Things that used to make me happy don’t anymore

I’m turning into a cranky old man. Things that used to make me happy now make me angry, or at least a little mad at life. I used to like things, a lot of things, but now they just remind me of stuff I don’t have and probably won’t get.

Porn is on that list of things that remind me I won’t ever get stuff. I have managed to outlive all my romantic relationships except Mrs. the Poet, and she’s not in the mood for physical romance. I mean really not in the mood, doesn’t want to be read poetry, doesn’t want to hug and kiss and snuggle, doesn’t want to watch scary movies and snuggle under a blanket when the bad guy does the scary things, doesn’t want to share funny cartoons, just nothing.

As stated in earlier posts, everyone else I had a relationship with is dead. One lady had a rash that turned into sepsis and died back in 2007, one lady had breast cancer and finally died in 2014, one died in a car wreck… My track record is not good. Part of that is from living for a long time, no all of that is from living a long time. Live long enough and this will catch up to you. I might be immortal but that is not the case for my friends.

Mrs. the Poet is basically crippled from back surgery that severely limits her mobility and she hasn’t walked without some kind of support since March of 2020, which as a person who spent 3 months with a walker and over 19 years with a cane (AKA driving a stick) I completely understand. Thing is I can manage to get to the mailbox by myself and regularly unload the groceries without the cane (but not without discomfort). Mrs. the Poet can’t even get out of bed without the walker. And hasn’t since April of 2020. She’s been in mild to severe discomfort almost every day since her operation, something else I understand from personal experience. Something has hurt or been uncomfortable pretty much daily since I was killed, and I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but I’m alive enough now to experience pain. We both have surgical scars that get tight and anywhere from mildly uncomfortable to please kill me now it hurts so bad. We both have nerve damage so bad that it gets hard to walk because parts of our legs are not responding to control inputs. I understand all of this, but it still makes me angry when I need to have some physical affection and she can’t or won’t respond physically. When you need physical affection it’s not like you can say I’ll be good until tomorrow, I mean sure you’ll still be alive, but you won’t be living.

Other things remind me I probably won’t finish the Sprint-T and drive it. Mostly that is getting in and out of chairs and cars… Sometimes those are either difficult or seriously uncomfortable to painful. I might get the Sprint-T drivable but it looks increasingly unlikely I’ll be the one driving it in races.

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It’s a kinda shit day

And I don’t know what to do with myself. My go-to when I’m having a shit day is either porn or writing, and since you’re reading this I’m not watching porn😇.

I have been doing lots of reading about tech stuff for cars, mostly the LS engine family, which was why I was making plans on building the carbon fiber intake manifold. If the stuff I have been reading is accurate, and it tracks with the data on the TPI L98 engine from the Richard Holdener videos on YouTube, I can get a very high average power with a stupid long and large cross section runner intake manifold for low and midrange power and a crazy long duration camshaft to push power out in the upper RPM range. The peak power won’t be super high like if I used a short runner manifold with the same cam, but the average power from off-idle to redline would be higher, and since autocross is more about average power across the whole RPM range… I think it might be worth a shot.

Also listening to my music app playing songs that soothe my soul like the one playing now (Taking a Ride on) Heavy Metal” by Don Felder from the movie soundtrack. There was some Tull, some Iron Maiden, some Infected Mushroom, some Jaime Berry (electro swing), some Wrecked Machines (techno, I think, might be techno-trance crossover), and some Blue Man Group “I Feel Love”.

One of the reasons why this is a shit day is we have a cold front moving through, the same front that went through CO yesterday and dropped their temps by 60°F overnight. This isn’t quite that drastic, we only dropped about 40°F, but we are having T-storms and overcast pretty much all day and it is pretty dreary. There’s an electro swing song on my playlist that has lyrics about not wanting things to be dreary. That song is so relentlessly positive, I can only take it at wide intervals. I forget the artist, otherwise I would let you know in case you wanted to either search it out or avoid it.

Other things I have been researching, because I have to keep up with the state of the art and also what’s available, is the tires for the Sprint-T. Specifically, the race tires for the series that require DOT 200 treadwear tires, because that is most definitely a moving target. The size that was “best” is still in limited availablity, but the research and development for cars in my horsepower range has gone to cars that are about twice as heavy as the Sprint-T. In other words right now I’m no longer sure of which tire is “best” anymore. The 245/40-15 size is still made, by more than one company, but it’s becoming a “competition-only” size even in the 200 treadwear class. Now I can live with this because I always planned on conserving the competition tires by only running them at the track and driving around on 255/60-15 500 treadwear tires from either Cooper or Goodrich. Those will last for years as long as I don’t get stupid with the gas pedal.

On the subject of tires the group that was doing the autocross series that was requiring the 300 treadwear tires has aligned their rules to other series that require 200 or better treadwear so that’s one less set of tires I need to find wheels for.👍

Speaking of the 255/60-15 Goodrich tires they are available in ¹/₂₅th scale for the model Mini Sprint-T for like $12 a set of 4, but I already have tires the same size, just with a different size label, L60-15 is within 0.1″ in every dimension in full scale. So I’m probably going to keep and use those tires, because I have them and don’t feel like getting more tires spending $12+tax and shipping more just to have a more accurate sidewall.

And it’s coming on dinner time and I have to proof the copy and put this post to bed.