Whatever

Wonderful Wednesday

Yesterday while passing through the shop at work, someone said to me, “How’s it going?” I said in a semi-sarcastic tone, “Terrific!” His response was, “Cool, its Tuesday, double T’s!” Usually I say, “Fantastic”, so I don’t know where terrific came from, in that moment it just did.

This fellow’s response got me thinking. When a coworker or acquaintance asks you how are you doing, they probably really don’t want to know, it is just a different form of Good Morning, etc. So instead of my normal go to of fantastic, from now on I’ll answer alliteratively, sort of. Depending on what the first letter of the day of the week is my response will begin with the same letter as.

Monday = Magnificent
Tuesday = Terrific
Wednesday = Wonderful
Thursday = Tremendous
Friday = Fantastic

Texts From A Cousin

We still have a flip phone (GASP!) and we will on occasion text someone as long as we keep it short. My snowbird cousin has a fine little iPhone and texts up a storm. Louise has just gotten to Florida for her couple of months of avoiding winter and Donna texted her the other day:

Feeling better? How are the B&B. A&F 1

Louise texted back a reply:

an. He is a
macrobiotic chef
and she imports and
sells clothes from

India so they are
very interesting…
But I feel like
throwing a c

Feeling much
better. Air BnB is
fine. The owners
are French and Veg

ds. How are you
doing?
Mild winter?
A&F Weeze

e steak when I
go out? going ove
r to West coast
today to see frien

hicken part on his
cutting board is
not the way to go
so I order th

For whatever reason her texts always gets broken down into mysterious haiku-like tidbits that arrive out of order. We have to go to Verizon’s web site to read the messages where the above six texts can be seen in the proper order:

Feeling much better. Air BnB is fine. The owners are French and Vegan. He is a macrobiotic chef and she imports and sells clothes from India so they are very interesting… But I feel like throwing a chicken part on his cutting board is not the way to go so I order the steak when I go out? going over to West coast today to see friends. How are you doing? Mild winter? A&F Weeze2

Everything Comes In Threes

Friday before last when we rode the tandem to work I had to add a bit more air to the front tire than the normal touch up after a week or two of inactivity. So this Thursday night I checked to see what the air pressure was and sure enough it was low. So I pulled the tube, found a small leak and patched it. The patched tube became our spare and I put a new tube back in the front tire.

On the way home from work on Friday a couple miles from home we hit a big piece of gravel with the front tire in just the wrong way in that it snapped up, poked through the sidewall and punctured the tube. Hss, hsss, hsssss. No problem, we always carry the stuff needed to fix a flat. Unsnap the front panniers, back the whole front quick release out and remove the wheel. I pull the tube and place the recently patched one back in.

To pump it up we have one of those CO2 cartridge things where you tighten the bottom into the top to puncture the cartridge. Well, I twist it a couple times and then it gets too hard to turn. I back it off and try again. This time I force it so much that I strip the plastic threads. Crap. Fortunately we also carry one of those collapsible 4 section pumps too. After about a 100 strokes I get enough air in the tire to limp home.

Thursday night I dropped Donna off at the home of a co-worker’s house for the ASCO Ladies Christmas party. On the way back home I noticed that the low tire pressure light was on. I figured it was a 3 p.s.i. air loss, just enough to trigger the light, that seems to happen annually around this time of year. Today I broke out my little garage air compressor and started filling tires. Left rear, down 3 p.s.i to 32. Left front down 3 to 32. Right front down 3 to 32. Right rear, down 8 to to 27. Huh? As I go to attache the chuck, right there at eye level, I see a nail sticking out about an inch, right at the radius as the the sidewall transitions to the tread. Right at a place that represents new tire not plug & patch.

A Variation On The Elf On The Shelf

A Variation On The Elf On The Shelf

Back in February when I needed to replace one of the Emperor’s 02 sensors I bought it and the wrench I needed to change it online. The sensor showed up, but the wrench was back ordered, so I went down to the local Advanced Auto and bought one to do the job with. Naturally the online wrench arrived a couple days after I finished the job. I couldn’t return the used one locally and I didn’t feel like spending the $5 to return the online wrench just to get $6 back, so now I have two of the same wrenches that I might not ever have to use again.

A couple times during the year I thought that maybe I’d just give one away as a “Door Prize” to an attendee to one of my MMC led events, but never did. Well it is now towards the end of the year and the MMC Christmas Party was coming up, maybe I’ll just wrap it up and put it under the “tree” for Ol’ Swapperoo Gift Exchange.

Then a couple of weeks ago I overheard my cubical neighbor telling another co-worker about his experience with The Elf On The Shelf and his 3-year old twins. I had heard of The Elf On The Shelf before, but never knew what it was all about. So rather than let on that I was ignorant of the subject, I Googled it. WOW! There is a whole subset of America’s mommies that are The Elf On The Shelf disciples and are not afraid to swap stories and activities and tips on how to make this “fun” for the month of December. This is where I discovered that some folks, that now knew what TEOTS was about, but didn’t feel like spending the money on the book and the official elf doll and could just make their own. A light bulb figuratively illuminated over my head at this point, I’d turn the extra wrench into a automotively themed TEOTS.

