A Finishing Touch and a Picnic Gus

You knew I would.

I just wonder if there was a pool and who won. (Careful readers will notice that I extended the existing checkerboard on the table over to the left so the new pattern on the doors would flow into it.) Yes, I am a geek.

Gus is not a geek. He's a bit odd, but will take the sun wherever he can find it.

And if nothing else, his head fits.

Doors, Boxes and Space Savings

Here are a couple of my New Year's weekend projects.


I put doors on the new storage cupboard I built a couple of weeks ago. (Warped doors, thanks to Home depot plywood, but doors just the same...) Not only do they make the corner look a little cleaner and neater, they do increase the storage capacity of the cupboard (as you'll see in photo two.) Yes, some slow afternoon I may paint a nice blue stripe or checkerboard on them...



The little gray box is even better. That corner has been pretty much wasted space ever since we moved in. I had the bench grinder mounted on an old plant stand in that corner, which made storing anything else there impossible. On New Year's Eve I built the box out of one sheet of 3/4 MDF. The wheels and paint I had.



What's cool about it is not only does it store all my oil and filters and motorcycle spares, I have both the bench grinder and drill press mounted to the top. When I need them, the box just rolls out .

Leaping Lizzards! (And Gus...)

Did I mention that Gus likes the snow?

And that Idgie still looks regal.

A Christmas Wish

May you always have someplace to curl up where you are safe, and warm, and loved.

(And having a few chewy toys around isn't bad, either...)

A Winter Wonderland, with Shoveling

Look at all the snow on top of my poor little car!

A White Christmas Perhaps?

Got the tree decorated today and the snow started falling tonight. A sign, perhaps?

And a word about the tree - it's nearly nine feet tall and Diane got it for $20 at Save Mart. (And thanks again to the bag boy who helped her hoist it onto her roof and tie it down - you did a nice thing, Sir.)

My car will get its first test in the snow tomorrow (or at least its first test with me behind the wheel.) I figure the Germans should ought to build a car that can handle snow, since they get a fair amount. I've got Z-chains to fit it and two bags of rocks to give the back some weight and bite. I should be fine. There's a story over at Everything's Shiny for those who like their car news served separately.

For the Christmas crew coming here - we'll ferry any and all who don't have four-wheel drive or chains from dry land in the SUV. It's too pretty to miss and we're comfortable with the driving.

Dogs like snow.

The King is Dead. Long Live the King!

Yesterday was Frankie's last halftime show at Memorial Stadium. (A Disney show, beginning with Lion King themes as you might have guessed from the picture...)

Good game, great show and a great season. He'll lead the band onto the field at AT&T Park for the Emerald Bowl as his last official act as the Drum Major of the University of California Marching Band. ("The Best Damn Band in the Land!") A new drum major will be elected this Tuesday, and he or she will then have responsibility for the 230-member company that is the Cal Band.

It was an amazing experience, watching this from our Proud Parent seats in Section X of the Gold Zone. I simply could not be more impressed by or more proud of Frankie. Go Bears!

What the UPS Guy Brought

Got the first galleys of The Portable Dad today.

Kinda cool. Kinda a lot of damn work.

I'll focus on the cool side tonight...

The Idgie Containment System

Well it is after today.

It was a beautiful day today - mid to upper-70s, leaves changing, etc. etc. I was outside fussing with the wiring on the '02, and let the dogs come out with me. AD was in a class at the gym, (so it's not all my fault...)

Anyway, the horn is on the bad circuit I was working on and I got it to work and tested it a few times and AD gets home and the dogs are gone. Gus visits his dog friends sometimes when he's out, but always comes home. Idgie doesn't wander. When I let her out like that she snuffles in the creekbed and suns herself on the steps.

But she doesn't like high-pitched noises and apparently the horn chased her away.

It's 11 a.m. when we start looking for her. (Found Gus in like two minutes.) Can't find Idgie, and she's so deaf that she's not going to hear us call and whistle even if she's two feet away. (I think the only noises she can hear are the ones she doesn't like.)

We look all day, walking and driving, and no Idgie. I hoped that I'd have luck after dark with a flashlight - she can see. It worked. She was two blocks away, belly was wet (how, we don't know) but not in any apparent duress after her 6-hour outing.

So quite a stressful day, all in all.

Let's Hear it for Australian Doctors!

For it was a doctor in Queensland who claimed the honor of buying the first item from the Some Say... superstore.

The latest design is this - the autobahn sign signifying no speed limit. Saw it in a catalog and replicated it on a nice selection of items. Check them out!

More Stuff. No Sales.

But who wouldn't like this to keep car-related notes?

Having Far Too Much Fun

My shop isn't setting any first-day sales records or anything, but I'm having far too much fun designing stuff.

It'd be easier, of course, if I had any actual design ability...

Just in Time for Holiday Shopping

Check out my growing selection of quality Top Gear at my new Cafe Press store, Some Say...

(And notice how deftly I sidestep copyright laws...)

We Like a Project...

This planting bed that dresses up the parking area fence is the latest. The ground was hardpan clay and came out slow. (Picks are evil tools. Effective, but evil.) Dug out about 18-20 inches, added rock and a 4" perforated drain pipe. Diane dug up nice soil from the creek area to refill the planter bed, and bulbs are going in it soon. The cedar border I made from the cut-off ends of split rail fence posts I'd saved from that project.

Notice anything different on the '02? Check out Everything's Shiny for the answer...

