Home Improvement

Sitting here on a quiet Saturday night. Mrs. A. is upstairs taking a shower, the pellet stove is going, casting that orangish glow on the room. The dogs are curled up on the floor. No drama, no problems to speak of. Nice and quiet.
Things have been a bit chaotic lately. We are having friends come over Nov. 23rd to see TSO in concert and spend the night, since they are driving from Yakima. It is always great to see TSO screaming electric guitar pyrotechnic laser light show extravaganza Christmas show.
But nothing happens in a vacuum. This becomes a stimulus for doing a lot of things we have put off for a while. I am perfectly happy with the way things are, but Mrs. A. always sees ways to improve things.
Of course this requires my participation. As it well should. But I don't always agree with what needs to be done.  Or when it needs to be done. This leads to some lively discussion. I readily admit to my share of blame. I have been known to be stubborn and opinionated.
But when all is said and done there is nothing I like better than sitting in the quiet of the evening in my own home, warm and dry, fed and comfortable, and at peace for the moment.
Tomorrow there is another project. Tomorrow I tackle the upstairs bathroom. The tub needs recaulking.

Genetics 101

Some times things do not turn out the way you want them to. Whenever someone starts out doing genealogy, they have dreams of finding out that they are descended from royalty. But the other alternative is equally possible. You might be descended from roguery.
I my search for my genetic history I came across Pope Alvey. Do a google search on him some time.
Sentenced to death not once, but twice, but never executed. Under bond for his life they decided that he would make a good hangman.
I guess the logic was that no good man would want the onus of being the hangman, so the good state of Maryland came to the conclusion that since he was a convicted murderer and thief and seemed to have no remorse, he would make an excellent hangman.
Don't worry, he was many generations back on the female side of my family tree, and the male DNA follows the father, so very little of his DNA has passed to me.
But it does remind me of an incident in High school........
I was bored out of my mind, It was between classes. I pulled down the blind on the window next to my desk, and fooling around, made a noose.
What to do next?
I tossed it around the neck of the guy in front of me (sorry roadrunner) and pulled the blind down and let go.
It sprung back up and roadrunner jumped up out of his desk clawing at his neck.
That was about the time the teacher came in the classroom and demanded to know what was going on.
He didn't seem surprised.
Maybe I can blame it on genetics.

Happy Halloween!

Meet Frankeneinstein, famous for his theory of irrelevantivity.
I saw this on the internet and ordered a pattern, which I transferred by hand to a pumpkin. Then it is a three level carving to get the different levels of light. I had a bit of a hard time envisioning what I was doing until I put the light inside of it. Should have thought of that a lot sooner.
It is exactly opposite if drawing or painting where you add something to give the picture form. Here you are taking stuff away to add light.
Never done it before, but I like to stretch my brain on occasion.
The result is a little rough, but definitely ok for a forst time.
Anyway, Happy halloween

Genetic confusion

I have been playing around with various genetic websites while waiting for my test kit. It gets pretty confusing, because a lot of them don't agree.

The fins a gravestone site lists James warren and Sarah Horrell as the parents of Alfred Alexander Warren. This is bad information. As a matter of fact, Alfred A warren is the son of Charles Warren. He is listed in the will as inheriting part of Charles's estate.

Charles is also listed as being executor of the estate of William Warren, who I figure must be his father. But I haven't been able to find anything that supports that. William warren was born in Maryland, in the area that would become D.C., but so far I have not been able to find anything concrete.

This has been fun, trying to ferret out small facts out of an enormous pile of........facts

Well, maybe not.

About the royal blood thing.....................
There are two mind sets about Guddun, Princess of England.
One side says she is the daughter of William the Conqueror, one side says not.
Her tombstone says she is, so I'm sticking with that.
I still have not connected the two halves of my genetics together, The sticking point is James Warren, who married Sarah Horrell in Kentucky in 1817. He was not born in Kentucky, but was born in Maryland, which would go along with family oral history. There was a migration of Catholics from Maryland to Kentucky in the late 1700s and early 1800s and the information I have managed to dig out is that he was born in 1790 in Maryland, died in 1870 in Kentucky.
I have joined the Warren family DNA site and have ordered a test kit, which will be used to compare 27 genetic factors of the warren family and should give me a match.
It will take a couple of weeks.
You may call me SIR.
Or not

Royal Blood?

