Batman to the Rescue

Z created a gorgeous Batman comic for her friend M. The art is all her own original work. She dictated to me so that I could do the lettering for her, but the dialogue is entirely her own. At the time that she did this, she was pretty sweet on M and he really likes Batman. I'm not sure she's much of a fan left to her own devices. She gave me the Batman bandaids a few weeks after she insisted we buy them. Click for the large version, and be envious of the creativity and expression. "...and the smoke below came up into the hearts of the people." WOW!!

The Tennessee Trip Report

Spooky has already seen it. Oh well. My other readers (err, reader) haven't. Last June I was stuck in rural Tennessee for a weekend. So, long after it happened, here's the trip report:

FROM: D's Amazin Stuff
MTG DATE: June 20-24, 2008
LOCATION: Xxxxxx Powertrain Assembly Planet, Decherd, Tennessee
PROGRAM: XXXX Stainless Steel EOC
SUBJECT: Coolers crushing under installation torque (AKA Touring the Countryside)

Background
Xxxxxx Powertrain Assembly plant in Decherd requested an engineer to be present to help solve an issue wherein the XXXX cooler was crushing on installation. I solved that one and spent 2 days touring the countryside. Sadly, I had left the camera at home and had to buy a disposable. The pictures are terrible and made worse by having to scan them in.

Summary
First stop Saturday morning: Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Suppin’ Whusky distillery in Lynchburg, not 30 minutes from where I was staying in Decherd. Here’s one of the welcome centre in Lynchburg itself. The distillery is bigger than Lynchburg. They’re attached.
Turns out there was a biker rally in Lynchburg that day. If you look down to the right you can see some of the bikes. I had interesting conversations with a number of really large sweaty dudes.

The distillery was interesting but I got almost no usable pictures of it. I did get this one of one of the antique trucks in the fire brigade. Who knew an REO Speedwagon was a real vehicle?
I took a different route on the way back. I had a GPS in the rental. I found that if you told it to take the shortest route (rather than the fastest) it would pick any old road, dirt track, whatever, just to shave off some distance. I got to have a real taste of the Tennessee back roads. It tried to send me down this road. Beyond the hay bales it kind of peters out into some woods. I swear I heard duelling banjos as I turned around and took flight.
Saturday night after dinner I could hear howling engines and screaming fans. I searched out the race track and took in a few hours of good ol’ boy local dirt track racin’. The whole town was there. I didn’t even try for pictures of that with the old disposable.

Sunday I headed for the Cumberland Caverns. Tennessee is apparently riddled with limestone caverns. No pictures of that, for the usual reason. On my way there I stopped for this picture:
Have a look down there to the left, just above the For Sale sign for the 5BR Huge Home. Imagine my disappointment when I realized I had missed the Turkey Shoot the day before. Of all the bad luck. In case you are interested in the house and can’t pay for it up front, it does say “We Finanse”.

Further along I stopped for a recce of this fine establishment:
Another fuzzy sign, thanks to my great camera, but it is indeed a giant pink “Naigh Club”. And it was pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Nearest town was a good 30 minutes away.

The last shot is after the Caverns and after a driving tour of Fall Creek Falls State Park (named by a 6 year old no doubt). Another missed opportunity for me, as apparently Goober’s Super Service isn’t open on Sunday’s and Goober was nowhere to be found.
Conclusion
The only one I have really is that I need to bring a decent camera next time.

Drying the baby.

Yes, it's for a doll that C got for Christmas. But if you're really dense and shouldn't be licensed to be a parent, or maybe don't read very well, please be aware of the following: you need to hang the baby to dry after the bath. You can't just plunk her down on the side of the tub and hope she won't slide in or get moldy.

Dolls

Z took this picture. I find it quite creepy. The small one in the back is up to something.

Strawberry Pig

Last summer, in an otherwise normal batch of Ontario strawberries, I found this little strawberry pig. It was eaten promptly after the photo shoot. Mmmmm, strawberry bacon.

