As I’m composing this I am literally waiting for Social Security to call about starting my checks, because I will be 62 in 11 days. This will nearly double our before-tax income here at Casa de El Poeta. The plan is to figure out our big single-chunk payments and put that money into the firewalled account at the credit union every month. Whatever is left over is my spending money for things like meds, massages, clothing, and books and food.
Notice I put books and food in the same phrase. There is a reason for that, I consider them both as essential to maintaining my life. I don’t think I need to explain why I need to eat, but I also need to have mental stimulation on the regular. Usually I get that from the Web these days, but there are times when I want to unplug, literally, and read a dead tree. I have magazine subscriptions but there is just something about holding a book and turning the pages that makes that a completely different experience from reading on the web, or from my Kindle app. Also we sometimes lose power and internet (and phone too, but that’s not pertinent to reading) so I need something that doesn’t require anything more than a light source to read. Books and magazines cover that need nicely.
One thing I’m looking forward to is having the funds to get a weekly massage. Now I don’t absolutely need to get a massage every week, but things would work much better if I did. As previously reported, I have a bunch of old injuries that massage is good for relieving the pain and stiffness without resorting to chemical enhancements. And massage is a good adjunct to those chemicals, making them work better at making me move. Plus massage is good for other needs that are theraputic, but not for my body. Massage is also good for my skin hunger needs, my physical need to be touched by another human being. I have found through bitter experience that bad things happen if I don’t tend to things like skin hunger properly. But that won’t be a problem now that I have the money to get frequent and regular massage.
OK just got done with the call from SS, and I’m getting my first check the fourth Wednesday of November, Woo!! I get paid for October in November because I don’t get paid until the first of the month after I qualify, and the check is sent the fourth Wednesday because my birthday is the 22nd, which is technically the first day of the fourth week. So I have to wait 2 months for my first check because reasons. Ah, well, we have survived this long without it, another 2 months ain’t going to kill us.
Now this isn’t enough money to build the Sprint-T, at least not all at once. But it does expand the budget a bit. Not by much, but enough that there is a possibility I will be able to drive it when it’s finished.
Speaking of the Sprint-T I mentioned building a carbon fiber intake manifold earlier, so I think I should explain that in a bit of detail. The fabricated aluminum manifold I mentioned way back requires use of forming bucks to provide a shape to beat the aluminum around. Thing is those can also be used as molds for laying woven fibers saturated with resin around and trimming to size after curing, instead of beating aluminum into shape and trimming to size after forming. The thing is the CF is much lighter than aluminum, making for a manifold that weighs a few pounds, like 3 or 4, instead of one that weighs more than 10-15 pounds. This is not a lot, but it is about 10 pounds plus or minus, and 10 pounds is a significant percentage of the race weight, about half of the fuel in the race tank.
This is one reason why I agonize over the weight of wheels and tires, because they are weight that is part of the total, and more importantly because they are unspring weight that hampers ride and handling. Unsprung weight and rotating weight are the two types of weight that have the most negative impact on performance, and tire and wheels are both of those. Hence the figurative hair pulling when making decisions about them on a build like the Sprint-T that has so little total weight the unsprung-to-sprung weight ratio is going to be bad pretty much no matter what I do. I mean the weight of the car and driver with a full race tank of fuel is pushing 1800 pounds (818 Kg), that is light by almost any standards.
And this looks like a good spot to put this post to bed before I go off on a tangent. To summarise, I will have a stable source of income for the first time in over a decade, things are good.
Witch on a Bicycle 