Monday, October 31, 2016

All Hallow's Eve 2016

Trick or Treat

The neighborhood trick or treating had barely been completed for a full minute before the candy, which had been sitting quietly in a silver salad bowl by the door not hurting nobody, was whisked away to the kitchen table, its contents poured across the cloth, and sorted.


That's what we do in this house. We sort things. Right before we eat them.

Mary enjoyed her assigned post of attending to the door, opening it when the doorbell rang, laughing, ooh-ing and ah-ing over the absolutely adorable costumes worn by the little children who now infest our neighborhood (including the one dressed as the snowman from Frozen who attempted to actually come into our house; apparently he does not yet understand that trick or treating is performed on the front porch of a stranger's house and not in their living room). 

Although we enjoyed the spectacle of costumes, we were quite pleased when the time had come to close the door and turn out the light and retire to the back of the house where we could hide in obscurity and devour the remnants of our offering. 

We went simple this year. Tootsie Rolls of numerous flavors, always a crowd-pleaser, and a few Tootsie Pops. Minimum of fuss, no controversy. Just a simple candy that rots their teeth and then enough stickiness to rip them out of their mouths.  A real dentist's fantasy.

---

Defeated

---

This is the look of Defeat.


Serenity has been sitting in the driveway for the past year or so patiently waiting for me to find the time to fix her. But, alas, there was no time this year for such things, what with all the basement work going on. So she simply sat. And (literally) gathered moss. And rusted.

Finally, with the thought of the approaching winter heavily on my mind, it was time to put her away again, back into the third bay where she spent so many unproductive months last year, being ignored. Because of the basement. And other things.

So I pulled out my rope and my pulleys and hooked her up and pulled her non-working carcass back into the third bay (after emptying it of everything in the way).

And shut the door to the Man Cave.


And felt incredibly sad.

Because another year has gone by.

And she gets older.

And I get older.

And neither one of us is getting into shape.

---

Junk

---

There was a lot of junk sitting in the third bay that had to get out of the way before I could move Serenity into her winter quarters ("dry-dock").

There was no place else to put it except the second bay.


So now the second bay is all jammed up with junk. Some of it I'll need to keep. But much of it is just junk that needs to go.

I have a hard time getting rid of the scrap lumber. There's lots of really good lumber in there. Two-by-fours, two-by-threes, two-by-twos, one-by-twos. Scraps of plywood, drywall. Even a door-sized mirror.

I just don't have any room for it. It all has to go.

I'll try to get rid of some of it down at the Habitat for Humanity drop-off. But they are getting pretty picky about what they take. I tried to take the mirrored door there, but they won't take it if there's any defects (and there's a small crack at the bottom). And they won't take used drywall (obviously). They might take some of the two-by-fours, but only the eight footers.

The thought of just taking it to the dump galls me. But that may be the only solution at this point. No one else wants a bunch of slightly used construction scrap.

I even thought about sitting out on the back deck and just burning it in our outdoor oven. But what a waste that would be.

If I was living out in the country, I'd put it in my pole barn or my shed or something, and next time I got an idea for a little wood project, I wouldn't have to head to the hardware store or the lumber yard. Because I'd (probably) have everything I need.

But for now there's just no room.

And that makes me feel incredibly sad.




Sunday, October 30, 2016

Passing the Time on a Saturday Afternoon

Today was a boring day with nothing to do. Except fix the cars, finish the ceiling in the basement, paint the shelves in Adam's room, finish up some spreadsheets for work, clean out the front landscape areas, and be all nice and cleaned up in time for "The Importance of Being Earnest" at Cornerstone at 7:30 p.m.

No problem.

First order of business is fixing Deb's Camry, because it's been my "backup" car since she went off to college. And since my "primary" car needs some brake / exhaust / tune-up work, I need to make sure my backup car is working before I tear apart my primary car. Especially since the backup car only needs a new radiator, which is a relatively simple job.

Should only take a couple hours.

So ... step 1: remove those pesky cooling fans from behind the radiator so I can actually get to the radiator. Then, find the nice little drain plug at the bottom of the radiator. Turn it til it starts leaking fluid all over the garage floor.  No, that's not right! First, create a kind of funnel underneath the drain plug to direct the flow so that the fluid doesn't pour all over the metal framework. Put the funnel thing underneath the drain plug, then

With the drain funnel in place, the fluid flows cleanly away from the frame...
put a pan or something underneath the car to catch all that lovely fluid.


Then disconnect all the hoses, including the transmission fluid cooling lines, so that I can pull out the radiator. I grab some rubber stoppers for both sides of the transmission cooling lines because otherwise transmission fluid will end up all over the framework. Oh, and put some shop towels underneath the transmission lines as they are being disconnected because they will drip a lot faster than it is possible to plug them.

The old, leaky radiator. Gotta pull off some hoses before it gets recycled.
The engine compartment looks kind of lonely without the radiator in it. And those hoses are just dangling, unused, with no purpose. They look very sad.

(Personally, I get very excited just looking at an engine compartment. Especially when I know what all those parts are supposed to be doing!)

Look at all that stuff! Just makes me giddy to look at it.

Once the radiator is out, put it on an old towel or a piece of cardboard so I can stop and just stare at it as though I know what I'm doing. Which I don't. No, no! I mean, so I can pull all the hoses and things off of it. Because I'll need those to attach to the new radiator. Because I don't have the time or inclination to go out and buy new ones. Because the radiator was quite enough, danke.

Oh, and those clamps...

Close-up of what Michigan weather does to metal.

This is what happens in Michigan to metal in the winter. The winter absolutely destroys metal around here, especially little things like clamps that sit near the bottom of the car and get snow and salt sprayed all over them, all winter long. When the owner is too cheap to get a car wash every week.

Now I go back and take a look at the empty spot where the radiator used to be. And feel the emptiness. Observe the rust. Check my savings account to see if it's possible to forget this whole adventure and just go get a new car.

Then sigh, and get back to work.

The radiator is gone! (The grille-looking thing at the bottom is the air-conditioning evaporator.)
Because Joy is Mine! I went down to http://www.napaonline.com and purchased a brand-new radiator for a bargain-basement price (~$100) and I've opened the box and laid it down on the ground and -- it looks so pretty with the orange and yellow stickers, with the yellow plastic caps over the inlets and outlets. And it's so shiny!

The brand-new radiator, right out of the box.
And in less time than it takes to mention it, I've popped that new radiator in place, plugged all the hoses in place (using the new clamps I happened to have in ,y personal auto-shop inventory), filled that puppy with new coolant, and I am 

All put back together, clamps on, fluid-filled, ready to go.
heading down the road to give it a test!

NOTE: No, nothing else of consequence was accomplished today.

Saturday, October 29, 2016

Remember, Remember, the 5th of September

Once upon a time, in the distant past of Youth Gone By, there were two little girls who loved to play with Barbie dolls.

And then they grew up, and moved on to other kinds of entertainments, and the Barbie dolls lay for a long time, patiently waiting for a chance to see the light of day again.

And the girls, on one particularly homework-free weekend, pulled the box of Barbie dolls out of long-term storage and began to sort through them.


Thinking to themselves, "One day, our children will want to play with these."

And as they took out each doll, they called it by name, and remembered the stories they had acted out with the dolls, and all the adventures they'd imagined, and all the clothes they'd worn.


And it was a pleasant afternoon.

For all of us.