Atrophy

I was driving home yesterday, tired from yet another day going to school and working for over 12 hours again. It was around 11 o’clock at night and a fresh mist was falling on the ground, leaving a glisten on the roads indicative of traction begging to be broken. While Katrina may not be a muscle car, lots of low end torque and very little weight on the rear allows for some fun. It was at this moment I was about to put my right foot to the floor when my calf started to hurt. It was then I realized just how much I missed driving a muscle car around. Many fun times were had with Shelley and I in a muscle car, and I feel many more will be had. So now, as I work and go to school, it is as though every time I see or think about a muscle car it is just a dream I cannot reach.

Though with this school semester coming to a close, I hay have some good news soon.

I think I need to exercise my accelerator foot some more
– Sooner Dead

Willpower

I’m broke. Not the ‘I quit, I cannot do this anymore’ broke, the ‘I have no money’ broke. It is kind of the reason for me being so quiet; I have been locked down in tests from school and had no money to get anything done on the car. I paid off Katrina, and bought a new computer, so that quickly drained any funds I could have had. The good thing with paying off Katrina was that I am not losing a 1/3 of my monthly car payments to interest! I have saved myself about $800 by paying the car off early. Sure it was a risk running myself that low on cash, but I am very careful with finances and figured it would be alright, and it was.

Onto the actual title of the post. I am actually quite frustrated with myself, as for some reason I cannot find the willpower to do things I think I want to do. Somehow I get caught up in something else, lose track of time, and end up getting nothing I wanted to do done. An example would be watching TV or playing a computer game instead of working on the car, working out, working on code, or doing homework. I know some of these things aren’t fun, but some of them are things I really really want to get done, but I can’t get started and keep working on them consistently and I don’t know why. The problem is is if I am not consistently checking myself to make sure I am doing what I should or doing one of the harder things I enjoy, I slide right back into basically doing nothing productive and it is getting frustrating. I wish I had more to say but I don’t, I just need to just keep at the more difficult things I want to do and force myself to do the things I have to do.

Will you defeat them, your demons?
–Sooner Dead

Bridgette’s Last Flight?

Well, it is time for yet another update. Progress with Valarie, though slow, has picked up a little bit as I now have another thing done on her: new door locks. Yes, that’s right, now my car is IMPENETRABLE to thieves and rabid raccoons, so long as they don’t have a slim jim… or a hanger… or rock… or anything heavy and blunt. The door locks also gave rise to a new “beast” if you will: the Shelley Car Beast. She got into this one and did the passenger side door lock all by herself. Sure it may seem like a small and trivial task, but this is only just the beginning and you must crawl before you can walk – and walk before you can run (and incidentally you must run before you can really fall and mess yourself up good). So today it may be door locks, but soon it could be springs and shocks, and then at some later date, camshafts and realigning full doors. Also, sticking true to my word, I will be making and posting a guide to redoing the door locks here within a week or so. The final update is that I have recently bought a set of 4 15×8 snowflake wheels that I will be refurbishing over the summer to but on some nice big meaty tires in the rear of the car probably sometime in August. That was the good news, but now its time for some bittersweet news. It looks ever likely that I will soon be selling the Trans Am in favor of buying a Ford F-150. With Valarie coming along, and with my career in Meteorology progressing, Bridgette is slowly losing her place as a useful vehicle to me. While she is quite a blast to drive and the first car I bought with my own money, she has lost her place as being my ‘fun’ car to Valarie and my growing desires to storm chase as well as needing a more versatile vehicle in which to haul things and drive in all kinds of weather has put Bridgette in what appears to be her final flight. Hopefully the new owner takes care of her and loves her as I have.

It’s time to unpimp de auto… oh snap
–Sooner Dead

New Apartment, New Progress

Well even though it has been a tough week for me, due to my Grandfather soon to be dying ( nurses give him less than two weeks ), trying to keep my head above water with school, moving into a new apartment, and debating as to whether or not sell my Trans Am in order to buy a Ford F-150 to use for storm chasing, etc. – I have still managed to get some progress done. While I was not able to directly work on the car, I was able to get the gauges all properly mounted. Now this did take some fabricating, and I have a guide up for this setup in the restoration guides section. Shelley even tried her hand at cutting a hole big enough for the tachometer and did great, we both are itching for a chance to get out to the car and get some real progress done. Now it is not technically all the way done because I need to drill some warning light holes and hood up some lights to represent the turn signals, but right now it is basically done. This represents a nice step forward as the main goal I have is to get these gauges in the car and up and working so I can legitimately drive the car home for the summer. But that is a few weeks down the road….

A spinning blade of death cutting metal between your legs can really wake you up in the morning.
–Sooner Dead