Merry Christmas, and a happy snow storm.

More snow. A lot more snow. So far I think we have gotten another 3-5 inches since this morning and it doesn't look like it is gonna let up for a while.

Jack is having fun, but he does have a fur coat. Me I have an old field jacket that keeps me warm enough, but I sure the hell won't be jumping in the snow. I am too old and delicate for that stuff anymore.



We are down to one boy right now. T's son went down to Cali to visit with his dad for the next two weeks. While noise drives me nuts, it is still way too quiet here. And Jarod's already going crazy without his partner in crime.

So we are celebrating another broke Christmas. Me and T are pretty well gonna do some stocking stuffers, but hold off our gifts for the kids. But tomorrow is my b-day and she got me something pretty special...



BEER!!

Utah has these strange draconian liquor laws where you really can't get anything stronger than piss water anywhere but the state liquor stores. Can't be that bad, can it? Well a 12 pack of Bass will set you back about 13 bucks, before taxes. And they tax the shit outta drunks here. So yesterday when we traded off Austin out in Cedar City, this came in a couple of holiday bags.

This is full strength beer. No Utah stickers on it. No reformulation to fit in their laws. And you can't get a fucking 6 pack of Fat Tire in this state. Well maybe you can, but I haven't found any yet.

Happy Holidays everyone, I am gonna get me a buzz going and hopefully the alcohol will keep me warm and pliable.

WTF is this white shit?!

It just ain't right. Too damn cold for this thin fucking blood.

I am gonna go hibernate. Seriously. Wrap up in the comforter with a case of Doritos and a case of beer. Don't bother me until it get back in the 50's. Thank you very fucking much!

I win!! The leaky radiator saga.

There are some times where life decides that you suck and it is gonna try and make things as difficult as it possibly can.

And so begins the saga of the leaky Elantra.

It started maybe two years ago. I have a little Elantra that really is my beat-to-death commuter car. I really have no love for it. It replaced the full size Dodge truck that I really dug. I bought it for the simple fact that it got nearly 30MPG next to the trucks 14MPG and would not eat me out of house and home in fuel costs. And that has been a true statement for a while now. I have driven the wheels off of the fucker.

A while back I noticed a seep in the upper radiator hose and ignored it. I never lost enough water to even concern myself with it. Hell, I have driven it for two years like that. You wouldn't think that I enjoyed to wrench on cars with an attitude like this, but I was broke, worked too much and just didn't care. So leak it did.

Last July we even drove it down to California with that same leaky upper radiator hose. 1600 miles round trip and still nothing bad happened. Since gas prices were through the roof T started to use the car for a while. Then it decided to spring a leak down around the lower radiator hose.

So I decided that since the leak spread, it was time for me to get a fixin' on it.

Well upper and lower hoses were replaced. Everything should be copacetic again, right? Wrong, oh so fucking wrong. The leak got worse. So the houses were pulled, things were cleaned, new clamps were put on. Still no fucking luck. But I hardly go anywhere so we decided that until I find the source of the drippings the car would stay here.

Anyway, I finally deduced that it was the radiator, considering it is nearly 6 years old, never really been serviced, and just run for about 130,000 miles, it was probably due.

I had hoped to get it last week before Thanksgiving, but no luck.

So a few days of feasting and games and driving all over hell's half acre. The Hyundai decided it was sick of my shit and let itself puke antifreeze all over the place. It became apparent that the upper jug had started to leak on the radiator and it was not gonna keep together much longer.

But we had a nice Thanksgiving nonetheless. Here is a Thanksgiving night shot. We were playing Clue with T's family that night. And you can probably figure out who the ugly mug on the left belongs to.



Well today I got the radiator in, from NAPA. They had a pretty nice price, but shipping time sucked ass!

But after some wrestling and wrangling, it looks like I am now leak free!

You can see the mess I started with.







Oooh pretty!



And let's compare the two. Can you guess which one is the good radiator and which one is the leaky shitbox?



And here she is, all put back together. Yay!!!



I did learn a few lessons along the way.

1. Pull the extra shit off, it really helps. And removing the fans and stupid crap like that was actually pretty damn easy. It gave me enough room that I didn't shave my knuckles trying to tighten the hoses.

2. Fixing cars sucks ass in the winter time. I am so getting me a heater for the garage and moving all that shit out of the other half of it. It wasn't very cold, but cold still sucks and if I didn't like it today I can guess how I am going to feel about it when there is 6 inches of snow on the ground.

Back again with an update. Sorta

So no updates since I haven't done any work. I still have the studs in the motor. And it is still hanging out in a corner of the desk/work table in the garage. Lately I have been getting things sorted out here at the house. Thanksgiving is coming soon and we are going to be shopping for food and getting the house cleaned up for T's folks to stay for a little while.

One recent project was refinishing a table. We had this little hand me down from my sister, it has worked well but really was not the best table for family use. Just a little round bistro type table. In our move, our old neighbors offered up an old table of theirs that was in storage. We figured that it could be a good craft table for the basement or maybe even get the "Shabby Chic" treatment and maybe be a useful table. It was definitely more solid than what we were using, and also had an extra leaf to allow for more than four people to sit and have a meal.