The Hairy Eyeball

When I was 16 or so and living in Calgary, I shelled out a whopping $75 for a 1971 Datsun 510. I drove the thing for over 10 years. I built an engine for it in shop class in high school. The old one ran fine, but the new one was bigger (Ooooh!). It was the first engine I had rebuilt from the ground up. I never even expected it to turn over and start, let alone drive back and forth across the country a number of times. The car was a little rough around the edges and not big on creature comforts, but it was easy to fix and it never really left me stranded anywhere. Of course, my definition of stranded was different back then when I didn't have kids or a real job. Back then I had no problem sleeping on the side of the road waiting for daylight so I could see to fix something myself.

When I lived in Calgary, I drove it to Ontario for the summers. Later when I lived in Northern Ontario I would drive it out West in the winter. In the final year I drove it from Parry Sound to Vancouver, then all the way back across to St. John's for Christmas, then home to Ontario. It was so cold driving through Quebec that winter that I had to drive in my sleeping bag to stay warm. The car was pretty rusty and the wind came in a lot. So in winter, it would warm up nicely sitting still, but the heater couldn't stay ahead of the drafts at highway speeds, so it would slowly cool down as you drove. The sleeping bag made it a bit of a bitch to use the clutch, but it was fine once you were going in 4th gear on the highway.

In my early 20's I gave it the fine paint job you see here in the pictures. I also named it the Hairy Eyeball because driving it sometimes reminded me of that really hung over feeling you get when you're so dehydrated that it feels like there's fur on your eyelids scratching your eyeballs, and you wonder who's cat shit in your mouth while you were sleeping.

The first year I drove to St.John's with the new paint job, I was stopped by the OPP crossing the top of Toronto on the 401. Really, I think they just wanted to make sure I wasn't stoned or something. When I told the cop I was on my way to Newfoundland I think he said something like "yeah that figures". Then he made me promise not to drive into Toronto and let me go.

That same trip, on my way home, I drove it into the ditch in a snowstorm at night somewhere out on the Rock. It ripped up some of the exhaust, but I was trying to make the ferry that night so didn't want to wait for the next day to get it fixed. You don't realize quite how loud a car with no muffler can be until you drive it onto the enclosed car deck of one of those big ferries. Later, in Nova Scotia I stopped to have some welding done to try to make it a bit quieter again. The punk at the shop kept staring at me, then eventually said "that's an interesting paint job, are you what they call a hippie?".

Even though the engine was still strong, I finally got tired of trying to locate parts to keep the rest of the car going. Ontario doesn't have the same pick your own part junkyard scene that Alberta did. Here they had long ago crushed all the cars I wanted to pick parts from. So I bought a truck one spring and coldly turned my back on the Eyeball. It lived in a boat shed for the summer at the marina where I worked because I had nowhere else to put it at the time. That fall the guy up the highway who ran a tractor trailer shop agreed to take it away. The shed had a damp dirt floor and the rear brakes rusted and seized up, so I had to use the forklift to get the car out. The pictures were taken while I waited for buddy to come with his flatbed.

I know it's getting boring, but the story's not quite over. Buddy was pretty handy with the tools and the welder. He took the engine and transmission from the Eyeball and built them into a frame he had made for a little yard tractor. He even put a hydraulic pump and scoop bucket on the front for clearing snow. I have a picture of the tractor somewhere but I couldn't find it. If I ever do I'll put it up. Buddy moved away a few years later and sold the tractor to someone in Parry Sound. Maybe it's still running...
UPDATE: I found the picture of the tractor. Yes, this used to be my old 510. Hope it's still running.

Repetitive socking

Last week work was shut down for 3 days and everyone was forced to take the time off without pay. Not ideal, but not the end of the world, and I made grand plans of getting all sorts of crap done around the house. Instead, C got a bit of a fever and cough and had to stay home from daycare so I just hung with her instead. We engaged in various exciting activities, had tea and cakes at 11, that sort of thing. If there's one thing she loves, it's accessorizing. Hats, mitts, underwear as hats, you name it, she likes to put it on and off over and over. She especially likes socks. The video is 3 minutes of what we did over and over for stretches of 20 minutes or more at various times over the 3 days. In the end, it was very therapeutic. And since she had 3 days of me all to herself, I am now the runaway favourite and it's all about Daddy!