I have been fiddling around with Genealogy lately. It all got started with me going back to recover some some recent history, mainly our family's activities in the Four Corners area of New Mexico.
One thing led to another and next thing I was doing a family genealogy. I had a decent place place to start, with a genealogy put together by my Uncle Ben.
I dug it out, and it took me back as far as Charles Warren (1748-1820) and Monica Drury (1785-?)
With that as a starting point I just slogged it out with the Internet until I worked my way back to William de Warren, who was William the Conqueror's right hand man,fought beside him at the Battle of Hasings and married his daughter Gundren the Princess of England.
The blood of kings flows in these veins!
They can have it back whenever they want, it doesn't seem to be doing me any good.
Next thing you know people will expect nobless oblige.

Won't be able to fart or burp or pick my nose.

Fie on the peasants I say, FIE!

The Grandkids

We went up to Concrete last Saturday to visit Amelia and James and the grandkids. It was good to see them settling in. The baby had gained 2 lbs in a week, which is significant because it was from seven to nine pounds.
It was a beautiful fall day for a drive. As we got out of town and a little up in elevation the leaves began to turn color. We stopped at a State Park along the Skagit river and walked on the trails for a while.
The mission was two-fold. We had clothes and stuff for Rs kids and a birthday present for Neeko's fifth birthday. It was hectic, with two five year olds together. They are already acting like sibs, in other words half the time they are playing together and riffin off of each other and the other half of the time they are fighting. Pretty normal.
Cps has been less than supportive up until this week, so we brought clothes and money. Although the State had awarded custody to Amelia and James, CPS was dragging their heels trying to find some other alternative. Rs lawyer finally nailed them with : The state has already given custody to James and Amelia, you need to take this case out of investigation and give it to a case worker so they can get the support owed them through the court. Good for him.
Monday they finally got a support check for clothing for the kids, who had arrived with practically nothing,
Looks like things might settle down now.

Driving the Z

So the Z had been dormant for a couple of years, because the dash lights were all out and it had developed an alarming "thunk" in the rear end.
It has been back on the road for a couple of weeks now, and I had really forgotten how much fun it is. I have slowly pushed the performance every day to just a little quicker, a little faster, until today I was back a the point where I remembered why I love driving this car.
The acceleration, while not neck-snapping, does push you firmly back in he seat. It doesn't take long to go from 25 to 60, and on up. Top end is around 140, but I've never had it above 120. With the ground effects kit on, it is firm on the road with plenty of pedal left at 120.. Some people may not like the removal of the bumpers and addition of the ground effects kit, but I hated the look of the enormous ugly front and rear federally mandated five MPH bumpers. And it is much more stable at high speed.
The handling is superb. It hugs he ground and corners like it is on rails. The car itself is a little on the heavy side, but  no ponderous. The power is adequate to pull through the corners, and one of the joys of driving it is hitting that point riding on the edge of control, when going around a corner you can just feel the rear tires just beginning to break loose, feathering the gas to retain control.  Hyper alert, senses at their peak, knowing you are riding the edge of disaster. Pulse racing.
Oh yeah!

On the Road Again

Well, after a couple of years of sitting dormant, the Z is back on the road.
I had put it out of service because all of the dash lights had blown. Since I work ten hour days, starting about now it is dark when I go to work and dark when I go home, so interior lights, while not being absolutely necessary, are a definite plus!
It is not perfect. They two immediate things are that the Brake light that comes on when you set the emergency brake is always on. It is mildly annoying, but no big deal. I need to fish around under the passenger's seat and see if I can find the wire.
Also, in my hurry to get it back on the road, I neglected to hook up the speedometer. As I tend to drive by the tach and engine sound, this is not a big deal. If a cop stops me and asks how fast I was going, my reply will be "3200 RPM in second gearr" Sounds perfectly good to me.
I had almost forgotten how much fun it is to drive.
But it sure came back in a hurry! Definitely not the best car in the snow unless you put some superior tires on it. I have a set of spare wheels, I wonder how much a set of Blizzaks would set me back?