So this is what we started with.


And here is what we ended up with after a lot of sanding, black paint and some poly wood stain.


Quite a transformation it was. And definitely well worth the effort.

Now also that last few weeks I have been struggling in a couple of my classes. One was algebra, which when I picked out the class I figured wouldn't be so bad. Back in the time that I went to school I had made it and passed geometry, so I assumed that algebra would be a no-brainer. Well I was fucking wrong. Even after trying to cram the last couple of weeks I bombed the class. And bombed bad.

So the rules are for University of Phoenix is that when you are complete aid, if you fail a class, you have to pay out of pocket for it. It is a great motivator. But really sucks ass when you do fail. So now I have to figure out a way to scrape up a grand for that class before I can go any further. And to think I was at the last pair of classes for the halfway mark to my AA.

The holidays are coming close, so I am not gonna stress on it too much right now. Considering it is gonna be tight enough as it goes, and time will be non-existent anyhow. So I will probably get back to everything after the first of the year.

Public service announement.

Today is Election day.

So please, vote. I don't give a fuck for whom, just go and vote.

Don't let less than half of the country decide how the rest of it should be run. Be heard!

Getting settled in.

It's bigger, it's taller, it's SUBURBIA!!!


That's right, I am in the "heartland." Social conservatives surround me. I am surprised that I don't go into hives. Never did understand those people. I mean really, let's go over this thing.

Let's make God worship a national law.
Let's rewrite the Constitution to exclude the gays from marriage.
Let's tell women what to do with their bodies.
Let's let the CIA and NSA tape and spy on anyone they wish.

But we want less government....

Umm..

Forgive me if I am a little confused.

It's only a few weeks until election time and you can probably guess that I am not voting Republican. Now here is the sad part. I spent the last decade registered as a Libertarian. I recently re-registered for Utah and changed over to an Independent. Which means that I fucking hate them all. But I will pick whatever S.O.B. doesn't totally disgust me. And I also won't feel a lick of guilt voting against a rat-bastard that has gone from someone that I would have cheered all the way to the White House 8 years ago, to being some type of pandering elephant cock-sucker.

Too bad I am not exactly energized about the other one either. But at least I don't get a "I have been touched where my bathing suit goes" kind of nasty feeling from that one.

Here's the thing. I am a FISCAL conservative. I don't want them wasting my money. I don't want them letting our jobs go away. I don't want crap from China to replace American made crap. But I don't give a rat's ass what you do. Just don't do it to children, the unwilling, or me. Maybe I am wrong, but isn't that what freedom should really mean?

Ah well, fuck it.

Boredom

So T has been gone since Wednesday. And Her little one went to visit relatives in Cali. So it has been me and my boy hanging out for the last few days. Now I love my boy, but this really has been the first time in the last year that I haven't been around T. So needless to say, I am a touch on the stir-crazy side. But she will be home in a couple of days. And the boy is also gonna be back in a couple of days. So we will return to normal, abnormal.

On to the good stuff - The Garage!!

Can we get a fuck yeah?



Yeah I got me a spot in the garage. That used to be our office desk, but it won't fit down the stairs to the basement. So it stayed upstairs. And we didn't need it inside, so I figured that since I needed a work bench that it would stay in the garage.





There is still a lot of clean up to make the garage really usable. But I am making a dent. I pulled a couple of the studs out of the engine today, but still have a lot to do. But I will be back out there cleaning and getting things in order.

And what doesn't fit in the garage. Goes to the shed!!



Sweet to have the storage. I am just diggin on this place. Plus I really don't feel like packing again anytime soon.

Finally!

We are moved!

So we have honestly been moved for a couple of weeks, but I am just now getting back in the groove.

With getting the new digs ready, packing, unpacking, getting the Intarwebs going and then catching back up with class and work, I just didn't want to be arsed with the blog.

So let's talk about the house.

Here's where we started.



Sadly enough the previous tenants were evicted, so while the place wasn't destroyed, it looks like they did get to the point of I.D.G.A.F. So the place stank of animal, and we aren't talking about the smell of dog and cat bodies, but the stench of dog urine and such. And grubby kid marks and crap like that.

And some paint and a *lot* of carpet cleaning later, we had this...



Now, I can't take any credit for this stuff. It was honestly 90% T's work. I would come after work and do what painting and cleaning I could. But since she is home for right now, she was able to do all the major shit during the day while the boys were at school and I was in the basement. Honestly, if it wasn't for her we wouldn't have finished in time.

So where does that leave us? Well it's bigger for starters. About twice the size of the last place. The garage is a bit larger and I now have a shed to store the stuff that isn't being worked on right at the moment.

Unfortunately, the garage still has junk laying around from the move. Some goes to the basement, other stuff goes to the shed. And I will get on it soon. We still have a bunch of yard work left to do before the season totally changes, but it is getting nicer in that respect also.

This is from last week.


I swear I have cleaned up some since then. It still isn't clean enough to park a car. But soon. Mainly because winter will be here soon and my ass is not going out into the snow to warm up my car. Hell no.

So I am still trying to get stuff situated, but hopefully I will get it done here soon and get back on task.

And I will leave with the view from my smoking section.
The big picture.

And the blog picture.