Songs of Ascent

It is a widely known that fact when U2 releases a new album, I put it in my CD player and leave it there. For a very long time. I don't remember how many years All that You Can't Leave Behind stayed in the CD player. I put that one in the day it was released and it was still there when the next one was released. It had spun around so many times some of the 1's were starting to look like zeros. Well times are a changing. No Line on the Horizon may not get the extended play that How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb received and All that You Can't Leave Behind before it.

What sayest thou? How fore can this be? U2 has already announced the release date of the next album. 2010. Bring it on I say.

Full disclosure: The CD changer in my car currently contains by NLotH and HtDaAB. I imagine there is room for one more U2 album without removing either one of these. Actually it contains 5 U2 CDs at this point. This was done a few weeks ago in preparation for the concert.

No school this week

This week was Fall break. The kids and I hung around the house most of the week, with the exception of the concert trip on Tuesday. Now that the week is almost over, I can't recall what I did this week. I suppose that is a good sign.

My plan for the week was to do nothing over the weekend, followed by nothing on Monday and the concert on Tuesday. Having gotten that out of the way, my schedule was all clear to do nothing on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. More of the same was planned for the weekend.

Saturday was Brianna's Birthday. She is now nine. She had a busy day between Girls Scouts and going out for a nice B-day dinner.

U2 - 360 Tour



Tuesday night Jordan and I went to Atlanta to see U2 at the Georgia Dome. We rode over with Ken and his son. Upon arrival we met up with my sister and his daughter.

Muse opened followed by U2. I had never heard Muse. They were quite loud. I must be getting old, because I did not comprehend a single word from their performance. Not even the speaking parts. Actually this probably had very little to do with my age and more to do with the fact that the volume was so loud the amps/speakers were being over driven.

U2 was great. This part of the show was not as loud. The show was easy to see thanks to the 360 degree overhead screen.

After it finished we drove back home. This was bad planning on our part as we did not get back home until after 3 am. Next time we will definitely spend the night.

So I was driving along in the zoom-zoom today when I noticed the climate was approaching ultimate camping weather.

Early in the day when I was walking about 100 yards in the rain with a heavy backpack on my back, I had the same thought, Hey this is camping weather.

Yep, the next camping trip is in the planning phase.

U2 - 360 Tour

Ever since last May when I heard U2 would be in Atlanta this Fall I had been thinking I would like to go to the concert. Unfortunately it was scheduled for a Tuesday night and that would require me to miss at least part of one day of school, probably two.

About two weeks ago I decided I really-really wanted to go and started trying to work through the logistics: transportation, a sub, etc. And then today it was pointed out to me that the concert was the week of Fall break. Well that makes it so easy!

I just finished ordering 3 tickets: One for me, One for J, and one for my seester. I'm ready.

Now I need to start saving my dimes for a t-shirt.

Mundane Post #1109

A nice three day weekend. School has been keeping me busy.

Today I tried to catch up on some of the chores that needed to be done. Really exciting stuff like replacing a toilet and a door frame. The plumbing task is complete but the door still needs a little work.

The oil and plugs in the Miata were replaced this weekend, the odometer reading 111k miles. Filling up the tank today produced a a result of 31 mpg.

The garden is still producing tomatoes, peppers, okra, and cantaloupes thought it is mostly unattended.

I just completed a nice box made from black walnut and cherry sapwood. Perhaps that is premature, it still needs to be oiled.

I have been busy for the last two weeks. I have had several thoughts in that time I wanted to share here but they have escaped me. Oh well!

Something odd happened with the odometers last week. On Sunday G's Tahoe rolled over 100,000 miles. On the same day, my Charger rolled over 20,000 miles and then on Tuesday the Miata hit 111,111 miles.

Tomorrow is the first day of school. That is all I have to say about that.

"What good is wanting to do something without going on and doing it." - Noah Dearborn

Life is a Beach 2009

We hit the beach this week (Sunday-Thursday). Per our normal routine, we went to the Destin/Fort Walton area of Florida. We stayed at the Island Princess on Santa Rosa Blvd again.

We had nice weather for the week - one rain shower and temperatures in the 80's. It couldn't get much better.

