6/2/14

 It was beginning to look like we were going to be a Wednesday only rant… and it might still only occur once or twice a week since I’m having trouble thinking of stuff to say.  Anyhoo, here’s what we did over the weekend.  I was running a little late Saturday morning and exacerbated it by stopping at the credit onion for some cash.  When I eventually arrived at the shop, John was working on his car… as Juan would expect.  We discussed his seat bracket situation and decided on abandoning the one Marty had made in favor of the factory bracket.  Yes, I know the one Marty made WAS a factory bracket with some additions, but it made more sense to start over… for some reason.  I zooked a bar to the cross piece to add some strength and then we began looking at mounting the seat to it.  I zooked another cross bar in to attach the rear of the seat but we needed some stanchions to raise the front, both for Hockley* and to clear the adjuster mechanism.  I made and welded them to the bracket and it was mountin’ time!  Of course we didn’t have the bolts to mount the thing to the base so we called it a day.  While we were horsing around with all of that, a dude came walking up complaining that we were hard to get a hold of.  We shrugged that off, expecting him to ask about something not related to our shop, when he asked about the Spitfire.  He wondered if it was something he could afford to take and piddle with to which I said, “Oh, you can afford it!”  I dropped what I was doing, not literally but… anyhoo, I walked out with him to look it over and tell my story.  Unfortunately I shot myself in the foot, again not literally, when I said how little I had invested in the car.  I finally said, “My purchase price and storage fees… $200.00 and it’s yours.”  He agreed to that and we began talking about when he could pick it up.  We settled on 0900 h Sunday morning.  After he left John asked if I was relieved to have it off my plate.  I think I am… or at least will be if he ever comes to pick the damned thing up!  But I’m getting ahead of the story.  As we were cleaning up to leave, Patrick the landlord came around the corner to ask one last question about his Datsun pickup.  We walked back to his shop and showed him what he needed to know then we asked him what we wanted for lunch.  He suggested “Off the Bone Barbecue.”  We went there.  We were a bit taken aback by the mention of “Lemon Pepper” ribs on the menu but when she didn’t ask which type of ribs we wanted, we fingered we’d eat whatever was the norm for the place.  Yep, they were definitely lemon pepper ribs… and they were fucking awesome!  The hot link was a bit “meh,” but the ribs were great.  The potato salad took a while to grow on me, I still prefer Red Hot and Blue’s PS by the way, and the okra was… okra.  From there I went to the new Bloodbath & Beyond location on Eastchase and I-30 to see if there was anything I needed.  There wasn’t.  Sunday morning I went to meet the dude so he could buy the Spitfire.  To make a short story long, he never showed.  While waiting I removed the whole wiring harness from Lil’ Wiggly again so I could tape up the dash portion of the show without having to contort myself into the car.  I had to extend one wire but I think I am finally ready to install the dash.  We may look at doing that this weekend after we get John’s seat installed.  I reinstalled the harness and re-routed the under hood section to its location and had a look at the clock.  It was 1115 h and I was supposed to meet mom at the church to go to lunch… so I bailed on the dude.  Oh, one more thing happened while I was waiting.  When I extracted myself from the car to get some more electrical tape, or power for the soldering iron, or something, I noticed one of the neighborhood cats darting out of the small bay’s door.  I tried to soothe it and get it to come to me but it was having none of that.  When I went to go into the “office” to do something, I almost stepped on a snake!  It was right next to the door, just inside the big roll up door and camouflaged by being right next to a huge crack in the floor.  It turned and darted out the door while I grabbed my skirt and jumped up on a chair, screaming like a little girl.  Ok, I didn’t really.  I probably let out a yelp sort of like, “Wa, HAAaay!” or something.  I think I might start open carrying the Judge loaded with birdshot while we’re at the shop!  After lunch I took my daily-carry gun, the Smith & Wesson 9mm I call Smitty, to the range to see if I could still hit anything with it if I ever needed to.  I could.  I’m not proud of the “accuracy” I showed, but it was sufficient.  After that I went home and had a look at bills and such… or at least tried to do that.  I couldn’t access the credit onion online so I’ve been in a bit of a funk.  I was thinking things like, “I gotta sell the Seven,” and “I gotta sell all my guns,” and “I gotta sell the Seven AND all my guns,” until I got to work and finally got in to check my account.  I’m not as broke as I thought.  I’m still thinking about putting a gun or two up on Texas Gun Trader but… well, we’ll see.

*Hockley is the term John and I came up with for the angle at which a seat BASE tilts independent of the seat back angle.