What followed was a weeks worth of some fun and some frustration for me and mostly frustration for Donna as we perused local stores scanning shelves for the ingredients for my MMC Christmas present. I already had some red paint for the wrench/body, but needed a small Santa hat, a styrofoam ball for the head, red pipe cleaners for arms and legs and some colored felt for the hands, feet, etc. Then we needed just the right size plain box to put him in. Just when finding all the required pieces proved too elusive we got lucky in Hobby Lobby when we found a $6 elf ornament for half price.

The right box was still missing. Google to the rescue again, the 6th link down for DIY Gift Boxes led to a hexagonal shaped box that I could scale to fit. What better style box for a wrench could there be?

Fearing a copyright infringement lawsuit I couldn’t call it The Elf On The Shelf, so in keeping with the car theme called it The Wrench On The Bench. I photoshopped an homage to the actual TEOTS book cover and now I just needed to put something on the inside to tell the story of TWOTB. Hoping to find a passage or two from the real book to inspire a new story once again I turned to Google. No actual words from the book, but I did find a poem on lil’ luna that got me going enough to hack something just long enough to go on the inside of the hex box cover:

How does Santa know who’s naughty or Nice?
The Wrench on the Bench sits in your garage
Watching if what you do is wrong or right
And reports back to the North Pole every night.

Harbor freight junk from Ol’ Saint Nick
Is going to be under your tree if,
You crawl under a car without jack stands, or,
Use pliers when a 6-point socket is called for.

Santa will make sure it is presents you’ll get
If you always consult your Chilton or Haynes,
Use a torque wrench instead of a guess
And at every 3,000 miles your motor oil is fresh.

There are only two rules for the Wrench on the Bench;
1. Never touch the Wrench on the Bench or it will be gone forever.
2. The Wrench on the Bench needs a name that is clever, but not Murphy, not never.

Delivery Systems

I’ve got a big sweet tooth and I like my coffee light and sweet, so for me coffee is primarily a delivery system for cream and sugar.

We usually end up in front of the TV during or after dinner at around 6:30, so we end up watching a nightly national news show. No matter which network, these seem to be designed as a delivery system to inform people of new, probably expensive, prescription drugs?

Did You Have a Fight?

Friday I had to be at Aiken City Court, my number was up, I’d been summoned to be a juror. I had to report at 9:00 AM and while technically I didn’t have to go to work, what else was I going to do, watch the Today Show? So I went in to work. Because I didn’t know if I would be selected to actually serve on a jury or not, Donna drove in in the Sonata and I drove the Miata. We parked next to each other in the usual far corner of the parking lot.

Not long into the day, a co-worker comes up to Donna and asks, “Did you have a fight?” Her perplexed look back signaled further explanation was required. He said, “You came in separate cars.” She replied derisively, “No”, turned around and returned to work.

When she told me the story later, my first thought was, if we did have a fight, would we have still parked next to each other?

Giant Ball of Lint

Giant Ball Of Lint

On our road trip we stayed in a combination Holiday Inn Expresses and Hampton Inns with a Sleep Inn & Suites thrown in for good measure. The only place we stayed that was not part of a chain was the Blennerhassett Hotel in downtown Parkersburg, West Virginia and it was definitely a step up. The price was really not that bad, about what the average was we paid for all the rooms on the while trip.

When checking in we asked to be away from the elevator and ice machine, our Guest Relations Representative assured us that even though we were not that far away, we would not hear either and asked if we wanted to see the room to check for ourselves. We said, “Sure.” At this point is where the clerk gives us a key, but not here, she hands the key to James the bellman who leads to the elevator and escorts us up. The room looks kind of small with a king bed in it, but it is furnished very nicely. The GRR was right and we head back down to finish the check in process.

They ask if we need help with our luggage and we of course decline, we are after all in the Miata, our luggage consists of 4 small bags, a laptop and a purse. The bellman/doorman does get to hold the door open for us though, both on the way out and again when we come back in.

The very best thing about the place were the towels. Used to the thin rough things you normally get at some chains, these things were a revelation. Normally post shower I grab the hand towel and use it like a squeegee to brush as much water off as possible before getting mostly dry with the bath towel, but here I get almost entirely dry with just the hand towel. These things are like water magnets. Soft? It feels like you are drying yourself with an Angora cat, the same breed that inspired the song Soft Kitty that Sheldon Cooper likes sung to him when he is sick.

I make note of the name on the tag and search the interwebs. One of the hits that come back is an Amazon link to buy them. $200 seems high at first, but it is for 6 bath towels, six hand towels & 6 washcloths, we vow to buy them when we get home.

We do, and they arrived last Friday. Best move ever. Knowing that new towels need to be washed separately, boy do they, we run them set through a cycle. Because these things are so big and so fluffy we have to break it into 2 loads. When load one comes out of the dryer the lint filter is completely covered about a 1/4 thick. When I get them in the house and are ready to hang them up, they are still covered in a bunch of balls of lint. They need to be washed a second time. I start saving the lint because it is prodigious.

What you see above is all the lint from the four dryer loads squeezed like a stress ball into something about the size of a regulation major league baseball.