Our diet consisted almost entirely of seafood the entire week. Sunday upon arriving in Destin we went straight to the Back Porch for a late lunch/early dinner. Monday we dined at Pompano Joe's, Tuesday we visited Louisiana Lagniappe, and the Wednesday was Graffiti's. Ginger's favorite was definitely Graffiti's.

Jordan was pleased to visit the water park and The Track (go carts) while in town. Brianna got to drive a go cart on the family track all by herself. She did very well and even passed a few carts. Go Bri!

It would have been nice to have stayed a few more days, but I had to return to HSV. The Summer of Rick is officially over. I started back to work today.

Logging

My neighbor, Mike, recently mentioned his buddy had some trees knocked down during a recent storm. Several of the trees were red oak. Would I be interested in having them cut into lumber. Certainly.

He we see Brian's truck ready to tow the first load of logs to the mill. It was no small feat to load the trailer using only a come-along and a couple of chains.



Here are our logs nicely stacked at the mill (H&K) waiting to be cut.



Here is the center of the operation - basically a pole barn and the mill.



And here is the mill.



We should get a call in a few weeks to retrieve our boards. Now I need to decide what to build.

'72 GMC Update

My goal for three consecutive summers has been to get a rolling chassis. This year I finally reached the goal. Sure, there is still a lot of work to be done but no hurry here. After all, I am on a five ten year schedule.

I finally got the transmission all cleaned up and painted. The paint is from Eastwood and is called aluminum blast or something like that.



After painted the transmission, I cleaned up the torque converted and painted it. I used some of the leftover paint from the engine block on the transmission. Again the paint was from Eastwood.



Here is the engine reconnected to the transmission.



And here is the entire drive train mounted in the frame.



I still need to clean up and paint the water pump, alternator, fan, etc. Expect me to still be talking about these items three months from now.

Buggin' In July 2009

This weekend was the annual air cooled volkswagen show. This is usually my favorite car show of the year. The entire show consists of fewer than 100 cars but usually draws from a larger radius than most car shows. And the cars are all air cooled VWs. Surprisingly every single car is unique.



No surprise that the same weekend of the show, I found a very nice '65 Beetle nearby. The car was still mostly original and unmodified. My intention was to bring the car home and take it to a few shows while I continued to work on the '72 GMC. Unfortunately someone else bought it while I was still trying to make a decision. I will think faster next time I find an original car in that good of shape.




Happy Birthday Danny!

Mmmmm

Homemade biscuits.

The kids and I drove over to Tuscumbia today to have lunch with my Dad. It was originally Terry's idea but we decided we should invade her plans.

On the way out of HSV I stopped to fill up the Charger. (Jordan pumped the gas.) Using mild hyper-mile-ing techniques I managed to achieve 25.5 MPG on the way to Tuscumbia. The original sticker listed the car as 18/25 so 25.5 was pretty good. Unfortunately the trip to lunch and then a short side journey dropped the average below 20. I did manage to get the trip average back up to 23.2 by the time I returned home though.

The side journey I mentioned was a quick trip out to Cane Creek Canyon Preserve for a short hike. Unfortunately everyone did not have good sensible shoes for hiking so we had to cut it short. We did get to see the water fall though so all was not lost.

Okra

A friend of mine has been encouraging me to try grilling some okra so on Monday night I did just that. It turned out well. I brushed the okra with olive oil and sprinkled it with seasoning including red pepper. Try it yourself.

Today I decided to try another okra recipe. This time I fried the okra but instead of using flour or cornmeal I used Parmesan cheese. This was surprisingly good as well. My motivation for this attempt was a recipe I saw while trying to memorize the entire internet. I didn't follow the recipe per se, but I did find motivation there.

I finished cleaning up the GMC's transmission this morning and finally got around to priming it. The first coat was Eastwood's self-etching primer. Tomorrow I will apply the paint

2009 Greater Tennessee Valley Antique Car Show

This weekend was the big car show of year. The location this year was at Point Mallard in Decatur. The show seemed smaller this year but it was still very large. (I heard there were over 700 cars but I didn't bother to try to count them.)

