Nothing to worry about it’s just the asphalt roads melting

We have a patch of cold-mix outside Casa de El Poeta that seems to have gone soft. It had a couple of tire tracks because cold-mix remains soft for about 24 hours after putting it down in more temperate conditions, but it seems to have a few more today after a string of 100°+ days this week. The concrete seems to be holding up fine where it wasn’t undermined by broken watermains years ago. Current temperature at 1700 is 99°F so nothing to worry about.😅

On bicycle things I have been perusing Craig’s List and online pawn shops in hopes of finding a bike I can get on and off of and still be able to ride, but prices haven’t been in my price range, or the bikes were too small for me to get proper leg extension while seated. I really need to find something I can ride to get some exercise with this bum hip making walking extremely risky for falling. That walk I had earlier just emphasized how bad my hip is now, but at least I can put my socks on without help again. There was a time right after the injury that action was impossible. It got a little difficult for a while this month but I’m better now.

On the Sprint-T I’m still plugging in the entries for the POWERNATION Ford (click to help me win, maybe) in hopes of winning the engine and having something to shove in front of the firewall. As I stated many years ago, there are two design objectives for this car, aside from doing car things like getting groceries and so forth. First is winning Goodguys autocross events by using basic physics and good design to succeed, second is cruising events and looking cool, and also not needing a trailer and tow vehicle to get it there. That is I want to drive to the event, drive the event, and then drive home. I also want to be able to bolt some slicks on it and compete in SCCA events. I will need a trailer to carry the tires for that.

I don’t object to doing a little maintenance at the motel beforehand, but I don’t want to unload and load a car hauler at the event. If I could afford to have a separate vehicle to get my race car around I wouldn’t be having these issues in the first place. There would be many problems I would not be having if I could afford to have a tow vehicle and a play vehicle. I would be fully vaccinated now because I wouldn’t have needed to leave the line because of running out of money for the Lyft, I could just keep circling the site until I got to the end of the line, not until my fare exceeded my checking balance.

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I was busy yesterday

I went and did stuff yesterday in the heat. By Texas standards it was a bit on the warm side as we hit 101°F while I was out walking around. I did some banking for Mrs. the Poet, got a haircut from someone who knows how to do a flat top, and then got a good massage from a little slip of a woman.

Anyway, I got started on doing stuff about 1530 and got home about 1930. Now part of that is because it takes time to get places even if you go by Lyft, and part of that is because it takes time to do things. Banking took a while because I had to deposit a paper check, get cash, and check balances. That took a bit of time, because it just does.

The next thing I did was walk to the barbershop in the 101° heat, as one does in TX. That was a few minutes to walk the 0.85 miles to the barbershop because I was too cheap to pay a Lyft and didn’t feel like waiting for the bus that may or might not stop at the bus stop. The closest stop to the bank is right in front of the Community College and for some reason the bus route I needed tends to go right by that stop. Anywho after walking most of a mile in 100+° heat I was hot and thirsty when I got to the barbershop and needed to take a break before I got covered by the barber’s apron. So after I cooled off enough I got the haircut, which included an eyebrow trim, all the way down my nose. I think I mentioned I have a monobrow that goes all the way down my nose and ends right above the tip, and also my eyebrows above my eyes were bushy and needed a trim.

Next part of the trip was via Lyft to the massage place. I found a new place closer to home and only a couple of miles from the barbershop, which was too far to walk, and the Lyft driver was initially sent to the wrong side of the strip mall that went in next to the barber’s, and it took a few minutes to guide him to the place to pick me up. Then it took a few minutes to find the massage place in another strip mall. Strip malls appear to be this guy’s Achilles heel, especially if they go around a corner like both of the ones at either end of this trip. The massage tech at this place was a slip of a woman who looked like a tween girl, but was actually a full-grown woman and managed to give a decent massage despite her minimal mass. My hips haven’t felt this good in ages. Usually a massage doesn’t last long in the hip area because of the nature of what the muscles do, but this one has managed to feel good-ish for almost than 24 hours and still feels not-bad.

