End of the quarter

Damn, how did it get to be 3 full months into 2010 already?



Been a couple of weeks since I've put anything down. Here's what's been going on ....



GC #2 is sick. Again. Shocking, I know.



My wife's grandfather is deathly ill with pneumonia. Not looking good and it has been a miserable week for both of us. I just want her to be in a better mood, which is difficult when we canceled our cruise weekend because her parents, who were supposed to babysit, had to drive up to where her grandfather is. My honey was very happy.....in addition, there were some raging hormones as it is also monthly cycle time. Yes, I'm being very polite in that phrasing. I don't know why.



I did get a little work done on the jeep last weekend. Not much, and certainly not what I wanted. But a little.



This weekend, the girls were supposed to be out of town, giving me a 3 day weekend to work on the jeep and lie around watching sports. Instead, due to the illness mentioned above, they will be with me. I expect this to be a serious crimp in the "work on the jeep" plans. What I would like to do is get the body centered, and start the process of mounting the new body mounts, finish cleaning up the transmission and transfer case and get them put back in, and finish cleaning and painting the skidplate to get it put back in also. In addition, I'm thinking of running up to the Tampa area to check out a couple of axles. Waiting to hear whether or not they are 1 piece axles in the AMC 20. If they are, I am them like a wolf. IF not, then I'm about 50/50.



Later

Mild work panic attacks

Yesterday, got an email from the head IT guy at work that they were fixing the electronic lock system on our building. Thought nothing of it, and continued to work. This morning, came into work and my fob wouldn't work. Now that's on OH Shit moment, especially with the number of layoffs we've had over the past couple of years. Wakes you up better than coffee.

Nothing too amusing from the golden children since my last post. One of the things I want to try and do is continue to post the amusing things they say. Another good one that was early in the week was GC #1 eating rye bread and not liking it....."This tastes like dishwater with butter". I laughed out loud at that and told her she didn't have to eat it, but she wasn't getting anything else.

Going to continue to work on the jeep. I just found a guy over on the east coast that has a pair of axles, regeared and supposedly ready for use. I'm waiting for some e-mails from him with pics. May have to buy them and replace mine. Not sure what else is going to get done this weekend, the new throwout bearing won't be in yet. May pull the trans and transfer case out and try to clean them up good so they are all ready to go when the new bearing does arrive.

Later

Things the GC's say

Get home Tuesday night, kids are in the #1's room. She comes out, bawling her head off, followed by her sister. She has a composition notebook in her hands. She holds it up and declares to my wife "How could you give this to GC#2, this is my POETRY book". Now, I'm standing there with my mouth open just looking at her. She's f-ing 6 for pete's sake, I know she's not composing poetry. And you should have been there to behold the drama of the crying and carrying on. Turns out that the book had some poetry from school that they had been given, and asked to draw what the poetry meant. What could we do but take back the book and apologize for being so unfeeling? I mean WOW!

Update on the jeep, and also my excellent customer service note of the day.......in my last post, I was pissed that the throwout bearing didn't fit on the transmission. So I call AMS, who is the manufacturer to find out if I ordered the wrong part or what. They listen to my describe the problem, ask some questions, and without any further ado ship me out a new bearing. So I ask, should I ship the old one back? And the sales guy, without missing a beat, says, No, just throw it away. Holy crap! have I fallen into some sort of vortex? I mean I really liked the call. So all I can say, Gold star for AMS clutch people.

Not much else going on other than work, work on the house, work on the jeep, etc. Weather has been really nice here in SW FL until this morning. But it's clearing up now, an promises to be 3 or 4 more really nice days.

Later

Sat update

I'm very annoyed with the entire drivetrain of the project jeep, but specifically the throwout bearing. It's been a pretty good day, got 95% of the dash finished, and hung the dash neatly. Then installed the clutch. So far, so good....until I went to test fit the throwout bearing on the transmission and realized it's a little too small to fit on the shaft. FUCK!! so, now have to call tech support I guess and find out what part I need. Hopefully, I won't need to get a whole new clutch and uninstall what I already did.

Later

Sat. Morning

So, been in Orlando most of the week at a conference sponsored by CFO magazine. Good stuff for the most part, other than a couple of presentations that felt a little too much like sales pitches. Met a couple of people who coule prove helpful in future endeavours, otherwise just tried to learn.

Back at the office Thurs/Fri. Finally managed to get some work done. I've been very unmotivated, which has meant large amounts of amusement for me when reading articles about how to keep your employees motivated and/or engaged.

drought update

Not sure if I mentioned it before, but I've been in a bit of sexual drought. Sure, I could go back my previous posts, but I'm pretty lazy today and don't feel like it. So if this is duplicative, tough shit.....anyway, I'd like to announce the drought is over!! I guess my honey felt guilty for the last 4 weeks of no sex, or was just horny, or maybe was worried about me going out of town this week and thought I might have to find a girlfriend. I don't know or care, all I know is I got laid.

Life is good.

Other than that we are pretty much in an SS/DD holding pattern. Children are in school, work still kind of sucks, working on the project jeep etc. I am trying to sell my daily driver jeep now. I anticipate that gas prices are going up this summer and now that I have to pay for my own gas, I want something that gets better than 17 mpg. It's really too bad too, because I like my 4 door jeep a lot and hate to get rid of it.

Finished SuperFreakonomics last night. While this is off my usual topic, I can only recommend both of the Freakonomics books highly. I don't know that I've ever enjoyed books relating to economics more. 2 enthusiastic thumbs up!! I'm also almost finished with "Too Big to Fail"....this book is a great read if you are curious about the events of 2008/2009 with the financial companies. It's also really scary if you have to deal with these assholes. I recommend this book also, but not as wholeheartedly. Check it out if you have time and want to get the purportedly inside scoop on these events.

Later

got sometthing done

So I guess this would be the post where I tell you how much I got done on the jeep, and so forth. And I would, if I had actually done that. But here's what did happen. The fuel sender wiring is now complete, and has been extended to reach the fuel tank. I reran the dash wiring to the fuel gauge, and it now works. I still have to create a little splice of some sort, as the same wire runs the + side of the ammeter as well. Also got the brake switch wires cut to length, got fittings put on and got the switch installed. It works like a champ, so all that remains for that little sub-system is to put some sort of cover on the wiring and tape it up.



More or less over my piss-off at all the women in my life, but something is still sticking in my craw and I don't really know what it is. I'm still working on this, and more may be forthcoming as soon as I know what to type.

Since it's only been one day, not much else to update.

Later