Yeah, do you remember that movie? It sure was cool.
A narrative tells of a legendary narrative whose story was the stuff of narratives. This will not be one of those, but if you have watched Kung-Fu Panda 13 times in the past 3 days you will understand - okay, maybe you only need have watched it once.
First off, I would like to tell of the second trash can turkey that I cooked this year. This occured the Saturday before Christmas. We were having a family party at our house and my wife commanded that I cook another parrot. Wait my wife says that she cannot stand when I call it parrot, so I cooked another wood pecker, is that better? This is okay with me because it is one of the few manly things I get to do. Most of my evenings are spent dancing like a princess, painting filange nails, and wearing feminine head apparel as this is the only items of my daughter's dress up clothes that will fit me. I found out the hard way. Yes, I dream of the day when testosterone will enter my life again.
Well back to the bird... It was a rainy week and the heaviest of the rain occured on Saturday. I believed that my bird needed to be cooked before the Sabbath so I went to work Saturday evening. It was still raining but that was okay with me, because I have a garage now. I often have brilliant flashes of insight like this, and when they hit me it is pure euphoria and all rational thought and my wife's cautions do not ever connect with my elated brain cells.
My wife tells me she is becoming annoyed reading this so I had better get to the guts of the matter. I opened both garage doors at either end of the garage so air could flow, and prepared my pigeon as described in a previous blog post. I arranged the fire area in the middle of the garage at the opening of the big door just inside from the rain and as much outside as possible. I lit my fire...then seeing how big the flames got, and how far the storm winds blew them, I panicked...I immediately removed the nearby gas cans from the vicinity, ran out the back door and drug my hose into the garage. After a while the flames died down and everything worked out just fine. The crow was amazing! The only drawback was the smell of burned wood pecker juice that stained my garage over the next few weeks.
The eve of Christmas Eve I had another opportunity to feel manly. Yes, feeling manly has become somewhat of a treat and I do feel to rejoice at these opportunities. The lights on my 1990 Toyota Camry have been busted for some time. They just stopped working. I do not know much about cars but I did know to check the fuses and the bulbs, all of which were good. Others suggested things like replacing relays or your dash switch, but that would have required about a half-hour of effort and would never have satisfied the inventor in me. I decided that I would take the road less-traveled. Some less-traveled roads are traveled because it is the right thing to do, others are traveled because the traveler is stubborn or desperate. I fell under the desperate category. I had procrastinated fixing my lights until the very last moment possible as we had to drive both cars to a Christmas Eve party. On my way home from work I stopped at Lowe's and purchased 40 ft of wire for about $10.
This was much cheaper than a 40 dollar steering column switch but probably more expensive than a relay.
However, inventing your own solution is priceless.
My car feels old, looks old, and is old. So I felt little or no fear at drilling holes in it and removing any sort of aesthetic panel that stood between me and my dream. Rather I felt a sense of excitement at the operation. Could I remove things make the changes I needed to make and put everything back together? I realize now that this might be how surgeons feel who operate on really old people. I appreciate the years of service my car has given me but I know the end is coming. I will do what I have to do to the car and if it passes away, oh well - it was going to happen before long anyways, but ripping the chest open for heart surgery sure was exciting. I hope that none of you ever have a doctor like this work on your loved ones. The plan worked. I cut the wires to my lights to get the plugs and ran wires straight off of my battery to the light plugs. For anyone who cares, the lights are wired in parallel. The most interesting part was deciding where to put the light switch. I decided that it definitely had to be in the cab, but how to get it there? Lucky for me, I walked out from church a few years ago and found my passenger sideview mirror missing. It had been broken off and was just gone. Some might not see this as a blessing but really it provided me the only decent way to run a wire into my car. I drilled out a bigger hole in the metal plate on which it had been mounted and pulled the wire through it. Now where do I put the switch? In the glove box of course. I removed my glove box door and used my soldering iron to carve out a rectangular piece out of the plastic back plate. I then drilled a slot big enough for a standard light switch to switch in. I mounted an old light switch to the back side of the door and wa-lah! My lights are now controlled by a switch on my glove box door. Pretty cool huh? In high school we thought it was cool when one of our friends duck taped his rear lights in place - this is so much cooler. Maybe my next task will be to route my window washer fluid line into the cab to use it as a Kool-Aid dispenser.
I am tired. I will try to add pictures soon and continue narrating recent events.
-Jude Collins
A narrative tells of a legendary narrative whose story was the stuff of narratives. This will not be one of those, but if you have watched Kung-Fu Panda 13 times in the past 3 days you will understand - okay, maybe you only need have watched it once.
