'Heart of Gold’ put me in the middle of the road. Traveling there soon became a bore, so I headed for the ditch.” – Neil Young, comments written for the liner notes of his 1977 compilation, Decade.
I’ve been working on some Bing carburetors for early 1970’s Penton’s. I purchased two gaskets for the carbs off of eBay.
Please don’t package your gaskets using…painters tape to secure them to a piece of paper. I removed the tape… very carefully and yet still took some bits of the gasket with it.
This is a Penton Mudlark. Cool looking 2-stroke motorcycle. Not the hottest performer of its day but I like it. We have owned it since 1974 and it has been in storage since the mid 1980’s. Going to go through it, fix a few things and get it running.
Alice came into our life right after my wife’s cat, Lucy, passed on back in 2008. Yesterday, in our home with the help of a in-home service, she passed on. She was 18 years old.
The image above is our first image of her. She’s in the shelter and is about a year old. I spotted her playing and was instantly smitten. We don’t know why nobody picked her at the shelter but we consider ourselves very, very lucky to have been able to bring her into our lives.
When we brought Alice home she marched right into the house and sat with us on the couch. No hiding under the bed or in the closet for this lady. Later that evening she slept between us in bed. Clearly she said to herself when she arrived: “Right, I’m home”.
Below is her favorite bed with a warming pad underneath it. We had a jade plant by a window so we slide the bed right there. She loved it. Warm, comfortable and able to watch the action. Below is an image of her luxuriating under the jade plant.
In 2011 after reading an article about it, I got the idea that Alice should get her ‘face in space’, so I submitted her name. Below is the certificate confirming that, in fact, her face was in space.
Around 2012 Alice started having painful GI cramps and they were diagnosed as ‘Irritable Bowel Syndrome’. To get a true diagnosis the vets insisted on an operation on her. A pretty serious procedure. We wanted to avoid that and my wife skillfully managed the symptoms successfully with food options for a time.
Alice was disappointed in this development as we had a machine, “the food god”, which delivered three square meals a day of kibble. She knew exactly when the clock went off and had perfected a move any gymnast would be envious of to get off the top of the machine and start eating from the bowl. Once she started on the new food kibble was off the menu but…she never forgot about kibble and it was always her favorite.
Eventually, we did the surgery, confirmed the diagnosis and then we were able to get meds to manage the condition. I spent a couple of weeks with her on the floor in my office to make sure she recovered. She took those pill form meds, every day, with very few complaints for the rest of her life. Every night we would flip her into our lap, pop one or two pills into her mouth and off she went to grab her dinner.
In Alice’s view I was A-OK but my wife? Oh, she was the BEST. As my wife likes to say she was Alice’s mama. Whether watching a show on TV, sitting in front of a fireplace or simply in bed there Alice was hanging out next to her or in her lap.
As you can see Alice was quite the cat, clearly, well-loved and she gave it all back to us a bazillion times over.
Alice was wicked smart, very social, lots of fun, a lover of sunbeams and a connoisseur of snuggles. Her personality filled a giant space in our home.
It is very rare to have such a wonderful soul enter your life. She’s gone now and that space is empty. She will be deeply, deeply missed.
Been awhile since I did so!
Replaced A-arms awhile back and now I have the Mustang up so I can work on the alignment. Good old Camber, Caster and Toe. That’s when I noticed the rear main seal is leaking. Awesome.
I have a pretty nice office in our house. Great space with a decent size closet. We had an old butcher block piece from Ikea that I originally used in our laundry room. I poured a concrete counter in there and used the butcher block to create a small narrow desk in the office closet. There is also a an old set of plastic shelves in the closet to store a bunch of junk.
I decided I need to clean this mess up, create storage for materials and electronics like printers and just generally organize and reduce the clutter.
The first part of this effort is to create cabinets for the space.
I’m fortunate enough to have space in my garage for a table saw and some other equipment . The cabinets for this effort are really simple. Just 3/4″ plywood held together with Kreg screws and glue.
The frames are 1″ x 2″ bits with 1″ x 4″ centers to divide the cabinets. The intention is to add doors…when I figure out how to build them.
Once the cabinets are built naturally we need to hang them.
The picture below is after I hung the first cabinet and put everything back into place for the week. The ceilings in this house are much higher than a ‘normal’ house. It’s awesome. One other thing to note is that since the area that I’m hanging these cabinets encloses the cabinets on three sides it guarantees that I can secure them to the wall. Lots of screws…just in case.
The cabinet was…heavy but I got it up there with some help from my wife and the bit of plywood screwed to wall to give me a place to set the bottom of the cabinet as I lifted it.
Add a bunch of cabinet screws in the back and two sides and it is rock solid.
The second cabinet followed the model established for the first one. This one took more effort to hang because one of the walls has a bit of bend inward. The tolerances are pretty good.
Here is an image of the cabinets in place.
Now that the cabinets are in place it is time to build some shelves.
Here we see two weather widgets that do not agree on the temp or the forecast. Same location, same room….
Good week. Did 10 miles including two 5k’s. Will continue that pattern for the week and then move up to just 5k’s next week.
Saw this on the driveway yesterday. Fall is just around the corner!
Getting out consistently now, 2 miles, 2 miles, rest, 3 miles.
Did another 5k this weekend. That makes 3.
I have done ZERO running in between. I’ve lowered my time with each race. I’m now going to start a running program and plan for another 5k and then a 10k.
In fact I ran a couple of miles today. Should be cool to see the improvement.
