Intergalactic House of Paisley

Still attempting to recover from ConQuesT 44. Despite a variety of issues due to the change of hotels (free parking is useless if there isn't any available, oddly enough), had a great time overall, especially hanging out with my new twitter wife sermelt until all hours. On the negative side, I managed to punch a hole in one of my car's tires, so I am currently driving on the doughnut until I can get that taken care of. And now, some music.


1) Can I Touch You, My Bloody Valentine

2) That's All Right, Al Kooper and Michael Bloomfield

3) Every Day is Like Sunday, The Decemberists

4) Here On Earth, Love & Rockets

5) Flashlights, Women

6) White Winter Hymnal, Fleet Foxes

7) Keep Talking, Pink Floyd

8) When The Circus Comes, Los Lobos

9) Wonderboy, The Kinks

10) I Just Sing, The Troggs


then...


11) Stand Up, The Clumsy Lovers

12) Poor Boy (The Greenwood), Electric Light Orchestra

13) Thank You For Sending Me An Angel, Talking Heads


And now, back to work. Jon will be back Tuesday, and roughly normal hours will resume. This weekend's goals: get laundry done, get replacement tire on car, sleep.

I got up this morning at 6a, after a fine evening of steak, beer and baseball (Royals win!), went outside to get the paper, and found that it hadn't been delivered yet, which happens occasionally. I also found my car had been stolen, which also seems to be happening on an occasional basis.

Police were called, info taken (this time I had all the paperwork from last time, and the registration stub with the new license plate numbers on it), case number given. So far, no call, which does not surprise me. I think it was probably the same assclams who did it last time, because there was once again no sign of damage (broken glass, etc). These are professionals, and alas my car (2002 Intrepid) is one of the easier to break in to without making a lot of noise).

Due to Dragonet's current hiatus from work, I have the van to drive so I can do my 28 hours a week of wage slavery. If it found (relatively) unharmed*, fine. If it is wrecked again, we'll give it to the knackers.**

When I told my boss this morning, he said "Man, you need a break." Boy, is that true.


*Replacing the window trim removed to get to the door lock and the steering column and ignition was $500 or so last time, so this is for expensive values of "unharmed."

**Pardon my lack of kindness, but if it wrecked, I do hope the perps are driving it, and are rendered severely incapacated by said wreck. Not quite "die in a fire" level, but "Walk? Good luck with that" would be acceptable.

This morning began with Dragonet being unable to open her car door ('95 Mercury Mystique). I went to help her, and we got the passenger door open, and she crawled in and headed off to another day of training. About 15 minutes later, she called in minor hysterics and said she couldn't get the window down to wave her card at the gate to get into work parking. So she came back home and I gave her the keys to the Intrepid. She handed me keys from her keychain, and I stuck them in my pocket.

At 8.45, I went downstairs to head to work. It should be noted that my left knee, which was acting up after the Xmas blizzard, had been stiffening up over the weekend, and was bad enough that I wore the brace to work (which was a 10 hour day, yay monies!). It was worse this morning, swollen and stiff and painful. I managed to get dressed, put on my coat, and reached into the pocket to pull out the keys. What emerged in my hand was the key to the van. Fortunately, we had a spare set of keys to the Mystique in the basket by the door. I grabbed them and hobbled out to the car to try and open the driver's door. Alas, the electronic mechanism was not interested in playing in the balmy 8˚ temp, so I had to clamber in the passenger door and slide across into the driver's seat. Then it was off to work, where I discovered that the windows still were not working, so I had to clamber out, gimp around the car to wave my magic card at the reader, then gimp back and re-insert myself (not a euphemism) and drive into the garage.

So, of course, in my hobbled condition, the big job of the day was installing cut vinyl lettering at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art fora new exhibit of donations made to the museum in honor of its 75th anniversary. Which involved a fair amount of clambering up and down a ladder while trying to get the letters to politely peel off the premask and go onto the wall. This took most of two hours, and then there was the long walk to and from the installation area, which left me feeling like I should be playing Chester in a summer stock production of "Gunsmoke: The Musical." The trip there and back was made in an SUV with the middle seat racked all the way forward to make room for the box of vinyl, and I was jammed in sideways, which made getting out almost as bad as with the Mystique.

After finally getting back to work at 2p and a brief lunch, I spent the rest of the day slaving over a hot table laminating* and prepping yet more Ha//mark stuff so I can cut it all out tomorrow. At 5p, I limped back to the car, which still wouldn't open. So I slowly forced my way back into the driver's seat, and on a whim tried the electronic lock button. The door lock moved to the open position, so I tried the handle. Amazingly, it opened. Alas, when I shut the door, it didn't latch. However, the window did work, so I rolled it down and was holding the door shut with my left arm as I started to drive home. After a few blocks, I realized I was so preoccupied with all the crap I had failed to put on the seat belt. I pulled it out, and looked at the door handle, and looked at the seatbelt, and decided "what the hell."