I didn't have a vehicle that was road worthy this year so I hitched a ride with my neighbor Brian in his '66 Mustang. We took some chairs, a large canopy, and a cooler and made a day of it.

This was my favorite car this year. Reminds me of my first car, only it was a '76 Mercury and it was yellow.

How Do You Clean a Transmission Case?

I don't know either. I have tried the pressure washer, engine de-greaser, carb cleaner, WD-40, brake cleaner, wire brushes, steel wool, emery paper, and a 50 gallon barrel of elbow grease.

So far the internet has been no help. I guess I will check it again in case any new information has been added since yesterday.

UPDATE: Easy Off oven cleaner is the best solution I have found. The one drawback is that it dis-colors the aluminum. This may not be a problem if your planning to paint the case.

So the post rate has been rather low of late while I have been somewhat busy. Why is this?

I will pause the internet while you consider this.

My neighbor Brian completely out did himself for the 4th of July. Big party, lots of neighbors and the most incredible non-professional fire work show I have ever seen. Happy 4th.

Did I mention I had sand in my ear. Again.

It was time to rebuild the brake calipers for the truck. Step 1: Disassemble. 2: Blast. 3: Paint. 4: Replace o-ring and dust boot. 5: Install caliper on spindle

I have completed step 2.

I pulled my first ripe tomato from the garden today, the okra is being attacked by what appears to be Japanese beetles, and I have three grape sized cantaloupes. Also no more bunnies since the cabbage and broccoli were removed.

For the past couple of weeks I have been walking 3 miles in the morning, starting out usually around 6:00 AM. Like most exercise, if you do it enough, it makes you feel better and you get the desire to do more exercise, so ... I decided to get out the old dumb bells and start pumping some iron again. And man am I sore now. Really sore. All over. Every where. Places I had forgotten I had.

My goal is to keep with the program for 90 days. Then all bets are off.

I Have Sand In My Ears

Again! Monday morning I started the day with a walk. By 7:30 am I was in the driveway setting up the sandblaster to strip down a couple of brake drums and backing plates. Sandblasting is messy. Especially on a really hot day when the sand sticks to your sweaty skin. Too much information?

The drums and plates cleaned up nicely and looked awesome after the rust had all been removed. After putting away all the blasting gear, I got out the paint gun and sprayed the parts a nice semi-gloss black. Who in the world paints a brake drum?

The parts are now ready to be re-attached to the rear axle assembly. I had forgotten the backing plates needed to be installed before the axle went back into the differential. I guess I will be pulling the axle out again soon.

The next step will be to install the new brake lines. After that is done I can finally put the engine back on the chassis. OK, that is not entirely true. First I will need to do something with the transmission. It doesn't need to be rebuilt but at a minimum it does need to be cleaned up. I am considering painting it. I don't want to use the same ORANGE paint I used on the engine. I would like some contrast between the block and the transmission. I also don't want to use black. In the event of a leak, black paint makes locating the source difficult. I am considering either silver or gray. I will probably go with gray.

After washing my hair 5 times I think I have gotten all the sand out of it. I am still finding sand in my ears though. Sandblasting is messy.

The bunnies have disappeared from their nest. I know they were still there yesterday. They were less than a week old so I am assuming something (cat, bird, owl) carried them off.

First Fruits

Today was the first mini-harvest from the garden: a half dozen peppers (jalapeno and banana), a few small squash, and a couple of still mostly green tomatoes. The peppers were quite good. I haven't sampled the squash yet and I am waiting on the tomatoes to turn.

Hiking on Monte Sano

Friday AM I went for a hike on Monte Sano Mountain. Our (David M. and myself) destination was the cuts. This is a pretty cool site on the top of a ridge that is basically a split in a large rock. It is probably about 30 or 40 yards total in length including a decent cave.

It had rained a reasonable amount on Friday so the trails were fairly damp. Downright muddy in some spots.

Having not hiked this particular trail in 13 or 14 years I surprised myself to be able to find the destination without a map. The trek required making the correct turn at about 5 forks in the trail. Even more surprising was that I believe I accidentally took the shortest route. Amazing!