I got a summary of my expenditures for Lyft for the day and it came out just under $30, which is a big chunk of my transportation budget. But $30 for 3 trips is not too bad, and I wouldn’t have even been able to do it on the bus because of the uncertainty of having a trip home. DART is so short of drivers that if someone gets sick their bus doesn’t go. And they don’t put out a notification that the bus isn’t running on their app. That’s what really annoys me, they have an app to take fares and alert riders, and they don’t alert riders when a bus isn’t running because of a sick driver. They give notices when the bus isn’t running because of no AC, or other mechanical issue, but staffing issues that shut a bus down don’t get notices on the app. This is stupid, and DART needs to fix it. Anything that interrupts bus service needs to be shown on the app. They don’t need to say why a bus is out of service, but they do need to let people know a bus is out of service. Especially if it’s a route that is last mile on the return to home. Transportation rant over.

AC is back again because the humidity is back down, so at least Casa de El Poeta is comfortable.

Still fornicating hot

It’s so hot that I switched from peanutbutter cups to mints because I don’t like melted chocolate. Mrs. the Poet came to bed naked not because she felt romantic but because it was too hot to wear a nightgown. And also too hot for hanky or panky. Seriously, I tried for a hug and a kiss and failed at both because I adhered to her skin after just touching her. Not a pleasant night.

Current temperature in my office is 84°F, not deadly by any means, but even with a fan it’s still uncomfortable. Probably not good for the laptop, either, but the manual says I still have a few degrees of leeway before thermal shutdown. I decided to move my laptop and myself to the living room with the fan because it’s a portable computer, so why not portage it someplace where there’s a breeze? Also the temperature just hit 85°

In other things, I still do the things to possibly win the Ford engine from Power Nation daily, but I’m still 10 friends shy of my maximum of 10 friends. You have until 8/11/2021 to click the link and help me win. I really can’t do anymore thinking about the Sprint-T, I have to either abandon the project or stop thinking and start doing, but fixing the house is eating my car building budget alive. And in the greater scheme of things having a house that is habitable is more important than having a hot rod.

[$DEITY] it’s hot in here

Because the AC is intermittent it got to 85°F in my office as indicated by my Atomic Radio Clock. And the AC is intermittent because the installers used the condensation drain that came with the house and it doesn’t drain as fast as the the coil makes condensation. The other reason it’s hot in here is we finally had our first 100°F day outside.

About the first 100° day, usually by now we have had 5 or more days above the century mark, but because of climate change for the first couple of months of Meteorological Summer our usual heat went to the Pacific Northwest, and the cool air was redirected around the Arctic Circle and onto us, leaving our temperatures well below normal, and theirs well above normal. But that flow moved on and we have our normal temperatures and so do they.

Getting back to that condensation drain thing, there is a sensor that controls a relay that turns off the AC when the condensation line gets backed up so the water doesn’t flood the house like when we were living in the apartment when we first moved here back in the 1990s. That one was bad, I lost so many magazines that time.😭 That was the last time we lived in an apartment. Shortly after that we got evicted and bought Casa de El Poeta, but it wasn’t named that at the time. It wasn’t named anything back then. Then a while after I was killed our central heat and air went south to the land of non functioning appliances, and we lived with window units for several years because it was cheaper than replacing the AC and wiring at the time. But our finances changed and we could afford to get the electrical wiring changes and replaced the entire inner and outer systems, but for some reason they didn’t change the condensation drain when they installed the new system and now it’s overwhelmed by the humidity.

I’m still doing the thing for the giveaway Ford engine because it’s my best hope of getting an engine for the Sprint-T. Otherwise I don’t have the budget to keep Mrs. the Poet happy and buy an engine and transmission. The plan is to sell the prize engine or trade it for an LS junkyard engine and transmission. Or see if I could sweet talk the TV production company out of a transmission and controller in exchange for making a program or 3 out of building the Sprint-T. It’s possible but unlikely so I’m not going to put it high on the list of probabilities. The chain of events needed to make that happen is so convoluted as to make living through getting hit by a truck going 60 MPH look like an everyday thing.