Like Water off a Duck's Back

Yep, we did go to the Cal-Oregon game yesterday, and yep, we got wet. VERY wet. Pruney-finger wet. Wore water repellent coats and pants and it didn't make a damn bit of difference wet. The saving factor was that it wasn't freezing. (That would have been really bad and somewhat dangerous.) Frankie did catch the baton - two hands - but a catch is a catch, especially given the weather. Cal won, which was a nice bonus for us.

Today I built this compost bin. All wood I had in the scrap pile. It's 3 x 3 x 2 feet tall - plenty to get us started. None of the fence-board pieces I had left over were 3 feet long, so all the slats are made from two 18-inch pieces. The 2x4s sticking up at the corners were on purpose. Diane thought she might want it one board higher, so I left the corner posts sticking up to make that easy should we choose to do it. I think this will work out, though, and if so I'll cut them off flush.

I also made some improvements to the '02, but you'll have to visit Everything's Shiny for the details...

A Scenic Sunday Spin

We needed a few things at the store this afternoon, and it was such a pretty day we took the scenic route. (The cool thing for us is the scenic route is just a backroad that parallels Highway 4 up to Arnold - no added miles.)

There hasn't been a nice picture of the 2002 in a while, and the ones I did post earlier didn't really have a good frame of reference to show the actual size of the car. So here's a couple with human frames of reference.

Now, Dangerous Dave in Davis will object to a car post on this blog, insisting that such matters are more appropriate for Everything's Shiny. To make DDiD happy, that blog will also be updated with automotive matters of a more technical nature...

Happy Autum!

More Masked Bandits

The bandits returned last night.

Gus started pitching a fit around 8 p.m., barking at the open field next door. Knowing creatures were astir, we shut off the dog door so he'd be stuck inside once we went to bed.

About 1 a.m. he's up barking again, and I see two raccoons scavenging for dog food on our back porch. I went outside and they both climbed this tree. Unfortunately I didn't have the camera right away because when I first saw them they were both behind the tree, one peeking out from the left, one peeking out from the right.

Anyway, they vandaled around for a while and finally took their show on the road.

Happy '02 News

Despite the title of my last blog over at Everything's Shiny ("A Better Autocross, Sept. 9) my 2002 has been giving me fits ever since getting towed home that day.

Would start but not run. Would run and then the distributor cap would pop off. Would run at high RPM but not idle. Those were the things I didn't know the cause for. On top of that, I knew I had bad threads in one of the spark plug holes and exhaust leak past the plug.

With some diagnostic help from the 2002faq.com forum and Larry B., I finally figured out there were two causes to the first list of problems - a bad motor mount that let the engine rock enough to whack the distributor against the firewall and an air leak somewhere between the carb and the cylinders throwing off the air/fuel mixture.

Installed new motor mounts a week or two ago and on Friday took the head in and had the spark plug threads drilled out and replaced with steel inserts. (All four of them - don't want to have to revisit the machine shop any time soon.)
Found the air leak during the disassembly process.

Put it all back together on Saturday and it fired right up. Dialed in the timing and carb adjustments this morning, and the '02 is back on the road. Now back to tracing the short in the No. 6 circuit...

A Herd of Trees

You've heard of trees, haven't you?

I originally heard that joke (if it can be called such...) told by a dog puppet on Channel 2 out of Oakland when I was a kid. (And it was a herd of bees as originally told.) Anyway, Anonymous Diane can attest that this joke is the foundation for my belief that all humor is based on repetition.

So about the trees....

We've been watching expenses. This is the first recession/depression/collapse of civilization as we know it that we've experienced as business owners, so we've started being very cash-conscious. In fact, we recently reviewed all our regular monthly bills and saved just about $100 a month by tweaking our cable, internet, cell phone and home phone plans. All minor changes that add up over time. So big plant purchases weren't necessarily part of the plan this month.

However, the local hardware store is having an end-of-the-season 40% off sale on everything - and most of the plants had been heavily discounted already.

So we came home with five trees (two birch, one tulip, one ginko and one maple) and seven or so one-gallon plants that will pretty much do the entire landscaping of the creekbed (augmenting the natural growth that's already there). And we got it all for $125.

And because we're geeks, we took pictures.

You've heard of pictures, haven't you?

Habitat Shedding

No Cal game this week, but the Bears did move into the AP top 25. (Not playing does have its rewards...)

As a UT grad, Back From Bolivia Ben is quite happy Texas has moved into the number one spot.

New construction plan in This Land is a second shed, this one in the Back .40. This picture is the inspiration, although I'm planning some major changes. First, there will be a large window on the near end (4+ feet wide by 3 high) and a narrow (10 inch x 40 inch) window on the far end, set high for a little light and ventilation. Second, it won't have a saltbox roof (the unequal roof faces) because that shortens the rear wall too much and we're tallish people around here. Also won't have cedar shingles because of the fire danger.

I do like the dutch doors, cedar siding and size - it's 8 x 12. Although it's a spring construction plan (provided the economy cooperates...), I did get the three windows I need at a Habitat for Humanity store in Modesto this week. Two brand new, one used, all priced at $40 each. I got them because I needed dimensions to start drawing my own plans. I'm hoping the Habitat store will also provide upper and lower kitchen cabinets for the rear wall inside the shed and, if I get real lucky, the cedar siding. Might be able to get the shingles and other stuff there as well.

It'll be Diane's project place/retreat/gardening shed and will have a potting bench built outside along the near end. (We currently share the shed attached to the garage. Once the new one is built, the garden stuff will get relocated and I will get all the space in the small shed for storage.)

Since my project car gets parked right next to this shed, it'll be handy.

Deck remains on the long-term wish-list, but since fencing the whole yard and getting rid of the old dog run, there's been less need for it. We're also going to keep expenses down as much as possible for a while, so the deck may just have to wait....