I threaded it through the handle, and it was just long enough to snap into the buckle. Didn't keep it fully closed, but enough to keep out the wind and not let the annoying "Hey, assclam, the door is open!" bell ring incessantly. I made it home without further incident, and after disentangling the seat belt, I opened the door, then closed it. Click, said the door. I shoved it, but it did not fly open. I got out, shut it again, and it still stayed shut. Victory! Ideally it will work tomorrow morning (and no, I did not engage the electronic locks).

But back to the knee. It has spent the evening under the care of ibuprofen and ice, and seems a bit better, though still very stiff and swollen (enough that at one point I forgot I had taken the brace off for the evening). If I don't have to work Monday, I am going to try and get into the KC Free Clinic on Main and get it looked at. My friendly neighborhood Tully thinks I tore the meniscus. In any event, to document this, as I did last winter's Bruise Banter, here is photo one of the Big Knee (it's my left knee, thus the one on the right in the photo. The other one is included for contrast, and to show that even when healthy, my knees ain't right).

Another thrilling weekend. Saturday morning I took Dragonet's car (which we got from Rohanna's mom when she decided she'd rather quit driving of her own accord, rather than discovering she no longer should be on the road the hard way) for inspection to get it re-licensed. We take our vehicles to a small garage at 59th and Prospect because it's rarely busy. When I pulled up, the semi-toothed, white-haired and otherwise multi-hyphenated mechanic who does the inspections was out front, working on a guy's truck, so I sat there waiting for him to finish and usher me into the inspection bay. He gave the car the usual once-over, then told me it had one problem: an exhaust leak. We have until the end of the month to get that checked out and fixed. Just what we needed. Other highlights of the day included my decision to gamble that it wouldn't rain until Monday, and putting off mowing the lawn until then (so far, I am winning the bet), changing the sheets on Dragonet's bed and catching up on the last two episodes of 24 with Rohanna while enjoying the bottle of American Riesling we got her during our trip to Hutchinson. I watched the 9th inning of the Royals-Twins game, and somehow failed to realize it was tied, and turned it off. As it transpired, the Royals won in 11 innings. Oh, and one of our new neighbors across the street came over to mention that one of the tires on my car was low. It wasn't the usual one (driver's side fron), but its diametric opposite. So, two slow leaks (not a euphemism). Joy.

Today I got up and traveled down to NPulsifer's to ride with him and Gisele to Lawrence to help Star and Pooch pack for their move to D.C. We took a quick detour to see the house NPulsifer and Gisele have an offer on, which looks like it will be a very nice place indeed. Once we got to Star and Pooch's, we greeted Holly (Star's ex, and the mother of some of her children) and set to filling boxes with books (fans with books? Shocking!), labeling them and moving them to the garage. After a brief break for pizza, we returned to the task, moving emptied bookcases to the garage, and boxing yet more books. At one point Pooch apologized to Holly for the fact that she was still filling boxes with political books, and she replied with the comment that titles this post.

Intermittently throughout the afternoon, NPulsifer and I were checking in on the Royals game, which wasn't going so well. As in after six innings, the Minnesota pitcher had a no-hitter going. But as we took a break, the Royals went single, single, tater, single, single (no-hit pitcher removed), double, and went from down 4-0 to up 5-4, and won 7-5. That, allong with the Saturday night win, are the kinds of games they would have lost in previous years. The Royals give every indication of being for real this year, which makes me very happy.

And on a musical note (see what I did there?), I passed 17,000 songs in iTunes, as well as 100G. So I really need a new, larger hard drive, too.

Which is, of course, a noble goal to which all should aspire. In this particular instance, Rohanna, Dragonet and I were at a grocery store, picking up tortilla chips on our way to have dinner with Lyle Wilson, who was experimenting with carnitas* (and quite successfully, too).

As a preface, I am not a car fanatic, but an interesting or unique vehicle will catch my attention. As I backed the van out of our parking place, I looked up and saw such a car. I started to pull forward, and pointed it out to the ladies as it turned into the aisle we were leaving. Dragonet asked, "Is that a Corvair?" as I looked at the front of the vehicle, which indeed had that word emblazoned across it. But this was no ordinary Corvair: it was a Corvair station wagon, in absolutely cherry condition. I sat there gawking for several seconds, then very slowly pulled away, giving it a long look.

A bit of Googling (which is why I am still up at 3.43a CDT) has led me to believe it was a '61 Lakewood wagon (as opposed to the '62 Lakewood or the '62 Monza models). And yes, these station wagons, like other Corvairs, were rear-enngine vehicles. The engine was accessed by lifting the "floor" of the back section of the wagon, so one would have the rear cargo area as well as the front trunk. I also learned that Corvair models in the early '60s included vans and a couple of pickup trucks, one of which had a side gate that converted into a ramp.

Sadly, I did not find much in the way of good photos of these vehicles. But it was one sweet car.

The more you know . . .


*While discussing the recipe he used for the meat, Lyle mentioned that several that he had seen called for cooking the pork roast in large amounts of lard. I pointed out that, the whole Kosher thing notwithstanding, this seemed to violate the whole "seething the calf in its mother's milk" prohibition.