Self Cooling Can

How cool is this? A can that when you twist a bottom knob will cool the drink for you.

Dumba$$ II

Yesterday was a swell day. After spending 70 buckaroos on a tooth that I shouldn't have broken, I went biking with my buddy Vince up in Forest Park. He couldn't ride until 6ish because he was having a lousy day.

I had time to kill so I started fixing the squeek on my new rear brakes. I took the pads off to push the pistons back and then replaced the pads. That took a little jiggling (of the pads, not me) because they're different than my old Hayes brakes. Sound gone.

We started up the hill with Vince's rear brakes squeeking like only a dirty disc brake does. We stopped a few times for him to add and replace shims, but nothing could silence the chalkboard sound.

One stop was at the porta-a-potty, where I saw the door was "occupied". For some reason I thought that someone was playing a trick on me and had locked the door from the outside and left. Because no one could actually be in the Honey Bucket. So I swore about the door being locked. Of course someone was inside and yelled "Yea, I'm in here." A tall blonde woman jogger traipsed out of the Bucket looking not too happy and ran off.

So a few miles later, I reached for my right (rear) brake to slow down from my highway speeds to go around a corner and had to pull the lever all the way to the bar to get any resistance. Why, that's funny, I just fixed that. The braking sounds reminded me of a brick scraping over glass (which I've done before.)

I kept on riding, like a dumbass (as Red would call me, I'm sure) just adjusted the lever so it would connect earlier. I rolled up next to Vince and he looked at me and said "Dude, you're grinding metal!"

No way, I just fixed those puppies. I hopped off and saw that I indeed was grinding metal. My right brake pad was gone and that side of the rotor was all torn up. It's one thing to lose a pad (around $25), but I ruined my rotor (probably like $80.)

We said to 'Hell with it all' and rode the 4 miles back to our cars which were nicely positioned close to McMenamins and a large basket of fries.

Dumba$$

I've been a nail biter since I stopped sucking my thumb last year - just kidding, it's been at least 5 years. :) I seem to only do it when I'm at work, when I'm on vacation I don't touch the nails.

This last year I got my front teeth fixed at my dentist down in Corvallis. I was very careful with my new chompers, until lately. So yesterday at work I started working on a nail (kinda gross, I know) and snap, a section of the cement on my right big tooth broke. Super.

I ran to the bathroom and saw I had a chunk of my tooth missing and a nice jagged edge to attack people on the street with. I hurriedly called Tina in Corvallis and begged to get in an appointment to fix my grill.

This morning I got my tooth fixed and asked if I was pretty again. The response I got was "Well, we fixed your tooth, how's that?" Can't argue with someone who has a laser.

You know you're having a tough day when

you have to use the computer's calculator to figure out what 7 times 8 is. It's 56 by the way.

McKenzie River

On Saturday Trey, Ron, Tubby T Tom and I rolled down the the McKenzie river east of Eugene for a little bike ride. We used my birthday (which is today, in case you haven't sent me my gifts yet) as an excuse to go riding.

Since I seem to have lost my camera (which is a good excuse to buy the new 5.0 megapixel version), I have no pictures of the ride.

Which is too bad because then I could show everyone where Trey biffed it. We were crusing down the singletrack with Trey in front of me and he tagged his right handlebar on a tree and started wee-wabbling. That lasted about 1/2 a second until he fell to the left. We happened to be on the section where the left side is a steep embackment that changes into a straight drop onto rocks in the river. Luckily for Trey, there was a little tree that stopped both him and his bike from being totalled. But he was ok, as was his bike and we continued on our merry way.

After riding we had some dindin at a restaurant in Rainbow,Oregon which is next door to Nimrod, Oregon. The dinner was pretty good (since everyone else paid for it, hahah).

As half the point of the trip was to soak in a hot tub after running into rocks and trees on the trail, we then proceeded to hang out in the warm pool. We got scolded by the old people from Cocoon for hogging the hot water. Apparently standing near the hot water outlet stops the water from getting to the wrinkled ones.

Pay Raise

Once a year we have a performance review here at work. I, of course, flew through with flying colors (how else do colors go?) I got my raise, which I think pretty much accounts for inflation. Today was my first new paycheck at the new rate, not a huge change, but enough to buy a few burgers.

