Sunday was Mrs. Fungus' birthday, and she had come home from work very early on Saturday because she was sick; she was scarcely better on Sunday. Around dinnertime she had recovered enough to eat the dinner she'd asked me to make for the occasion. Yesterday she was better, and we ended up planting the rose bushes she bought last week.
Anyway, today I am feeling dizzy and achy and have no energy whatsoever; naturally it's the first day above 75° since last year.
On the plus side, Saturday afternoon I went to see Og. He was putting a power steering pump into his optometrist's car and I was mainly standing around talking to him, but he thanked me for the (im)moral support and handed me more Suzuki motorcycle bits. That's the first time I've really hung out with any of my friends since I got married.
I rode the bike to Og's, of course, and it was a fantastic day to ride. Og gave me a horsehide jacket that no longer fits him; it's stiff as a mofo but would provide more protection for my skin in the event of an unscheduled landing than the seude jacket.
...but I won't be riding the bike today. *sigh*
* * *
Russian scientists are still confidently predicting a cooling period. The sun's 200-year cycle is showing a decline, and that would rather neatly account for a lot of the data trends we're seeing.
Bonus quote:
If only there was some natural source for variations in the earth's temperature. The source of such variation would have to be large, though: on an order of magnitude of our own Sun.Gee, y'think?
* * *
The economy of Texas is booming, and I would wager that this has something to do with it: "The south Texas Eagle Ford field is now the largest oil and gas production field in the world. 6 years ago it was barely a blip." Emphasis theirs.
There's all kinds of oil out there. Now that we're able to get at some of it, all we need now is to be allowed to build some new f-ing refineries, and the price of gasoline and diesel can drop precipitously...thus giving our economy a much-needed boost.
* * *
Kermit Gosnell's butcher shop is not unique. That is to say, there are places just like it all over the country. (Probably all over the world.) And everywhere they exist, it's because abortion-as-contraception advocates are turning blind eyes to them because nothing must stop the abortions.
*sigh*
* * *
Twinkies will return, and not be made with union labor. The people who bought out the wreckage of Hostess relocated it to a right-to-work state, and $5 says that the new employees will be less than enthused about unionizing after what happened to the 18,500 former employees of the former Hostess Company.
* * *
Mrs. Fungus found her box set of A Song of Ice and Fire books, the huge George Martin epic which begins with Game of Thrones.
...so far I've managed about two hundred pages of the thing. It's a slow read. This is a guy who devours a Tom Clancy novel in a day or two, who can read the latest Dresden Files book at one sitting--but not this shit. Damn.
It's not even that it's impenetrable prose; it's not. Though Martin tends to use two dollars' worth of words to write a five-cent sentence, at least some of the words he uses can be reduced to common one-syllable words on the fly. ("Destrier"="horse", for example.)
If it's not that, then I'm really not sure what it is; but this thing is plodding. And supposedly Game of Thrones is the best book in the epic.
I'm not allowed to read past the end of A Clash of Kings, not until the third season of the TV show is over. If what I've seen on various wikis and such is true, the TV series pretty much runs one season per book, so the first season covers GoT, the second CoK, and the third (running now) covers A Storm of Swords. I get to read SoS when season 3 ends, but can't pick up volume 4 (A Feast of Crows) until the end of the fourth season. (If it comes. And if I haven't given up by the end of SoS.)
Additional commentary: the TV series is raunchier than the book is. Recall please that I referred to it as Game of
* * *
Car stuff:
Thanks to a post on MGB Experience I have learned of the existence of Weber Carbs Direct, a company which specializes in Weber carburator conversion kits for various cars. That last link is to the kit which would fit the 1977 MGB in my garage; the only other parts needed is a pre-'75 exhaust manifold and a pipe connecting it to the existing exhaust system in the car.
$300.
Contrast that with the upper right kit from MGB specialist Victoria British, which costs a mere $560 and is exactly the same goddamned thing.
Now, before finding that link, I thought it would be prohibitively expensive to put any kind of alternative carb in that car, unless I lucked into finding a used set of carbs for an early MGB somewhere on the cheap; I figured I was locked into sticking with the stinkinous Zenith-Stromberg 175CD that was original equipment just because it was prohibitively expensive to do anything else. $600, $800, and on up from there. $1,500 for fuel injection, if I wanted to go that route.
Not so. I have to keep reminding myself that MGBs are popular cars and you can get parts all over the place for them. For cripes sake, in 2004 I was able to order a carb rebuild kit from AutoZone for the damned thing. They didn't have it on hand, but I had it within the week and it cost under $40.
$300 is doable--or will be once I'm employed, assuming that ever happens. That would mean being able to tune the engine properly, so that it doesn't backfire all the f-ing time, and eliminating the manual choke we had to install after the automatic choke went balls up. (Automatic choke assembly for Z-S 175CD: $300. No, I'm not kidding. And it was pretty crappy from the factory, to boot.)
But that's long-term. Short-term is just to get the thing roadworthy again: engine starting and running reliably and tuned, bearings greased, brakes working, etc. Once it's drivable, I can plate and insure it and clean it up nice and shiny, and then put it up for sale. As time goes on, I can fix things and make it niftier and niftier...and raise the asking price in the bargain. Whee!
* * *
Finally: as I said, yesterday Mrs. Fungus and I planted the rose bushes, and while digging out the shovel I found the post-hole digger, so I was able to get after the window well and get that mucked out. It's still not really up to my specifications but it should get by for the time being.
Spring has arrived with a vengeance: yesterday the pear tree looked bare, and today there are blossoms beginning to open. The honeysuckle bushes have exploded with greenery in the past three days, and the lily of the valley in the front yard have burst from the ground. Thursday, the tulips were barely showing flower buds; today they are in full bloom.
...and it looks as if the grass needs cutting again, already. *sigh*