What is wrong with this picture?

I put the second coat of paint on the block today. As you should recall, this is the engine from my 1972 GMC pickup. They call this a Chevy Small Block (SBC). And I painted it Chevrolet orange.

Got it? GMC truck. Chevy Small Block. Chevrolet Orange. Yes the GMC's came with Chevrolet Small Block engines painted Chevrolet Orange. Does this strike you as odd as well?

Laugh Out Loud

The very same day I planted my garden, I spotted a rabbit in the back yard and put up a chicken wire fence around the garden to keep the bunnies out.

Today I noticed something new. A little hole covered with grass clippings and bunny fur. And inside the hole are three (or more) little gray bunnies. I didn't notice the bunny clutch on Saturday when I was trimming the grass around the garden so I suspect the bunnies are less than 3 days old.

Did I mention the nest is on the inside of the fence? {Cue Laughter}

OK, I have now re-routed the fence to place the bunnies back on the outside. I also battened down the fence in the spot where I suspect the momma bunny may have accessed the garden interior (and cabbage).

On a related note, my cabbage took on the appearance of Swiss cheese almost over night. By that I mean holey. Today I sprayed some pesticide on it and the okra. After spraying the cabbage, several worms crawled out into sight on each cabbage plant. After inspecting each plant and counting the worms, I gave up on the cabbage, pulled them all from the ground and tossed them into the woods so the bunnies could feast tonight. I had been needing to thin the garden in that area anyway to make room for the ever expanding squash and cucumber vines. I don't think I will be planting cabbage again.

I mentioned the okra was also sprayed. The okra has aphids. I didn't notice the aphids, but I did spot the ants which were apparently feasting on the aphids. Hopefully the pesticide will clear that up whole mess. Once the aphids are gone, the ants will leave too as they don't really care for okra - boiled or fried.

After cleaning the block again today with TSP, I finally got around to painting it. Only one major catastrophe occurred. While painting the bottom of the oil pan, I had the gun tipped over too far and the lid fell off. Orange paint went everywhere including the garage floor, my shoe, and my leg. Later I discovered some on my elbow as well.

The block looks good so far. It appears dry but I have resisted touching it. Tomorrow I will check it out and decide whether to apply another coat.

I used Eastwood engine paint, the high temperature ceramic stuff, in the factory orange color. It's looking pretty good so far.

This One Goes to Eleven

Yesterday was Jordan's Birthday. The big eleven. He missed the last day of school as we had previously made plans before they scheduled the makeup day.

I started his day with a couple of plate size pancakes smoothered in buter and syrup. His grandmother took him (and his seester) to lunch and a movie and then last night we had pizza and a chocolate chip cookie cake with chocolate icing. He got several cards in the mail and has requested a trip to Wal-Mart and Best Buy in order to acquire some new stuff. Perhaps we will make a run to Wally-World tomorrow.

He seems to be settling into eleven just fine. Only four mores years until he gets a drivers permit. Amazing.

Sipsey Adventure

J' and I went hiking in the Sipsey Wilderness this morning. We hiked a trail I am fairly familiar with as I have camped on it 4 times. J' let me blaze the trail on the way in so I would be the web catcher. We evaluated many campsites for future trips.

The Sipsey River was higher than I have ever seen it but still fairly low compared to the obvious water marks. I intended for us to cross at a fork in the river but alas the water was too deep today.

The color was off in most of the pictures I took today. It seems someone was playing with the camera recently and changed several settings including a color filter which caused an interesting effect on several shots.

In the first photo you see us at the trail head ready to begin our 2.5 hour hike. Looks like someone has been eating too many biscuits. The second photo is J' in the (very wet) cave, about to disappear around a corner. The squeeze through the cave seems to be getting tighter every year. Or perhaps someone has been eating too many biscuits.

Garden Update

The garden is rapidly progressing towards various stages of completion.

Squint and you can see two tommys.




For reasons I can't determine, the next two photos are being rotated 90 degrees. If I compensate for the rotation, it does not rotate them, yet they are still off due to the compensation. After fighting with the issue for a few minutes I decided the easiest way to fix the problem is for you the viewer to tilt your head sideways while viewing the next to pictures.

