Two Weeks At Home

It's tough being on vacation when everyone else is not. I'm not complaining with my mouth full. I enjoy being on vacation. It's just that I'd like for everyone I know to be on vacation at the same time that I am.

After spending one extremely bored monday I decided to go and do stuff because I wasn't, for any reason, going to spend two weeks inside my skull, being bored. First off, I went for a little retail therapy ie: buying stuff and generally spending time in stores looking at stuff I might buy.

I ended up buying a Meccano set. I had seen it when we went skating in february and could not justify the asking price at the time. "What the hell" was the justification this time. Oh, and allegedly I bought it for my children, who are not born, errr not even the shadow of a thought at this point, because, well... err... I can't autoreproduce (that's a good thing...I think) Of course I had to test it to make sure that it was the genuine article.

I can't remember the last time I've had this much fun without touching someone (or being touched by someone for that matter) as I've had with my new Meccano kit. I ended up building a crane.
I also did some painting, on a canvas and everything! I tried out a new technique I was told about by a friend which consists of mixing paint with sawdust to create texture. I'm not too sure about the results. You see, being a bit exessive by nature I figured more is better and, well, my sawdust was more like sawCHUNKS and I've got texture that would rival the surface of the moon. No big deal, I'll just slap some more paint onto it and see what come out. You'll understand that I have no picture to show you, this being a work in progress and everything.

Sometimes (often) I'm at the wrong place at the wrong time. This time though I could not have asked to be home at a better time. When I got there my bonsais were just breaking bud and I could pinch of the terminal shoots to keep them the right size. By the time I was ready to leave the buds had extended and I could nip them to compact growth and favour branching off. Seriously I think some planetary alignement had something to do with the fact that I was home for the most important two weeks of the year in bonsai culture.

I also pretty much listened to one album my whole vacation. I mean endless repeat cycle listened to an album. Dropkick Murphys "Live on Lansdowne" which I think is the perfect remedy for the reggea and pseudo reggea they call Kanake that we are bombarded with around here. You have, I think, to be seriously under the influence of several drugs and/or horse tranquilizers to find Kanake even remotely interesting musicaly. So Irish punk comes as a bit of fresh air after two months of bleugh.

There was question at one point that I would sell my truck. Well, no more. I'm keeping it and furthermore I have decided to turn it into an experiment. Therefore, my truck shall now be known as "The Mule".

Apart from putting new tires on (thanks dad for finding them) I've started to remove all the unessential bits from under the hood. First stop the mess of piping Ford calls an intake ducting. As you can see in the picture it now looks quite neat and the red thingy "sport" (that's a laugh) air filter gives it that "new school" look. Good thing it's under the hood and nobody sees it cause I seriously think it doesn't look to to good. At least it allowed me to remove a whole bunch of plastic pipes that were restricting the airflow to the engine.

Next step is getting rid of the fiberglass box cap. Hey, anybody want to buy a fiberglass cap for a Ford Ranger short box?