And a wonderfully productive one at that! We’re getting set up to go on a bit of a road trip this weekend out to visit Aurora’s best friend in Joeseph. Should be a nice weekend, though on the warm side for my taste. That said this week has been about preparing! There’s been a handful of things I’ve been putting off for a while to my detriment. Firstly the Mazda has had an intermittent check engine light related to low coolant. Most likely a stuck open thermostat. Not really a huge issue or anything, just an annoyance that’s made the more annoying because it’s intermittent. So after watching a video showing just how buried the thermostat and housing are, I sent it to my local shop, J+S Automotive (nice place! I like them quite a bit) and just had them do it. They also found that the left rear tire was worn badly to the inside, and probably needs alignment. The rears are pretty old, so I picked it up during lunch and dropped it off at Discount Tire for two new rears…hooray more money! This weekend road trip’s getting expensive! (yes… this event is expensive in routine maintenance?). So now it’s scheduled for alignment on Thursday.
That’s all well and good but I have a pair of front struts in the garage that have been nagging me. A while back we discovered the front struts were leaking and worn, so I ordered some middle of the road KYB’s to replace them…well then I didn’t do it…for a while… (cough… as in months… cough cough). Thing is when you put struts in it’s usually a good idea to get an alignment just to be safe, and I have an alignment in two days. Luckily with the help of my lovely wife, we managed to knock it out in about 2.5 hours after I got off work! I was really surprised we got it finished so quickly, especially because these struts are arranged in a weird sort of press fit that I’ve never seen. The top hat’s still 3 bolts like normal, but the bottom, instead of two thru bolts, has basically a C-Clamp much like a triple tree on a motorcycle or a battery post clamp for a car. Seems fine until you realize it’s a big heavy cast and machined piece that has been press fit in place by the weight of a car…Then you realize it’s going to take a good sized hammer to rearrange this problem and it does. Still went quicker than I thought, so good news.
Next up! Registration! I’ve been a bad person and let my Mazda’s registration lapse…and also my truck and motorcycle registrations… It’s funny I remember getting at least one of those notices and thinking ‘oh I’ll do this tomorrow.’ but it still hasn’t been tomorrow yet. It’s always been today when I wake up. This time though, it’s 1:30 AM…so I’m doing this today! So I went a scrounging for titles to fill out all the paperwork, and as I did I found this!
That is the original form from when I got my dog Spectre. February 2009…hard to believe it’s been so long! Puts him at about 8 years, in spite of the form the Vet was pretty sure he was at minimum 2 years old. That’s a 10 year old dog who truly has the spirit of a dog that’s only 1.5 million years old. Truth be told he’s been getting a bit more spry (for a glacier) now that he’s on this new Thyroid medication. He’s lost some weight too. I think he was clocking in at 35 lbs and he’s back down to 25 lbs or so. Of course you look at that scraggly dog in black and white above…and that 17.5 note…that was his weight on admission. Poor guy looked (and acted) like he hadn’t eaten in weeks.
He’s been a good dog/inanimate object that you feed.
It Rhymes with Hockey 