Court

Today was the custody hearing for placement of R's two kids. My grand daughter and her husband have been trying to get custody, but it has been an uphill battle.
Her hubby has a record from back when he was a kid. It was all a long time ago, and minor stuff. His last charge was seven years ago, for carrying a pocket knife. He would have been about 16, Certainly not reason to block their placement. Bu CPS had a wild hair up it's ass.
I wrote a letter of recommendation for them. My recommendation matters because I am the grandfather, and I have been approved by CPS, since I adopted and raised one of my grandkids. I also
helped them write a letter to the court.
Court was this morning. They agreed to place the kids with Amelia and James. They called me just over the moon with happiness. They will pick up the kids tomorrow.
I hope they know what they are getting themselves into. "i" is five and has some behavioral problems from being dragged around by his drug-addict mother. The little girl is only six weeks old. This is a life changing event. I wish them all the best.

Power Without Accountability

By God, I hate CPS.
They are a perfect example of what happens when you give marginal people power without accountability.
The individual who is working with R. to arrange for care for her two kids told her (rightly so) that because R was not in jail and not yet in care, she has the legal right to have a say about where her kids are placed. Think of it this way: It is legally no different than if she asked someone to babysit her kids so she could do something. That is her legal right.
The people from CPS took violent exception to this. After all, they had not approved of the placement. They were still doing background checks on my grand daughter and her husband.
So given the conflicting information, she went down to pick up the kids. Everything was going along fine, when CPS shows up with the cops, and demands custody of the kids.
They tell Amelia that it is not her, it is her husband that they object to. They refuse to say why or what he has ever done to cause such a disturbing display of jack boot Nazi trampling of of basic human rights.
It is my opinion that they were just pissed that they had gone down to pick up the kids before they had been given the official OK. In other words, a childish temper tantrum of monumental proportions that had absolutely nothing to do with the welfare of the kids.
And will anything ever be done about it?
Of course not.
Power without accountability.

Another Little Piece of my Heart

One of THOSE phone calls yesterday.
It was my Grand Doughter, Amelia.
She called to give me some information
1) My daughet was going in to in-hospital rehab for drug addiction. This is not news, I think this is the third time, In between she is just a junkie.
2) The reason Amelia knows this is because CPS called and wanted to know if Amelia would take the kids for a month or os while R was in the Hospital. KIDS as in multiple. Tha last time I saw her was at Christmas and there was only one. I heard rumors about a second kid, but have not heard from my daughter since Christmas Eve. Now there is a six week old Grand Daughter I have never seen. I don't even know her name.
My daughter can kick the crap out of my without ever even talking to me.
Why do I continue to let het do this?  I have been told that she isn't even mine, something I was always pretty sure of, but figured in the end made no difference.
But she stilll sneaks in there ad breaks another little piece of my heart.

The Gloves

Well, I got a lot of the information about the gloves wrong.
First of all, they weren't purchased by my dad.
My Uncle Father (Richard?) Clark was a priest on the Ute reservation in the early part of the 20th century, When he retired from his position he was presented the gloves by the tribe in honor of his service.
When he moved back east uncle/Father Clark gave the gloves o my dad, who was working for the Trading post and acting as Assistant Postmaster at Towaoc.
So that makes the gloves even more relevant, I guess.

Family History

I've been doing a little family history research lately. This all started when I came across my dad's silver and turquoise ring that he bought out of the Trading Post he worked at as a young man. So of course I had to find out which Trading Post it was.
I knew he had worked at a trading post on the Navajo Reservation, but on questioning my mom, I found out that right out of high school, he worked at Towaoc at the Ute tribal headquarters. He spoke Ute very well, and acted as an interpreter for the tribe. He was also the Assistant Postmaster at this time. He purchased a pair of beautiful beaded gloves there in 1938 or 1939. We still have them, and they are in excellent condition. They have beadwork roses on the back of the hands. It is the plan to return them to the tribe when my mom passes on. I figured I would personally deliver them so I could spend a little time in the four corners area where my family lived. The trading post is gone now but the Utes still have their Headquarters in Towaoc. The gloves are exceptional and belong in a museum.
In the early to mid 20th Century my Grandfather was farm manager for a Boarding School in Waterflow New Mexico, so this same train of thought got me to wondering about the school. My search turned up the Sacred Heart Academy in Waterflow. I doubt there was any other Catholic Boarding School in the area, so this must be the place.
Included in the short history of the school was a picture of the students in 1928. I figure my dad and a couple of Uncles should be in the picture, but I haven't seen enough pictures of my dad as a child to pick him out. The school was run by the Ursuline Sisters, who have an active web site. I have sent them an inquiry about Grandfather and the students in the picture.



