Weather still rotten, cats still crazy

And we are still p’. I may spend spent some more money gift card balance at Lowe’s buying cutting tools to make a Mini Sprint-T.

Mrs. the Poet went to the evil place (Wal-Mart) to spend her gift card to buy TP and tissue, and I used her bus pass to get to Lowe’s after she got back. I got a pack of single-edge razor blades and two packs of batteries, to power the digital calipers and the laser pointer cat toy. The trip up was by bus, but I just missed catching the bus as it came back around on the return loop, so instead of waiting the 0:45 for the bus to come back I decided to walk home. I managed to get back to the corner where the bus stops just before bus came by, meaning I managed to get the 1.67 miles faster than the bus managed to get around the whole loop and I didn’t even push hard to get there first. It felt good to get out and get a little exercise except for where I tore the middle toe up a few weeks ago pushing against the inside of the shoe, that still hasn’t healed up right. That was uncomfortable, but nothing I can’t deal with.

And as it turns out we don’t have cats, we have boring dogs in cat suits. Clyde ignored the laser pointer completely, I mean he saw it and reacted to it, but he didn’t react to it like a normal cat. No attack jumps or chasing the dot up the wall, just moving his head to track the red dot. Clint chased the dot for a little bit until he got bored and then ignored it after a few minutes. Then he sat down and just watched the red dot. And now he has just crossed his front paws and is ignoring the dot some more. Like I said, boring dog in a cat suit.

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Stupid cat won’t come in out of the cold

Yep, Clint keeps going back out into the freezing cold weather. The aggravating thing about that is Mrs. the Poet is the one letting the cats out to freeze in the cold. It’s almost as if she wants them to leave or something. I get them to come in and she turns around and lets them go back out a few minutes later and then doesn’t wait for them to come back in a few minutes later as cats do. And then I spend hours at the door trying to call them back in from wherever they have holed up for the night. I end up with popsicle knees because she can’t keep the cats in when the weather gets cold.

And it would be so easy to do, just don’t let the cats out when they get done with dinner, act like you don’t hear them for a couple of minutes and they shut up and settle down for a warm night inside. I can say this here because Mrs. the Poet and our mutual friends don’t read my blog, because they read it a few times before I stopped writing about and linking to bike wrecks and decided it was “too depressing”. That’s one of the main reasons I stopped covering bike wrecks, I was making myself more depressed. Now I can semi trash-talk her and Mrs. the Poet will never even know. Of course I would never deliberately really trash talk Mrs, the Poet, calling her a pushover for the cats is pretty much as far as it will go.

And basically what I’m saying is I’m worried about the cats in the cold when she lets them out.

I had to turn the AC off

And I wore long pants and a long-sleeve shirt today, and wished I had more on. I got up way too early (0900) and then spent about 2 hours getting to the meeting after getting ready and fed. I felt like I was freezing until I found a place out of the wind while I was waiting for the bus for the outbound trip, when the actual temp was 44 and the “Feels like” was down in the 30s.

I mentioned turning off the AC because it was down to almost 60 in the office this AM, and it is still only 68°F this evening, a far cry from the mid 80s from less than a month ago. Seriously after all that time acclimating to hot weather, decent temperatures feel cold. I’m even back to drinking hot coffee again instead of iced tea for breakfast to warm up. We actually used a blanket on the bed last night. And my nose feels like an ice cube on my face.

And I’m also dealing with a needy (and kneady) cat, so this post is over.

Going for a walk tonight

It’s supposed to rain in a bit and then get cooler, so I thought I would go for a walk after the rain. And after I get back I’m going to do that stick aided design thing with the bucket shell. I was looking at the pictures after I did the post and decided that I don’t need to fix the “divot” from the dashboard because it won’t even be part of the mold. I just have to continue the top molding from the cockpit past where the dash interrupts it and make the flat top like the cockpit. Not that big a deal especially with the contour existing on either side. Of course that’s easy to write while I’m listening to “Seven Nation Army” on my music app. I mean most people could tackle just about anything while listening to that, it’s very uplifting and empowering.

Right now the rains have come as forecast, as Mrs. the Poet says “in buckets”, and Clyde came in, grabbed a bite, and immediately went back out into the rain. That’s Mrs. the Poet’s cat and as she says there’s something “not right” about him. I’m thinking the thing is he’s a bit more feral than Clint and doesn’t like the indoors even when things are yucky outside. And Clint just spent the last 20 minutes keeping me from typing by sprawling across my lap and demanding I pet him, that’s how “not-feral” he is, laying on his back with all four paws in the air begging for a belly rub.

Getting back to the car, I’m having a minor issue with the spindle not fitting the axle boss, being just a touch too short between the ears. I mean seriously there is like 0.02″ interference with the thrust bearings in place. Now I know why those spindles were in the Garage Sale section of the Speedway site. Again this is not insurmountable, I have an angle grinder and if I take the excess material off the thrust bearing side I don’t even need to be too careful about keeping the surface flat. I mean yes as close to flat as I can keep it, but I don’t need to make it super flat and true like I would the other side, the thrust bearing can cover a lot of imperfections, and the mill file can remove the worst of them. The top only gets paper-thin shims between the axle boss and the spindle, so it has to be flat and true to keep from messing up the shims and binding the steering.

I’m going to go for my walk in a few minutes, then go do the stick aided design and take lots of pictures while I’m doing it, then make another blog post with the pictures.