Still hot but bearable

I knocked the thermostat down a couple of degrees F and it is much better. The current temperature in the office is 77°F which feels much better than the temperature of 79°F from before. It’s amazing how much just 2° makes in comfort level.

I’m still mostly on a daywalker sleep schedule. I say mostly because I need to be up before noon, but I haven’t been. I need to get up earlier to go to sleep earlier. Also, I need to take my sleep meds earlier to fall asleep earlier. But things are still not working up to tolerances, never mind working up to specifications, and I don’t know how to get up to tolerances.

The end of next month is the 20th anniversary of my death by murder by motor vehicle. It is weird for me to think about it, but I was dead 20 years ago. I still have nightmares about it that I didn’t have right after the wreck because I was still having nightmares about the horrible abuse I had growing up. But the statute of limitations expired a long time ago on that and on the guy trying to kill me (because it was a misdemeanor when it happened and the SoL was only 4 years) basically the ship on that one sailed and sank before Obama’s first administration. Hell Obama hadn’t even run when the SoL expired at the beginning of the second Bush term. Not right at the beginning, the wreck was 12 days before Bush was interrupted reading an age-appropriate book to elementary school children to get told about the first plane striking the Twin Towers so the SoL expired well into the first year of the second term of the Bush administration.

But in less than 60 days it will be two decades since one life ended and a different life started and I’m still trying to grasp the significance of the event.

After melting running errands yesterday, blessed coolness today

Yesterday I was depositing checks and picking up my pulls from the comic shop and basically melting in the sun as the temperature again approached the triple digits. I also got my toes done as I was snagging the sheets again when I didn’t wear socks to bed, then walked the 0.9 mile from the nail salon to Casa de El Poeta for a full limit on my Sweatcoin collecting. Speaking of Sweatcoin, I still don’t have enough to cash out any, but I’m getting there, almost $15 right now. I need to get a bunch more to have enough to cash out at $50.

One thing that is hard for me to get used to is the thought of actually having money to spend on days I’m not doing the lab rat thing. My mentality has been when I’m out and not visiting the LRK I don’t have any money unless this is a trip to actually spend money on something specific. And that I wouldn’t have a couple of bucks to spend on a cold drink and a snack if the urge took me. So I stopped at Jack in the Box and got a Cherry Coke Zero Sugar™ and a slice of half-price cheesecake one because I needed it and the other because I could. Well I didn’t need the Cherry Coke Zero Sugar™ specifically, just something cold and wet, but the cheesecake was definitely because I could.

Now today it was much cooler as the first of two cold fronts passed through leaving temperatures in the mid-80s most of the day. It’s only 91° as I get ready to get the lottery with the $15.25 million jackpot. Back from the store. And just for giggles I also bought a ticket for the Powerball $223 million jackpot, which the first year payout will have more than enough money for us to live on the rest of our lives. I suppose we could move to a small town without internet and set them up with Gigabit internet just because we want it and letting everyone else have access just makes sense. Seriously, I have so little experience spending money in large sums that after setting up a retirement account to take care of my financial needs for the rest of my life I have no idea what to do with the rest of the first year payment.

Well if tomorrow’s post doesn’t make much sense, I’m still drunk from celebrating winning.

My brain does evil shit to me sometimes

Yesterday after falling asleep on the toilet and then faceplanting into the keyboard I went straight to bed to stare at the wall waiting to sleep. Yep, in spite of literally falling asleep in one of the most uncomfortable places in the house just minutes earlier I was wide awake in the bed. No, I can’t explain it either.

Well something that might explain it is my ant bites/stings are both healing and starting to get infected, both of which lead to discomfort from itching. Some are healing up, some are getting infected, and I think the difference is which are bites and which are stings. I can’t tell the difference which was which now, because of inflammation and infection, but before that set in bites had two punctures from the mandibles, while stings were just a single puncture, from the stinger naturally.

Anywho, I spent several hours thinking of nothing and counting my breaths to try to relax and get to sleep, and sometime before sunrise which was 0643 this morning. I count breaths instead of sheep because I keep trying to write stories about the stupid sheep, why are they there and why are they jumping over that stupid fence and where do they go after they jump over the fence. And then I interview the sheep as to what’s happening, if they are running from anything or to anything, and I can’t find my notepad, and somewhere along the line I’m having a nightmare about what the sheep are running from and why they are so orderly about it but at least I’m asleep. When I count my breaths I avoid the nightmares about persecuted sheep. With as many PTSD triggers as I have I really don’t need more nightmares.