Chicken Gumbo

Desperation drove me to the Cafeteria today in search of sustenance. The Cafeteria does not serve food, it serves fuel to keep the workers moving.
Today one of the soup choices was Chicken Gumbo. I make traditional Cajun Gumbo from scratch. This is nothing like that. Calling this Chicken Gumbo is an insult to all other Chicken Gumbo's. It is my theory that they tie a cleaned chicken carcass on a string and drag it through a 55 gallon drum of stock. Occasionally a piece will fall off. If it is your lucky day, you get the piece of chicken.
Because it is made for mass consumption, all the flavors have been tamed down to insipidity (is that a word? if not it should be). If you take the Gumbo and add enough Tabasco to it that your nose runs and you break out in a sweat, you can occasionally get a hint of what real Gumbo tastes like.
Almost.
The real problem is that in order to make real Chicken Gumbo you need to start with a stewing hen. Do they even sell stewing hens any more? I think they all go to soup makers. At least I never see them in the Supermarket.
Oh heck, now I'm hungry for some seafood gumbo. My recipe does not start wih: Fill a 55 gallon drum with water.

The Ring

The curtains had blown around in the bedroom because the window was open. The hot August evening was cooling off a little and the bit of breeze was welcome.
The flapping curtain had knocked over some stuff on the night table, so I was tidying up. For no particular reason, my attention settled on the old battered jewelry box. Dark blue, battered, satin embroidered ill fitting top. It is not so much a jewelry box as a junk collector. Mostly stuff of little or no value that I can't bring myself to part with.
My Army Dog Tags. An arrowhead I found as a kid, An old gold chain, cuff links, a bead necklace made of seeds presented to me by my daughter when she was about six. My Army lapel insignias and shoulder patches.
And this battered old turquoise and silver pre-war Navajo ring. It has a very nice old stone of high quality that is cracked in a couple of spots. A lot of the detail is worn away on the silver. It has obviously been worn for a long time.
The silver looks to be coin silver, and it is obviously hand made. I am not sure exactly when it was made. What I do know is that my dad bought it in 1939 when he was working in a Trading Post on the RES in New Mexico when he was 19, I think he probably bought it out of pawn. It was a pretty standard practice for the Navajo to pawn their personal jewelry when they needed a little cash infusion and buy it back later. I suspect this was a piece that was not retrieved.
My mother says that it was the very first personal luxury that my dad bought. He was not one to accumulate things for himself. Throughout his life he accumulated a bunch of kids (seven of us). some tools, and half interest in the farm in Idaho.
So it is my personal connection to him. I can't wear this ring without feeling the connection to him, and wonder about what it was like and how things were with him at the time.
He was the strong silent Western type. He never talked about himself. Never told stories, so to me he was largely an enigma. There is a picture of him taken about the time he bought the ring, hair slicked back, sitting on a Harley Davidson, looking way cool and self assured. I hear he cut a pretty wide swath in  North-W
estern New Mexico in the late 1930s. He had cowboyed, moving herds from summer to winter pastures, and vice versa. But his first real job was working in the trading post.
He spoke Navajo, Ute, Spanish and English, so he would translate for the First Peoples when they needed to deal with the officials.
The other thing he accumulated during this time is a beautiful pair of white gloves with incredible beadwork on the backs. The beadwork is of roses and the gloves are beautiful. We have contacted the Ute tribe and will be donating them to the Tribal Museum. They are too nice to be moldering away in a drawer somewhere.

