5/5/15

I started to do a rant yesterday to wish everyone a happy “Star Wars Day” but decided to delete it at the last minute.  I don’t remember why though.  Anyhoo, we’re here now so happy “Cinco de Mayo” which STILL isn’t Mexico’s 4^th of July.  Yeah, so anyway…  Ok, have I ranted since making a final decision on the job front?  I guess I could go check.  Hang on…  Yes, I see that I did inform y'all that I put in my notice and have been inundated with, “I can’t believe you’re leaving us!” e-mails.  I have found that I’m smiling a lot more, especially when telling folks what I’ going to be doing.  See, I’m telling them I saw the movie “Magic Mike” and decided to become a male stripper.  The reactions have been mixed, to say the least.  My favorite was not incredulity over me being a stripper; it was that I saw “Magic Mike”!  Which, by the way, I have NOT seen.  So, there’s that going on.  Ok, as for the van, I mentioned that John was going to pick up an engine for me on Friday.  I asked him where it was located and when I found it was in Denton, I somehow got across that I’d like for him to pick me up on his way.  We picked it up and took it to the shop on Saturday.  Well, he dropped me at my car then went home with it and then we met at the shop satur… know what?  Never mind.  Saturday morning I was the first to arrive at the shop.  I crawled under the nose of the van to see what I could see.  Yeah, it’s an old van under there.  I was about to get started removing the doghouse when Patrick showed up.  We grokked the van a bot and then John arrived.  We unloaded the engine and then grokked the van some more.  I really like that van!  Once we had the engine on the stand, we got to work pulling the zorst manifold in order to get to the freeze plug in the head which had rusted through.  Only one bolt broke off, fortunately, and we have yet to get it out of the head.  At least we hadn’t when I left on Saturday.  John has had two days to do it but I would never suggest that it is his responsibility.  In fact, I hope he has NOT touched it now because I feel guilty at even saying anything.  Oh well.  We’ll see what’s what on Saturday.  With the manifold off, I got to work knocking out the freeze plugs.  With that done… um, I don’t know what else we did.  John and I ate sushi at Ninja then I went to meet Pat and Tony at Pat’s house so we could go to the Pate Swap Meet at the Speedway.  We were a bit flabbergasted that so many of the vendors had packed up and left by 1700h.  The place was a ghost town.  I found one table with some Ford six cylinder stuff, but it was all for the Big Six.  Eventually we gave up and went to Fuzzy’s for tacos.  That evening I found a set of stainless headers on e-Bay for about half the price of new ones and bought them.  I then bought a two-in/two-out muffler as well.  I almost bought the metric buttload of 2” exhaust bends but couldn’t quite pull that trigger.  I’m thinking now that I’ll see how few bends I can get away with and just buy them in stainless as well.  Of course the muffler is mild steel so I might not.  We’ll see.  I’m also thinking that I’m going to dump both pipes out in front of the passenger side rear tire in an effort to point the noise away from me as much as possible on the freeway.  I have not invested in a carburetor or carb adapter yet… but I’m not sure why not.  Hmm.  Anyhoo, this gets us up to Sunday, right?  Larry texts me at 0900h saying he’s going to Wally World for something and will text again when he’s headed to the credit onion.  When he sends the second text I head out myself.  I grab a couple hundred more dollars from the ATM and wait for him.  This I should NOT have done.  My going to a gun show with money is a bad combination.  We walk the thing and I successfully don’t buy anything stupid… until the very last row.  There I found a receiver for a Mossberg 500 which converts the gun to feed from Saiga 12 magazines.  Yeah, a box mag fed pump shotgun!  It was marked $199.00 but since it was their “last one” he let me have it for $180.00.  Of course now I have to buy a Mossy 500 to do the conversion.  Larry goes back to look at some of the stuff he saw on the first pass and I began shopping for a shottie.  I eventually found one for $225.00 and bought it.  I shouldn’t have because it has the long 8-round magazine which will be totally superfluous once the thing is converted.  We’ll see.  Yesterday on the way home from work, I stopped at Gander Mountain to see how cheap I could get into a new 500.  They had one on the discount table for $250.00 and I’m giving it some serious consideration.  I don’t know, we’ll see.  Well, that gets y'all caught up on my world.  Have