Hello Family,
I pulled up our
last update and was shocked (shocked!) it’s been over three months
since I sent one out. A lot has gone on and I will try to relay some
of it here.
Our latest foster pug
Lucy was adopted two weeks ago. It was really hard to let her go but
we’re very happy she found a good home. We were thinking we would
wait a few months before getting another but an opportunity has come up to get
another female named Savannah. She’s originally from Missouri and
came out of the same puppy mill that Sophie and Mr. Bailey were
at. She’s blind and will need to have her eyes removed sometime in
the near future (they don’t produce enough tears). She sounds like a
sweet pug and we should be getting her this Friday evening.
The other pugs are
still doing their thing. Tweetie is still our little
trouble-maker. Satchel has inexplicitly started losing her hair over
these last few months. We’re not sure what to think and right now
we’re just watching for behavior changes. She is really starting to
go grey and it may just be that she’ll have less hair in her senior
years. Sophie is as cute and neurotic as ever. Sometime
in the last few months she crossed into being essentially incontinent when on
the floor. She doesn’t make mistakes in her kennel, on the bed, or
hanging out on the couch but put Sophie on the floor for a couple of minutes
and she’ll start working to change the color of the carpet. Now that
we understand her hatred of the carpet it’s not too big of a deal and she’s
sweet enough to get away with it.
A couple of weeks ago
we had a new furnace installed (thanks Mom!!!). You might be
thinking, “That’s silly, it’s the middle of the summer,” but really you should
be thinking, “It’s a smart person that fixes their home heating in a time when
it’s not actually needed.” The old furnace was 24 years old and we
had to have the fan replaced after it seized up last year (it was meant to last
about 15 years). The new furnace is 98% efficient and pushes around
the A/C much better than the old one. One of the major pluses with
the new furnace is that temperature throughout the house is now much more
consistent. It came with a fancy touch screen thermostat that has a
WI-FI connection, the weather forecast, smart phone/tablet control, and (best
of all) a customizable screen saver. Right now when you look at the
thermostat you see a cute picture of Lucy poking out from under a blanket on
her bed.
We just reached the
halfway point in the rallycross season this past weekend racing down at Pike’s
Peak International Raceway (PPIR) down south of Colorado
Springs. What’s unique about PPIR is that the driving is on both
dirt and pavement. Tire choice is always a hot topic for the
location as rally tires don’t work very well on pavement but have a large
advantage on the dirt over street tires. The pavement surface at
PPIR is also extremely hard on tires so many of the drivers opt to use tires that
are already worn down. Susan and I actually saved our older rally tires
just for races at this location. I believe we made a wise decision
as the amount of tire melted off (“burned off” isn’t exactly what is happening)
on Saturday was depressing. The pavement portion of the course does
give a pretty large advantage to the few drivers with autocross experience and
I was able to take first place (my third win in a row). We both had
a really great time.
In May the WRX was
down for repairs and upgrades. The plan was to swap out the open
front differential with a limited slip differential, replace the gear synchros,
and install a new clutch and lightened flywheel. In the process of
doing these things it was discovered the bolt holding pitch stopper on the
engine (basically a dog-bone-shaped hard piece of plastic that connects the car
to the top of the engine to prevent it from pitching forward under
acceleration) had come out. This allowed the motion of the engine to
completely destroy the motor mounts under the engine (this was probably
exacerbated by racing). It was bad enough that the engine was
sitting crookedly under the hood. This led us to replace the mounts
and pitch stopper with heavy-duty polyurethane parts as well as the
transmission mount and sway bar bushings. We also had to get new
front axles and possibly a few other things I’m forgetting. It was
quite an ordeal but now the WRX is running better than it has in a long
time. Here is a link to the time-lapse video our friend made of the car
getting repaired: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XPOHeM0lgqk
About a month ago we
decided to sell the Sentra and buy a project car. By project car I
mean a 90s Subaru Impreza that probably isn’t running and needs a lot of work
(Susan and I are fully aware that we stopped being sane car owners some time
ago). It took three weeks to sell the Sentra and one week to acquire
our project. We are now the proud owners of a 1993 Subaru Impreza. Much
of the rear end has been replaced with Subaru Legacy parts and the engine is
from a 1998 Subaru Outback. The interior is almost completely
stripped out (no back seat, carpet, upholstery, and you can see the ground through
many drain holes). The prior owner (a good mechanic friend of ours)
recommends wearing ear-plugs when driving it on the highway. I was
able to get the car home under its own power and into the garage (it mostly
runs). As you can probably imagine Susan and I are very happy with
our purchase. We have a large list of things to fix, replace, and
upgrade (we’ve been searching junk yards a lot). Our plan is to
reinstall some of the interior pieces (back seats, drain plugs, door panels),
fix the many problems it has, and then turbo charge it (for the
win). Luckily for us a relatively low-mileage and well-maintained
Sentra sells for a lot more than a stripped out and barely running rally car
and we have a small pile of cash to put into our project car. We’re very
excited and it is taking a lot of our free time.
I’m starting to think
the band as a random phenomenon as opposed to an organized group of
adults. In this sense you might say that the band is still
occurring. The recording portion of the CD has now been complete for
a couple of months but the artwork isn’t close to being ready. I’ve
decided to step back and take a less demanding role for awhile and not worry
too much about it. It doesn’t sound like I’m worrying, does
it?
August 1st marks
ten years of marriage for us and we’re celebrating with a gathering of old and
new friends at our house the following weekend. Time has really
flown by and I can hardly believe all the amazing experiences we’ve shared in
the interim as well as the years before.
That’s all I can think
of from our neck of the woods. We hope this finds you happy and
healthy!
Max and Susan