For the last week I'd been running over to my new house to do some scraping, painting, mudding, sanding, and DDP drinking. Since there is no food besides a box of Cheez-it crumbs at my house, I have been visiting the fast food restaurants. Ok, just Burger King. I think I ordered like 3 whoppers, 2 double whoppers and 4 large fries in 2 days. I figure you need protein when you're scraping paint.

Stuff learned

While on my Moab trip with Ron and Henry I started listing off the top 10 things I learned while at school. The list actually expanded to 20 when I included things since school. Of course I don't remember them now. So I'm gonna try and get one by one and put them here.

The first, and most important:
When you see bird droppings on the ground beneath your feet, don't look up to see where they come from.

Craigslist again

Well, it's time to get stuff for my new home, and what better place than craigslist? I realized a while ago that I don't have time to make all of the things I really want, like bookshelves, coffee table and TV stand.

I already bought a fair amount of paduk wood for a coffee table, so I better just make that. I made a bookshelf a few years ago and really like it, it'll just take too long to make shelves for all of my books (and National Geographic magazines). A TV stand will have to be made, I think.

So I've been visiting craigslist again and finding stuff to buy from there. I'm gonna see a teak bookshelf today, hopefully it'll be pretty dope.

House fixing

I started working on my house this weekend. I was super ambitous and thought I'd get both rooms prepped and primed this weekend. I tried this orange solvent to strip the paint off of the nasty window frame in the bedroom. It seemed like it was working well, but turned out to be a pain in the ass to clean off.

On my 4th (of 6) trips to Home Depot I picked up a cleaning bit for Ron's cordless drill to take the paint and solvent off from the small spaces. The brushes disintegrated within a few minutes and didn't get too much cleaning done. I ended up taking out my big carbide scraper and taking all of the paint off with that.

My dad helped me fix the ceiling of the bedroom, there was some water damage and the plaster was coming off. I used my new cold chisel to take the plaster down. I then put up some gyp board and mudded it.

On Saturday I took the carpet and padding out of the room. What was left was tack board along the walls and about 200 staples in the floor. I thought to myself, "Hey, I can take staples out no problem." The needle nose pliers couldn't get a grip on the staples, so I had to take a screwdriver and a rubber mallet to get them up a little. Then I took the pliers and pulled the staples out.

My last project was to start taking the security bars off of the windows. I'm using my buddy Vince's grinder for this job. It seems to take about 3 minutes a bolt, not too bad. I'm wearing a tanktop on my head to cover my neck and face from the spark showers that erupt from the grinder (which looks pretty cool.) I got two windows cleared, just 8 more to go.

This explains a lot

I think that this explains some issues from my drinking days.

House is done

My house closed last Wednesday as I was sitting in Ron's truck on I-84 in Utah. Now I can get excited about buying picture molding hooks.

I started my move last night by taking over a bottle of Vodka and Southern Comfort. I looked throughout the house and saw how much cleaning I'll be doing over the next few weeks. Fun stuff.

The refrigerator is standing in front of the hallway door, so I think it's about time to get a sub-zero undercounter unit. I think the first thing I need is a pull up bar. Gotta have priorities.

Moab 7!

Ron, Henry and I just got back from Moab this evening. It was an awesome time, we had good rides and no one got hurt. We rode Bartlett Slickrock, Monitor Merimack, Slickrock, the bottom of Porcupine Rim and Amasa Back. My brakes wonked out on me again so I ditched them to get some mechanical Avid disc brakes and they work really well. So I'll be trying to hock my other brakes after I get them warranteed.

It was Jeep Jamboree week and we got to see the thousands of Jeeps and other four wheeled monsters. We hung out at Potato Salad to see if anyone would mess up their rigs, and came up flat. But we got to watch as people threw their vehicles up the wall and get heckled by the crowd. One guy in a Toyota was having a hard time getting up and got yelled at by a young girl "You want to use my winch!?!" That was pretty damn funny.

Jumping at Porcupine Rim

Ticket III

Last night I received a response from the Lewis County District Court stating that I only owe $300 now. So it was better that I wrote a little letter explaining my actions.