit to get home.  There I unloaded the Tavor and accoutrements from the trunk, rounding up the stray ammo I spilled while driving like a pussy on MRR, and went inside.  I gave mom $100.00 and settled in to waste the rest of the evening.  Now I'm back at work talking to y'all.  And now I'm done with that as well.