7/3/14

Well, I made the trek to Bowie, Texas yesterday to have the bolt face of the SKS smoothed and their sear, which I already had, installed.  The smoothing went well, the sear… not so much.  It took him an hour or so of fiddling and trimming, filing and polishing to get it in and “working.”  Unfortunately, when I got home and had a look at it, I discovered that the trigger won’t reset when the action cycles with the trigger pulled… y’know, kind of like every time the thing gets fired?  I shot an e-mail back to the guy and said I’d come back this afternoon to have another go at it.  It is 0920 h and I haven’t heard back but he probably hasn’t read his e-mail yet this morning.  I truly regret making the decision to install that sear because the gun worked fine with the Chinese sear in place.  I just fingered, “Hey, I got this I might as well use it.”  That is the bane of my existence… “Hey, I got this I might as well use it” syndrome.  Fortunately the shop move saved me from some of the wackier “HIGTIMAWUI” projects I had floating around.  Shall we list some of them?  Well, there was the back two-thirds of a Honda Goldwing and the front two-thirds of a Formula Vee racecar which were going to be combined into a tricycle vehicle I was calling a Crossbow.  Then there was the Honduh D15-Z1 engine and transaxle and Austin Mini which were going to be combined using thousands of dollars’ worth of Mini Mania kit.  I can’t count how many Datsun 1200 chassis came and went through the place, all of which were at one time destined to be returned to the street.  Ok, I probably COULD count them, I don’t want to.  There were numerous “orphaned” engines and transmissions which were allocated to numerous different project cars, none of which ever actually happened.  Oh, and the worst offenders of them all with regards to “HIGTIMAWUI” were disposable income, the trailer, and space to store dead cars!  Juan might argue that going into crushing debt has saved me from myself.  Kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but it does put a bit of a positive spin on… no, never mind.  Of course I am still sitting on one “HIGTIMAWUI” project: the Spitfire and the A-14 from Lil’ Wiggly.  I really dig Spitfires.  I really would like to build have a Spitfire… especially one with a Datsun donk.  I have almost all the bits I need for it.  If it is still around AFTER the Chickenhawk is up and going, I’ll do it… probably… maybe.  We’ll see.  Well, I just heard back from the gunsmith in Bowie.  He’s ok with me coming back this afternoon.  Since the home office in Irving is closing at 1400 h today, in preparation for the 4^th of July holiday, I will probably make my way north at around that time as well.  Ok, I have mentioned mom taking in “strays” from time to time, right?  Well, the current one has burned her bridge with me.  When I left Bowie yesterday my phone rang.  It was mom telling me that she and DC (the “stray”) were going to get something to eat and that I should eat on my way home.  I stopped at McDonald’s for a Demi-Kilo Avec Fromage.  When I got home I found out they had not gone to eat yet.  Apparently DC is an aspiring author and needed to use mom’s computer to do some writing yesterday.  She didn’t show up until after 1500 h, to mom’s annoyance, so she wasn’t ready to go eat until after I had arrived.  Mom was worn out, and pissed off at wasting the entire day waiting for and then on her.  She said she would take DC to dinner somewhere and then drop her off at the bus stop.  I knew she was knackered so I changed clothes and went with them to West Side Café.  There is where DC’s final bridge to me was burned.  She acted like an entitled little shit to the waitress and alternated pissing me off and embarrassing me with her constant verbal diarrhea.  Somehow it was mentioned that I might, MIGHT be interested in seeing Australia someday.  Mom chimed in that she would go with me there.  That statement, in DC’s head, became “Mom and I are going to the outback of Oz!”  “What,” she asked repeatedly, “Are you going to do in the outback?”  “I can’t see Miss Dot in the outback,” was peppered in there as well.  “What about kangaroos?” was one which really baffled me.  “Um, I don’t know,” I said.  “Avoid being kicked by them?”  Then New Zealand came up in conversation.  “Oh, do you ski?” she asked.  “That’s how they get around down there, isn’t it?”  I was dumbstruck.  I said, “Didja see ‘Lord of the Rings’?  THAT was New Zealand.”  Ugh!  Then there was the aforementioned entitlement attitude with the waitress.  Well, “entitled” perhaps isn’t the right word.  She was more condescending… and acting entitled.  The “Soy vs Teriyaki Sauce” argument she had was bad.  Then with the constant asking for her fucking chocolate cake, which when it arrived was questioned as to whether or not it was a brownie for fuck’s sake!  I could see the frustration in the waitress’ face and apologized.  I finally just got up and went to pay so we could get her out of there before mom and I were banned from the place.  I apologized face to face to the waitress who gave the polite, “Oh, it’s ok.”  But it was far from “Ok.”  I told mom, “I am never doing that again.  I can’t tell you who you can associate with, but I am never going to dine with her again.  The sooner you cut her loose, the better.”  Since she was supposed to come back today to help mom with cleaning, mom asked what I thought of letting her stay the night.  “I can’t afford to get myself a hotel room,” I said.  She did not get the invitation or I probably would have slept in my car or here at the office.  I literally dislike her that much.  So, that’s about all I have to say today.  We’ll be going to the shop tomorrow and I might be trying to sell a couple guns at the gun show Saturday and/or Sunday.  I’ll have a report next week sometime.