So for now I am wearing the ring. It is fairly small, so it will only fit on my little finger, but I wear it to honor the man that was my father.

MEH

I'm really not sure what's going on with Blogger, but I have been having issues with it.
It eould let me enter a Title for a post, but that was it. Wouldn't go down to the body of the post.
Oh well I faked it into working for the moment.
Three weeks off, what can I say. Too short, that's what. Paint the house, pressure wash the patio and back deck. A week of camping. Never did have enough time to work on the cars at all.
They insisted on giving me a new laptop at work. I don't mind the improved performance, faster speed, and better graphics, but I sure wish they would get to the point that it would actually work whan I plug it in. Nothing is in the right place. everything in my favorites is where I left it. More stuff will show up as I try to do something and the link is tucked away in some forgotten corner. Hide and seek for the next couple of days.
Oh well, it will all work out in the end.

Staycation

I am taking off the next THREE, count the THREE weeks.
I had already planned taking off two weeks when the shop announced they were taking off the week I planned to return. So I asked the boss if I could just extend my vacation for another week.
He gave me the OK.
It has been ten years since I took off more than two weeks.
The last two years we have taken two week trips in the Wesfalia. Altogether put about 10,000 miles on the camper. Had a great time, but I'm kinda burned out on the always on the road moving from one place to another gig.
Last summer I had the siding on the south side of the house replaced and painted.
Number one project is to prep and paint the east side of the house. I dug out the old airless and got it working, but had to replace the gun and buy some new hose. I think it is ready to go, but first project will be to do a trial run.
Then I need to get the big ladder out and wire brush the bad spots. Then do the trim. Then paint. I have set aside a week for this, which SHOULD be plenty of time. I still need to get a five gallon pail of paint.
Then we take a break.
Then I work on the Z for a while. If I get done with that, then I need to work on the deck off the kitchen. I need to repair the railing and re secure the decking. I may have to replace some of the boards, as they are pretty badly warped.
If there is any time left, Frankenhealey beckons. The fuel pump is broken, and it's my fault. After the umpteenth time of it freezing up, I'm afraid I used the wrong hammer to tap on it. A ball peen is not the appropriate tool, a rubber hammer is. Suffice it to say, it needs replacing.
One more day

Next Steps

Once I get the clutch free and adjust the valves and fix the "Clunk" in the rear end, I am going to get the Z painted. I love the blue to green color shift, but I was wondering if it would look better if the final finish was flat instead of shiny. In the picture at the top, I think the "Shiny" detracts from the color shift.
Oh well, when I get to the point it is being painted, I can have them do a coat of flat clear with the additive, and then if I don't like it that way, I can just have them put a second coat of shiny clear on top.
I dug my old airless paint sprayer out of the basement. It has been sitting for better than ten years, so I tore it down and cleaned it and put it back together. Didn't work.
Pulled it back apart, and figured out I had the diaphragm in the pump in upside down. Mind you I have no repair or owner's manual, so I'm flying by the seat of my pants.
Put it back together and it still wasn't working. Tore it down again. A small steel ball bearing check valve was kinda rusted in place in the intake. Cleaned the ball bearing, the seat and the spring, turned it on "prime" and it started moving water around. Installed the high pressure hose and gun. The pump moved fluid but nothing was coming out of the gun. Removed the gun and ran the pump, and fluid comes out of the end of the high pressure hose, so I think all I need to do is tear down the gun and clean it up. I'll try it tonight if I have the time.
You may ask yourself "Why is Al doing this?"
Or maybe not.
I have three weeks of vacation coming up, most of which will be spent working around the house. Last year I had the siding on the South side of the house replaced and painted. The east side needs to be wire brushed and painted also. An airless sprayer is the only way to go.

Z Interior

 

 

I finished buttoning up the interior of the 1977 280Z today. Put in the trim pieces on the dash, installed the shift knob. I included a shot from "before" for contrast.

I also included a picture of the tach with the dash lights on to show that, indeed I do now have dash lights, the lack of which sent me down this path. Now on to fixing the mechanical stuff. Right now the clutch is frozen. Not sure if it needs to be bled or just busted loose.