And speaking of my favorite mental illness… I think Trump tweets have become a new anxiety trigger, especially when he starts tweeting about wars. I can’t verify this hypothesis because I unfollowed @realDonaldTrump from my twitter so I don’t see most of his trash, but the ones I do see cause me a case of the willies, even the ones where he’s not on about the Russians and Fake News. Those are the worst, followed by Trade Wars, but even the twitter fights about LeBron James are upsetting for some reason. I would rather have the dreams about the sheep than read Trump Tweets. Maybe it’s because I spent so much of my youth scared to death about a crazy old man with his finger on The Button, afraid he would snap and put us all in the end scene of Planet of the Apes or Them!. Trump is old enough to remember that shit, but took too many drugs in his teens and twenties to remember much of anything.

And I’m melting in the office whie my laptopis acting crazy and only intermittently recognizind keypresses and I can’t see the kyboard clearly anyway, Office topped out at 90°F this afternoon.

I really need to get the AC unit installed

Little steps, I have moved the unit next to the window it’s going to be installed in. And I need to get it installed quickly, the outside temperature is currently 85°F while the office is a frigid 90°. That’s right, it is cooler outside than inside an air-conditioned house with the AC running. But on the good side, I am basically doing a cleanse every day, sweating the toxins out of my body constantly. If you believe that kind of thing I should have a toxin-free body by the time I get to my next appointment with the Lab Rat Keeper. Of course that also means I smell like I just finished riding the century course at the HHH and just barely cleared Hell’s Gate before they cut off the full course so I got the full effect of the sun and any humidity. TBH I reek of sweat.

And while the subject is my body, the good news is the deep-tissue massage I got on Thursday did a beneficial number on my wrecked leg. My foot did not swell up either Friday or today, and was free from cramping since the massage. I even managed to bypass the ibuprofen and still get to sleep at a decent time last night.

And I found out why my BP meds got changed, the base medication is Valsartan, and most of the world supply was contaminated a few months back with a known carcinogen, so since I can sort of control my BP with other meds, I got moved to other meds. The other meds aren’t as good at controlling my BP as the Valsartan, so my systolic has jumped to 135-140 where it had been 112-120 depending on how much news I had been reading. If I need to get my systolic up all I need to do is read the @realDonaldTrump twitter feed. And also on that subject I got another letter from the nice people running the SPRINT study I was involved in, their data showed keeping the systolic pressure below 120 reduced the incidence of a precursor to Alzheimer’s called MCI or Mild Cognitive Impairment. Not everybody who has MCI gets Alzheimer’s, but everybody who gets Alzheimer’s had MCI, first. And according to their tests I don’t have MCI, yet.

And I have a RPG group tomorrow, where I’m going to get more explanation of my (character’s) immortality. As it stands now my character has been killed at least 3 times, once with the truck and the idiot that I went through, once with my character catching a grenade during the Battle of Central Expressway that wiped everyone else in the machine gun nest, and the most recent with the KillDeer incident. I’m in deep conversation with Kokopelli about the how and why, as well as questions about why my customer loyalty card for Charon’s Ferry has 6 round trips punched when I can’t remember dying that many times. And will I have to stay dead to get my spa day at the Elysian Fields Resort? Or just stay dead long enough to get my treatments at the spa? And why am I the only one who can see the card? Does it have something to do with resurrecting without external assistance, while other people who died and come back had medical intervention from trained professionals to revive them. I have to say I love being able to see the reactions on people’s faces when I say “Ow, was I dead again?” when I resurrect. I couldn’t do that with the first two times I died, because I didn’t stay dead long enough the first time, I came back before the medics arrived for the second one, but I was definitively dead and about to get buried this last time, so I had an audience when I came ashore from Charon’s ferry.

And I really need to put this to bed and take a shower and put myself to bed, so write you later.