Look: two squash



And some cabbage and broccoli



You can straighten your head back now.

Patience

Today I prepped the GMC's engine for painting. I had already removed the water pump, fuel pump, alternator, dizzy, etc. I spent a few hours cleaning up the block and taping off the holes. I was about ready to paint when I decided to call it a day. Let's call this practicing a little patience rather than simply procrastinating.

I was ready to paint but knew I should probably clean/degrease the block one more time before painting. By putting off painting one day, I didn't rush the final block cleaning. I expect the final result will be much better because I didn't rush to get the engine painted.

Learning patience is so difficult, especially when you want it now!

Biscuits and Egg Rolls

When I was in high school, I worked at the golden arches for a couple years. During this time I worked a lot of weekend mornings making biscuits. No telling how many thousand biscuits I have made in my life.

Recently I decided I wanted to make some really good homemade biscuits. I have been hit by this desire before but have never found a recipe I really liked. Having recently eaten at Cracker Barrel I decided I would look up their recipe on the Internet. Their biscuits are usually pretty decent. After doing a little bit of reading online, I eventually decided the recipe I would try this time would be the one on the Lilly White bag of self rising flour: 2 cups of flour, 3/4 cup butter milk, and 1/4 cup Crisco. Simplicity. Some would say that using self rising flour is cheating. I would say to them, "don't ask me for a biscuit."

After making biscuits four days in a row, I would say I can now make a pretty decent homemade biscuit. I would eventually like to find a good recipe that does not use shortening. Perhaps I shouldn't mess with a good thing though. I still wish I had the recipe Mrs. Tice used.

What's next? I would like to learn to make a mean egg roll before the cabbage in the garden is ready. Anyone have a recipe they would like to recommend?

For the record, I like mustard and bacon on my biscuits. Mmmm.

I am working towards repainting the GMC's engine block. Currently it is black. It will be Chevrolet Hugger Orange when I am done. Before stripping down the engine for the paint job, I decided to turn it over. It hasn't been cranked in quite a while. How many years has it been? After charging the battery, I sprayed a little starter fluid in the carb, hooked the ignition wire to the battery and tapped the starter wire on the (+) battery post. The engine turned over and a few cylinders fired off. Sweet! Oh yeah, and flames came shooting out of the exhaust manifold.

Wouldn't this look nice in my driveway!

I have been obsessively checking the garden each day. Sometimes two or three times a day. On Friday I discovered I finally had a small tomatoes and squash. On Saturday the count was up to 6 tomatoes and 4 squash. Oh, joy.

I was glad to see the tomatoes coming in. My neighbor had announced a week before that he already had some golf ball sized tomatoes, but he had set his plants out two weeks ahead of me.

I am watching the okra closely as well. It seems too early for okra but I think I have spotted a few tiny pods. Maybe.

Alabama Jubilee

Yesterday J and I went to a car show at Alabama Jubilee in Decatur. The jubilee is an annual hot air balloon rally. Also included is the car show, a antique tractor show, and some other stuff that currently holds no interest for me. This event falls on the weekend Memorial day each year.

J agreed to the car show under a single condition. He wanted to take pictures of the cars. No problem. He did a great job with the camera and we came home with lots of good pictures.

While at the show, I saw a 1968 Corvette convertible, triple black, which was for sale. The price was reasonable as well. I have been thinking about it.

On Friday someone asked me "When do you graduate?". After thinking for a second, I said "Today I think". Turns out I was right.

It has been raining like crazy here for the last few days. Besides a couple of tornado watches today, we are also under a flood watch or three. So you know what that means, right? I definitely don't need to bother watering the garden this week.

The plants are all progressing nicely. I planted some more corn and okra about 10 or 12 days ago. The conditions must have been good because the plants started peeking through after only 8 days. I have even seen a couple of blooms on the tomato plants but I don't expect I will be seeing one any time soon.

I put up a chicken wire fence around the garden the same day I put the first plant/seed in the ground. Good call as I have now seen three rabbits in the back yard, or perhaps one rabbit three times.

What day is it anyway?