First off, I would like to tell of the second trash can turkey that I cooked this year. This occured the Saturday before Christmas. We were having a family party at our house and my wife commanded that I cook another parrot. Wait my wife says that she cannot stand when I call it parrot, so I cooked another wood pecker, is that better? This is okay with me because it is one of the few manly things I get to do. Most of my evenings are spent dancing like a princess, painting filange nails, and wearing feminine head apparel as this is the only items of my daughter's dress up clothes that will fit me. I found out the hard way. Yes, I dream of the day when testosterone will enter my life again.
Well back to the bird... It was a rainy week and the heaviest of the rain occured on Saturday. I believed that my bird needed to be cooked before the Sabbath so I went to work Saturday evening. It was still raining but that was okay with me, because I have a garage now. I often have brilliant flashes of insight like this, and when they hit me it is pure euphoria and all rational thought and my wife's cautions do not ever connect with my elated brain cells.
My wife tells me she is becoming annoyed reading this so I had better get to the guts of the matter. I opened both garage doors at either end of the garage so air could flow, and prepared my pigeon as described in a previous blog post. I arranged the fire area in the middle of the garage at the opening of the big door just inside from the rain and as much outside as possible. I lit my fire...then seeing how big the flames got, and how far the storm winds blew them, I panicked...I immediately removed the nearby gas cans from the vicinity, ran out the back door and drug my hose into the garage. After a while the flames died down and everything worked out just fine. The crow was amazing! The only drawback was the smell of burned wood pecker juice that stained my garage over the next few weeks.
The eve of Christmas Eve I had another opportunity to feel manly. Yes, feeling manly has become somewhat of a treat and I do feel to rejoice at these opportunities. The lights on my 1990 Toyota Camry have been busted for some time. They just stopped working. I do not know much about cars but I did know to check the fuses and the bulbs, all of which were good. Others suggested things like replacing relays or your dash switch, but that would have required about a half-hour of effort and would never have satisfied the inventor in me. I decided that I would take the road less-traveled. Some less-traveled roads are traveled because it is the right thing to do, others are traveled because the traveler is stubborn or desperate. I fell under the desperate category. I had procrastinated fixing my lights until the very last moment possible as we had to drive both cars to a Christmas Eve party. On my way home from work I stopped at Lowe's and purchased 40 ft of wire for about $10.
This was much cheaper than a 40 dollar steering column switch but probably more expensive than a relay.
However, inventing your own solution is priceless.
My car feels old, looks old, and is old. So I felt little or no fear at drilling holes in it and removing any sort of aesthetic panel that stood between me and my dream. Rather I felt a sense of excitement at the operation. Could I remove things make the changes I needed to make and put everything back together? I realize now that this might be how surgeons feel who operate on really old people. I appreciate the years of service my car has given me but I know the end is coming. I will do what I have to do to the car and if it passes away, oh well - it was going to happen before long anyways, but ripping the chest open for heart surgery sure was exciting. I hope that none of you ever have a doctor like this work on your loved ones. The plan worked. I cut the wires to my lights to get the plugs and ran wires straight off of my battery to the light plugs. For anyone who cares, the lights are wired in parallel. The most interesting part was deciding where to put the light switch. I decided that it definitely had to be in the cab, but how to get it there? Lucky for me, I walked out from church a few years ago and found my passenger sideview mirror missing. It had been broken off and was just gone. Some might not see this as a blessing but really it provided me the only decent way to run a wire into my car. I drilled out a bigger hole in the metal plate on which it had been mounted and pulled the wire through it. Now where do I put the switch? In the glove box of course. I removed my glove box door and used my soldering iron to carve out a rectangular piece out of the plastic back plate. I then drilled a slot big enough for a standard light switch to switch in. I mounted an old light switch to the back side of the door and wa-lah! My lights are now controlled by a switch on my glove box door. Pretty cool huh? In high school we thought it was cool when one of our friends duck taped his rear lights in place - this is so much cooler. Maybe my next task will be to route my window washer fluid line into the cab to use it as a Kool-Aid dispenser.
I am tired. I will try to add pictures soon and continue narrating recent events.
-Jude Collins
5 comments:
Haha, I'd like to see pictures of the rigged up car... that is funny. Jarom also spends his evenings dancing like a princess with Addie.
Jude to the rescue! It doesn't matter how the job is done, as long as the job gets done, right? lol I'm going to get George to read this post!
LOL!!! Jude I love reading your blogs!!
Jude, I bet you're quite dashing in your little girls frilly things. Go figure, we only got one girl and she is a tomboy to the bone. Her all time favorite toys when she was little was a dalmation puppy and a dump truck!! Nothings changed now that she's 14. She is our tough as nails girl... that happens to scoop donkey poop without an upturned nose. I would have like at least a little glitter and sparkle, grin. So glad your pigeon turned out well, even MORE glad your house did not burn down!
hahaha... I HAVE to see your ghetto-rigged car! That's hilarious!
Jared has managed to maintain his manhood so far. Taylor can be girly, but she does love to wrestle with him. We'll see how it goes when the next girl gets here!
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