Deposited checks for Mrs. the Poet and basically transferred fluids through my body to my skin

It was warm again out on the road today, and Mrs. the Poet did not want to go out in the heat to deposit checks from NY at the credit union, so I went instead, and basically melted in the sun. I also got a massage, then sweated some more. My legs feel great now, we will see how long that lasts.

The evolution of the Sprint-T, by the pound: original kit car with 350/350 engine and transmission and iron and steel 9″ Ford, 1700 pounds with 8 gallons of gas and no driver. First iteration of the space frame with same powertrain 1650 pounds. Second iteration of the frame with SCCA legal roll hoops, back to 1700 pounds. Fourth iteration of the frame with improved bracing for better stiffness, 1725 pounds. Sixth iteration with redundant bits removed, back to 1700. Changing from the 9″ to a quick-change rear with magnesium center and bells and aluminum tubes, 1675. changing from the 350/350 to the Pentastar V6 and OEM 8-speed automatic, 1450, going to the T5 transmission gets to 1375. Changing to the Subaru EJ257 and the T5 and adding a 1 gallon tank for E85 on race day with a storage tank in the tire trailer for holding the low-octane transit gas while the car is racing reduces the race weight to 1285 without driver. Add my 225 in race gear and helmet and we are looking at a 1510 pound combination with 300-325 HP depending on if we get the turbo from the wagon, or from the WRX-STI, and how we tune the cam timing VVT. This is still 5% better power to weight than the most powerful Corvette engine in the lightest Corvette, without a driver or gas in the tank.

And the weather report says it hit 103°F while I was out and about and waiting for the bus.

The heat is taking a break and Mrs. the Poet returns

The forecast high for today is was “only” 103 104°F getting down to 75° in the AM. And to welcome Mrs. the Poet back Tuesday the forecast high is just 99°. Mrs. the Poet is strongly considering staying in Upstate NY, except that her ticket is only transferable if her flight is cancelled. I know the cats will be glad to see her, they wander the house calling for her like they expect her to appear from the air or something. And I’m missing her, too.

On the Sprint-t project I have simplified the body mount somewhat. Instead of welding a box structure with a complex flange and dozens of holes in the top that would allow water intrusion, I moved the face between the floor and the filler over to the other side of the mounting nuts with a simple bend to carry the flange up close to the nuts through the cowl pinch which won’t affect the mount stiffness since there won’t be any bolts except next to the firewall. This would have almost the same effective stiffness as the more complex mount with all the fiddly out-of-position welds I would need to do standing on my head. Most of the welds I could do outside the car on a bench, but there would still be some yoga welding in the car, only about a third as much as the other design. This design leaves the nuts and bolts inside the body and exposed for maintenance. And there would literally be a line of bedliner caulking the bottom of the body outside in the joint between the body and the frame.

Like I posted earlier the design is getting to the fiddly bits like body mounts and making sure the floor doesn’t oilcan when I get in and out of the car, without disturbing the smoothness of the belly pan that is the other side of the floor. This excludes running beads on the floor because that also is either a bump or a depression on the belly pan. This leaves welding light angle sections or just vertical flanges on top of the floor like for the body mount. And I forgot to reiterate the floor/belly pan is a structural part of the center bay to prevent distortion of the roll cage in a wreck and also act as a transmission mount. I decided the trans/driveshaft tunnel will be removable from the inside of the car for installation and maintenance of the drivetrain. This solves a ton of issues with keeping water out of the interior and also keeping the belly pan smooth, and makes the floor a better structural component for the frame. Otherwise I would have to figure out how to route the shear loads around the hole in the floor to get the transmission in and out, and make a removable cover for the hole. This would be a weak point in the frame that would be a bear to fix without adding a bunch of extra weight.

And I have to get the clean sheets out of the dryer and put them on the bed. I had some bug bites that bled a little on the sheets, plus there was the matter of sweating making the bottom sheet dingy looking, so I got some bleach at the store and tried to whiten them. And it doesn’t matter if I succeeded or not, they go on the bed tonight so Mrs. the Poet has a clean place to sleep tomorrow night.