Ed and the Ants Weekend
12/16/2

The next time I�m tempted to stay up too late playing Vice City, I should tell myself, �Hey, rather than staying up late, why don�t you wake up early to play it?� Which of course makes no sense. The fun of staying up is stealing time from your future self, which just happens to be me this morning.

Thursday, I got the computer back. Datac was supposed to call me, or that was my understanding, when they had burned the 5 CDs of what was on my C drive that they could recover. I didn�t get the call so I didn�t drop by to get them. I think I�ll drop by today. If I do, then I�ll have dropped by there on five of the last six work days. The computer was $186 for a new 60 gig drive plus labor recovering data, etc. Not a bad deal.

Friday, I met a guy I only knew from Miata.net. Ed drives a white Miata which is a little tricky by my tastes. The reason I can say this is the color shifting stripes and the reflective stripes on his car. It looks good, but it�s still tricky. Well, Ed taught me how to open the panels of my doors. After doing this, we learned that the guy at Best Buy did me wrong. Of the Dynomat that I bought, only about one of the two sheets was used. Several of the �pops� weren�t done on the driver door, thus making it rattle, the reason that Ed offered to help me since I had asked questions online. And there were two pops missing from the passenger door. Best Buy guy hadn�t used the holes he was supposed to for mounting my speakers, even though they would fit. He used self tapping screws.

Yes, Best Buy guy basically drilled holes in my car when it wasn�t needed.

And while Ed and I had it open and were checking things out, we also found out that there were no rain guards on my speakers. Since we were actually working in drizzling rain, the speakers were actually soaked while we were working on them. We fashioned rain guards out of �

Just to let you know, Word just crashed after I nearly finished this entry, locked up my whole computer, but then recovered up to the work �of� up there. So, now you�ll get the condensed part since I�m sick of writing.

�food containers from Atlanta Bread Company, which we were parked near since his wife works there. They do rattle at some frequencies so I�ll have to fix that.

I also got my polished Voodoo knob in and replace a floor mat this weekend. My gas foot heel had rubbed a hole in it.

Most significant, besides the car stuff, was the war with the ants, which I had written about but Word ate it.

In the not so distant past, there was an ant war in the kitchen. At first, we fought hard while the ants continued to terrorize the cat food dish. I tried killing the ants outside, but eventually had to bring the heavy artillery inside. I sprayed. The war ended decisively.

The war of the bedroom began when I got bit on Saturday morning. Then Aisai got bit several times Saturday night. When we got back from church on Sunday, we found their entry point. Mainly since they had a line to a shoe they were deconstructing and eating. The war began.

I sprayed the entry point. I sprayed the line. Aisai put the shoe in the freezer. Zapato walked through where I had sprayed the line. I sprayed the perimeter of the room. Everyone fled the room since the fumes really sucked. Zapato started throwing up. I tried to get to her with some petroleum jelly (for her to eat, to give her stomach something to chew on) but she was scared of what was happening and hid and threw up a little, technically dry heaves, upstairs.

Twenty minutes later Zap was sitting near Aisai while she read upstairs. Fourty minutes later she was cuddling her catnip fuzzball downstairs. Then she sat on me while I played Vice City.

The war of the bedroom was over. Now I need to do what I hate. It�s one thing to fight invasions on your own turf, but it�s another to go and kill kill kill on theirs. I think I�ll need to get a bottle of spectracide and kill a whole spectrum of insects outside. It�s a shame, but at least this time the crickets aren�t out there. Last time I had to agent orange them it was October and they started coming inside to die.

So, what happened in Vice City? I managed to collect all 100 of the hidden packages. Now, if I could get onto the military base, I would be able to steal the Blue Thunder clone or pick up my tank. But, I�ll have to be content with chain guns, flame throwers, rocket launchers, and the Sea Sparrow, a nice bubble type helicopter with a fixed chain gun. The Blue Thunder one has an automatically targeting chain turret and missiles. I did all this before dumb old Vance, played by Phillip Michel Thomas, gets captured. Too bad, I will have to rescue dumb old backstabbing Vance. I�m also collecting Hummers since those and stingers are my favorite vehicles. I need to find a place I can find stingers reliably. The only hummer is the one at Phil�s place (Phil played by Gary Busey).

We also got invitations to our holiday party this Friday out. Now to clean and buy food, etc etc.

And I need to change the oil in the Miata. I�ll be switching to the cheaper Havoline synthetic rather than Mobil 1. But I�ll be using a more expensive filter, going from a normal cheapo Purolator to a Purolator PureOne. I think it filters a little more microny, but I got it for the backflow prevention valve.

OOH, and the Twickenham Auto Club (SCCA people around here) is going to be having a performance driving school in May. Rather than being the hundreds of dollars I was mentally expecting to have to pay, it�s only $30. And you get a T-shirt. I�ve really wanted something like this as I am long time FWD and now with the RWD and more oomph, I desperately feel the need for greater skill.

I was also very pleased that my care package made it to Z before she headed back to the big T.

And another highlight of the weekend was seeing my neice Christine, who keeps saying, over and over, that she needs a phone for Christmas. I think I have dropped every hint there is that she is already getting one. I think the most obvious was, �Chris, everything you have asked for Christmas has be bought for you, and if you keep talking about it, we�ll return the thing.� I think she knows we got it, but for some reason, it�s not really registering enough that she�ll stop talking about it.

MS Word�s spell check suggests Patricide for Spectracide. No, I don�t need a bottle of that.