I wore an Aircast™ plastic cast for almost six weeks, and I guess it was OK. It squeezed my toes, so I couldn’t wear it as tight as I thought I was supposed to, but the doc said that it didn’t need to be very tight (pretty much just wearing it does the thing). Another note the techs didn’t share with me (but that I learned on wikipedia): your feet swell when you sleep, so don’t pump up the air part of the Aircast™ too tight before going to bed.

The crutches (pictured in the previous post) were awful, so I bought myself a pair of these forearm-style crutches. Totally worth it.

I’m taking a spare phone that I’ll try and get a SIM card for; I’ll post the number here if I pull that trick off.

I’ll be back at the end of the month.

He then said something to the effect of “let’s build some highways. Let’s spend that money here.”

That’s been my point almost exactly (I referenced bridges and New Orleans, but we’re on the same wavelength.)

I ain’t switching, but that’s some ballsy shit from a Republican.

And my Flickr page is pretty much all Guam by now. Click the pic if you don’t believe me.

Seasons can matter four times as much in Michigan.

I showed up beat (and without a rental-car reservation, which added more time).

The time difference is huge. Right now it’s 3:38 pm here, but 38 minutes past midnight in Ann Arbor (which is Friday night, really). In the morning, I can talk to people in Michigan (where they’re about to go to bed), and, if I stay up a little late, I can catch them right when they get up.

There is zero overlap during the work-day, which makes contacting the office annoying.

Mom and Mike are probably getting upgraded again.

(There’s been a part-of-speech thing concerning a certain word going on there for the last few days.)

This is from a while ago, but I haven’t been keeping people up-to-date, have I?

This is some bread from Grizzly Peak. It is shown here exactly as it appeared at a meet-up I had with KC and Tanya Ritter. Right down to the eye-hole.

He claimed it was odd advice, but that it was good advice, and that he took it. It, roughly, follows:

Jason asked Bill if he could tell when he was in character. Bill asked Jason how much he weighed. Jason said he weighed 140 pounds. Bill asked if Jason could feel it (the weight) in his feet.

That is all.

Still, I had a bad feeling about that stretch, and stopped for a break right before the on-ramp. Resolve restored, I motored on. Right on the on-ramp, which was up-hill, the engine hesitated, so I pulled over short of the freeway to regroup. Back down the on-ramp? Nope. So — continue.

The short rest seemed to have helped, and I got up to near sixty. More engine hesitation, so I backed off (and tried not to feel bad for taking up a lane at, oh, 52).

I got off at the next exit and continued on slower roads. The hesitation started manifesting at lower and lower speeds, and ‘resting’ the motor started having less effect, so I gave up and put-putted to a hotel to rest and think.

[Moderately talented automotive trouble-shooters will already have a pretty good idea of what was probably wrong. I didn’t, but I was a little too close to the problem.]

Sunday was a repeat of Saturday, OK for the first hour (where top speeds were about fifty), but the hesitation eventually showed up again (at about 53 MPH) and then crept down to 40. That’s it. I called a wrecker figuring he’d know a shop to tow me to, and I was right.

Speedy, at the Haas’ Service Station in Stony Ridge, agreed to take a look at it on Monday, so off to another hotel (Howard-Freakin’-Johnson!) to wait.

I am now very happy, though, ’cause Speedy pointed out what I should of seen for myself the previous day — and could have tested by visiting any parts shop: It’s probably a slightly clogged fuel filter.

Having slept on it, I am now certain that it was the fuel filter. I’m also patting myself on the back a little too for never pushing it when it was hesitating. The mixture gets real lean right before it cuts out, and lean mixtures burn much hotter than the normal (slightly rich) mixture. Air-cooled engines hate extra heat much more than water-cooled ones, and can break.

Update: It was the fuel filter; I got home fine.

He seemed — perhaps for the first time in his professional career — relaxed. I wish him more such tournaments. Maybe, when he’s my age, he’ll have to struggle to win, but he’s got at least a dozen years until then. In the mean time, I hope to watch him smile more often.

Tonight I’m going through two emotionally wrenching experiences. By ‘wrenching’ I have to admit I’m referring to the small sort of wrench we used to use (in airplane-wrenching school) for the very small nuts and bolts associated with fuel-control systems — the ones around a quarter of an inch or less.

Emotionally wrenching experience one: My humble room happens to be next to the room that next weekend’s local golfing outing is using for their Thursday Night Poker Room. That sucks in about the way you might think. Being me, the smell of cigars is actually comforting. The yelling, not so comforting.

Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Hotel \Ho*tel”\, n. [F. h[^o]tel, OF. hostel. See Hostel.]
1. A house for entertaining strangers or travelers; an inn or
public house, of the better class.

2. In France, the mansion or town residence of a person of
rank or wealth.

“[O]f the better class”

Emotionally wrenching experience two: I’m trying to watch the movie Little Children.

Um, wow. Way different than trying to ignore drunken golfers. Way harder as well, yet way more rewarding.

I’ve got almost 55 minutes of it left, yet I recommend it. Tough stuff.

DJ Projet won the iPhone, but I already had one so I was cool. (I had to go back to his cube to tell him he’d won.)

There will be plenty of Washington “insider” pundits that will echo Bush’s claims.

Bush won’t care that his Justice Department has no leader ’cause he doesn’t want the J.D. to do a thing right now.

Just sayin’.

And my favorite, from Rep. Rahm Emmanuel (D-IL): “Alberto Gonzales is the first Attorney General who thought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were three different things.”

Indeed.

One million miles.