It's a clown car dammit,

not a car for suburban house wives! I do not drive a girl car.
Article
This is both about the car and a good friend of mine. Though I noticed that the picture of him with his "30" Mets includes a few I happen to know do not belong to him. It's still a good picture though

A buck a pop...

I only needed a few things from the store, so I stopped on my way home from work. I left $103 later. I still haven't figured out how I manage to spend more when things are on sale. Charlie started me stockpiling when things are cheap. Things kept whacking me in the head with low prices, so they ended up in my cart. The apple bowl was empty yesterday, so they too ended up on the list. Of course, the apple bin at the store was fairly well picked over. They did have bags of bulk apples for a decent price though. Not very good ones however. Last week I bought a bunch of oatmeal, so perhaps I might take my crappy apples and combine the two into something more eatable. Edible. Whichever. Also A&W was 10 for $10. Dinner tonight was perhaps not as satisfying as it might have been, but the hotdog wasn't bad. Not all was lost. The environment in which I ate it was nice though. I had a good hot fire on Monday night due to company coming over. When I got home it was only 48 degrees. The others might not appreciate a house that cold, so I stoked up the stove really well. I packed it full again when I went to bed. The coals were still glowing in the morning so I packed it again. When I got home again the house was still a touch warm and the coals still glowing yet again. Apart from running out of wood, I could get used to a warm house.

Not as bad as I thought

Instead of my usual Saturday of working on the railroad (getting the song out of your head is your responsibility), I went to the Christmas party being thrown by my Metropolitan car club. It was a bit of a drive into Tracy, but entirely worth it. The food was good. The fine gentleman hosting happened to own a beef cattle ranch. Needless to say, he made a fine steak. After that fine lunch, we got down to business. That is to say, those inlined to do so got down to business. Bob, Larry, and I got down to business of our own outside, discussing the ins and outs of Metropolitan restoration. This is to say, of course, that Bob and Larry talked and I listened. The three of us took off a little early to head back to the shop in Pittsburg. We did a bit of car shuffling and divided as many hard top Metropolitans as we thought nice enough between us and various family members. From there we drove down the way a bit and entered ourselves and the others (still in Tracy) into a parade in downtown Pittsburg. I had mentioned during lunch that I really didn't know what a proper Met drives like, considering the condition of mine. Bob and Larry promptly crammed me into one from the shop. Of course this means that my first time driving a Metropolitan was in the rain. Keep in mind that the Met is not known for doing well in the rain. It is a fun little car that I don't fit into terribly well. It is possible that I just couldn't move that particular seat back well enough. The pedals are very high, and the windshield very low, meaning my knees sometimes interfere with the steering wheel and I hunch over a bit. I still like it though. Also, they lean on even the slowest turns, have huge blindspots, no synchros in first (gotta love that grinding sound) and a windshield wiper motor that sounds like a blender with a spoon in it. Just off the parade route, Wayne's Metropolitan truck conversion lost a clutch. Bob lived just down the road, well within limping distance. A pleasant introduction into practical Met driving. We managed to take first place in the car category of the parade, before heading off to Wayne's house in Brentwood. During conversation that night I got the club interested in taking a trip to the NCRy. Cool. Now I know that my car is not that bad, but rather just slightly more cranky than a well restored, easy to drive one.

Fatman has left the building

According to Charlie, moving a waterbed is like trying to move a dead fat man. Having little experience with moving actual dead fat men, I can only imagine that he is right. Charlie moved out last February and has been sleeping on an air-matress ever since. Sometimes he uses the couch. What do you do about leaks, I asked. Plastic Safeway shopping bags and superglue, quoth he. Now he has actually moved the waterbed. We tried to drain the bed as much as possible with the drain kit and the time allowed us. The draining process took hours longer than it should have using the kit supplied. We got it drained a bit more than half, then started disassembling the bed from around it. As soon as the side board was removed the entire bag slithered off the elevated bed frame and enveloped the bedroom floor. The three of us decided to attempt to carry the fatman out, but due to the lack of bones and the weight of water, we only managed to slide/roll the bag out the front door. Once on the front porch, we let the water out. Charlie and I also managed to pull the White out of its shed and load it onto a trailer for the trip north. That was the easier of the two jobs. It only required us to play leapfrog with three semi trucks.