kiffie

It's raining, again.

God knows we need it, but see: previous post on potential power outages.

Today, the semi-annual fruitcakening happened again.

Everything went fairy well, until I got to the dates. Dates are hard to peel on a good day. For some reason, this bunch was almost impossible. The skins seemed to dissolve back into the meat the second I picked at them. I ended up getting frustrated after ~3/4 cup, and tossed the rest into the trash. Good riddance.

Beyond missing a few datebits, I made some other minor tweaks to the recipe, as well. We'll see how it turned out when random and Mr. Kitteh come home in a few hours.

So, from what I understand, del Toro wasn't allowed to make a third Hellboy movie, in part, because Mignola thought the previous films were too camp and strayed too far from the tone of the books.

Okay, cool. I can see his reasoning.

I just watched the trailer for the new movie.

Which he has been pretty involved in.

Uh.

Huh.

Welp.

While I'm waiting on getting some further repairs done on my bike, I figured I'd post up a photo from a few months back, when she was still in working order.

Took the Junkerbolt into the state park for a short ride, to test her out on some "rougher" roads -- it would be generous to call the park's roads uneven, so I figured it would be a good test for the bike.

While she did okay, I can't say she did well.

The bike lacks shock absorbers of any kind, so I felt it when I went over a small stone in the road. Going over a rough patch felt like driving a car over BOTS dots. Also, the state park road is full of large, deep potholes; I was able to go around them, but I don't want to think about ever hitting one, especially at speed. Given the teeny-beeny front wheel, I'd probably end up going over the handlebars and literally eating gravel.

The other problem of the day came from some adjustments I'd made.

Since the bike is, after all, an internet-based yard sale find, very little is in particularly good shape, including the mesh seat. It sags and is uncomfortable -- a testament to how worn out it is, since Lightning's seats are typically regarded as some of the most comfortable in the bike world. I had taken a foam seat cushion out of the Triumph before I sent her off for parts, and it just so happened that it fit the Junkerbolt's seat pretty well. This made the bike more pleasant and easier to ride, but it had an unintended side-effect.

As a stop-gap measure to get the bike up and running in case I'd need to ride to work, I'd tied my home-made tail-light assembly directly to the seat's rear frame. This held it on pretty well, and put the tail-light in a nice, visible position. But it also put the on/off switch for the tail-light right against the seat back. This was fine, as I previously wasn't putting any weight on the seat back, and thus wouldn't accidentally click the button (or, I could intentionally lean back, hard, and flick the light on, which was nice). But, once the new foam seat pad was installed, the gap I had between my own back and the seat was gone. Just the action of peddling hard put enough pressure on the seat back to make the tail-light flick on. Or off -- a problem at night!

I may have to just hunker down and finish building the tailframe I'd originally planned, which would put the tail-light far away from the seat (and give me some storage space), but I doubt that will happen in the next week or so. In the meantime, I'll just have to find some way of mounting the light so there's no interferrence from the seat. I have no idea how I'd even go about that. v(._.)v

Turns out the grinding/shuddering noise was, in fact, significant!

I took the Bug in for her rear wheel bearings, and got her back with the car equivalent of a note pinned to her lapel:

Her front ball joints are bad. They'll need to be done. Soon.

Thankfully, "soon" is not "now" -- I'm not in the danger zone, yet. We're going back in a month for a recheck, to see how much they've progressed toward unsafe levels of no. If they're still okay in a month, I'll put it off another month, and then lather, rinse, repeat.

This isn't me being a procrastinator. random and I are moving within the month, and our funds are pretty much exhausted. I'm still trying to find a second job-- at this point, I'm considering returning, if briefly, to food service just to make ends meet --and any work on the Bug's wheels is on the expensive side.

It cost around $600 to get the bearings done. My folks helped out, there. But they're also helping pay for part of the cost of moving, so asking more of them isn't something I can-- or would want to --do.

And it'll cost around $700 for the ball joints. Cheap for a car. Expensive for a Bug.

And expensive for a kiff.

Hopefully, the Bug holds out for a while. At least until I can get my financial feet back under me.

I currently have a job.

It's a good job. Good hours, nice company culture, tolerable co-workers.

But SLO is expensive to live in. It's doable, and I've been doing it for a long while. But I've never been comfortable. And some changes are happening that mean that, despite the small buffer I've built for myself over the past few months, I'm going to be passing through the narrowest of straits, soon.

And there's no guarantee that I'll come out the other end with anything but lint in my pockets.

So, I'm looking for a second job, to help ease some of that uncertainty.

The problem is that I've had two jobs, at once, before. Both times, I worked far beyond my limits, sometimes to the point of true exhaustion. It was neither pleasant nor terribly rewarding.

Right now, though, I don't have a choice. I'll be doing that, again. And I do not look forward to it at all.

So, wish me luck in finding (yet more) employment. I'll likely need it.

Dear Bug,

How did you get dirt inside your spark plug?

What.

Sincerely,

Kiffies

I really want to write (read: finish writing) some Dresden-fic, but since most of the folks I'd previously nerded with haven't been online in a while, I kinda lack... not motivation, but just oomph, I guess?

It's not like I've ever cared much if I have an audience– I don't live off comments or feedback –but the nerding convos that would be borne out of those posts were always fun.

I'm not even sure if there's a Dresden comm on DW, much less one specifically geared toward the TV show. I like the books well enough, but my heart really does belong to the snarky ghost and the hockey stick wizard.

Relatedly, jabucc , cyloran  -- ya'll know I'm still game for Dresden nerding, if you still are.

(This is what I get for falling off the face of the internet for a few years.)