December 2020

 First week of December – 

Susan and I were off for the first week of December.  We largely did nothing but hang out which was par for the course when it comes to our holiday season vacations.  It was relaxing and we think the dogs were happy to have us around.  

On Saturday Kari came over to help us paint much of the interior of our house.  Susan had picked some neat blues and had a great plan which we toiled to implement.  I started in the kitchen, Susan worked on the entrance area, and Kari began the living room.  We chatted about this and that as we did our thing.  We spent several hours working before breaking for a BBQ lunch.  Kari left in the late afternoon when I was almost finished rolling on the final bits.  We had bought the top of the line paint in hopes of avoiding multiple coats and for the most part this worked out.  Later that night and the next day we found some bits of the old color showing through but not much which was nice.  We were very happy with the results.  

Sunday had us mostly just hanging out again to finish out our vacation.  We really needed the time off from work and enjoyed each other’s company.  

December 12th weekend – 

Saturday began with me up early playing games while Susan slept in.  It was very cold outside and the sky was grey.  The snow from the previous day was still present except for on the roads as they were still warm from the nice weather over the prior week.  Once Susan was up we had our coffee and basically just hung out all day.  I whipped up a chicken casserole which was yummy.  The day was originally going to be quite different as my car-buying itch was itching and we had set our sights on older Mazda 3s.  They checked a lot of boxes but I had second thoughts after we looked at one.  Basically I think buying one would be an “easy button” to getting past some car projects I need to finish.  Hopefully I can complete the projects I have in front of me which will eliminate the “need” for another car.  

Sunday was a lazy day.  I woke up early to take care of the dogs and then fell asleep on the couch until Susan got up and made coffee.  The snow had returned the night before and the landscape was quite serene and white.  Fortunately not much accumulated and the snow had a light consistency.  While we were not productive we had a wonderful weekend together with our dogs.  

December 19th weekend – 

On Saturday I woke up around 8:00 to take care of the pups.  I was finally feeling productive so went out to the garage to work on Lil Red’s engine and transmission extraction.  Over the next few hours I made good progress and ,by the time Susan got up and we had coffee at around 11:00, I was mostly done with what I wanted to accomplish.  It was another couple of hours before Susan helped me pull out the guts of the car and mount the engine to a stand.  It felt good to get something done on that car.  

After finishing up with Lil Red we fed the dogs and went to Walmart to take care of a long shopping list we had been accumulating throughout the previous week.  The store was very busy but we managed to buy everything we were looking for.  Once home Susan made orange jello and we hung out with the pups on the couch for the remainder of the evening.

Sunday had us up with an alarm to start the day.  After taking care of the dogs and coffee we prepared mashed potatoes and Susan gathered up supplies to bring up to Kari and Alvin’s house for our small Christmas gathering later in the day.  Once we were ready and after I had distracted myself noodling around with my guitar we finally left the house.  

We arrived to find the roaster had been started a bit late but we didn’t mind.  We played two new games Susan had acquired and had fun with that and our normal chatting.  One game was called Charty Party which played much like Cards Against Humanity but with charts instead.  Interesting concept and we enjoyed it quite a bit.  

After a few hours the food was finally ready and we happily gorged ourselves the turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, orange jello, and cranberry sauce.  It was all very yummy.  We then played Tiny Towns.  We found the instructions a bit daunting but once we were going the game was fun to play.  I think Susan found us some fun new games we’ll enjoy for some time.  

Susan and I left right at 7:00 and the dogs were happy to see us and get fed once we were home.  We settled in and relaxed on the couch to finish out the weekend.  

December 25th weekend – 

Friday was Christmas and we slept in a little bit that morning.  Well, I tried to but the dogs were restless early and I didn’t managed to fall back asleep.  Such it is.  Eventually I got Susan up and we had our coffee.  

The day was remarkably pleasant so we went to the garage to finish pulling parts off of Lil Red so we could finally push it out of the garage.  We spent a few hours removing this and that with Oliver hanging out with us the whole time.  For the most part Oliver occupied himself playing with some cat toys and batting at the occasional ankle.  

It was a relief to push Lil Red into its place next to the cat shed.  We then jump started Ralphie and drove/pushed it into the garage in preparation for Saturday.  Susan hit the car with a can of white primer before we finally headed inside as the sky got dark and the temperatures fell.  

At around 6:00 we sat down in front of my phone to join the Zoom meeting Em had scheduled with the family.  It was our first time using the software and it worked well.  It was great to see everyone and the audio file Em and company put together was fantastic.  We enjoyed the experience but hope next time we can be together in person.  

Saturday the dogs let me sleep in a little longer which was nice.  I got Susan up around 9:00 to have our coffee.  We had a busy day planned and needed to get started.  

To the garage we went to prepare Ralphie for Sunday’s customer appreciation day at the track. What we needed to do involved installing exhaust, the cooling system, and figure out the driver’s seat.  

The exhaust came from the tire shed and was previously installed on Scrappy from before the motor swap.  Susan thankfully had suggested we keep the exhaust which saved us time and many hundreds of dollars.  The exhaust went on relatively painlessly though we were missing some hardware.  We made a quick trip to Lowes later along to buy the hardware along with some metal strips to mount the radiator (these ended up proving unnecessary).  

The radiator mounts and radiator came from Lil Red.  I thought I’d have to fabricate the mounts but Susan suggested we use what we already had.  I’d already pulled out the radiator so we just needed to grab the brackets.  We also sourced the hood prop that Ralphie didn’t come with.  The cooling components installed easily as they were all OEM parts meant for the car.  

We had hoped to be able to install our new driver larger seat in Ralphie as the seat that came with the car was a bit too small for our rounded-out middles.  Unfortunately this was not to be as the floor of the car wasn’t quite wide enough to accommodate.  It’s possible we could have forced the issue but we were already planning on having the floor lowered and the existing floor already had more holes drilled in it than we were comfortable with.  Using the smaller seat made installation easier though I ended up having to drill out one of the holes in the seat to get it to line up.  

Susan started Ralphie up so we could bleed the cooling system.  This went a little worse than normal and we ended up making a mess of antifreeze on the floor.  It wasn’t for naught though as we did successfully bleed the system.  

We swapped out the crappy wheels and tires with a used set of the racing wheels and tires we’d used with Scrappy and finally put Ralphie on the ground.  Somehow the alignment had been messed up by the previous owners so I spent some time adjusting the tie rod on one side to get the front tires to be roughly parallel with each other.  

It was at this point that I remembered that the tail lights weren’t hooked up.  The previous owners had rewired them at some point and they wouldn’t plug into the wiring harness I had installed.  Luckily we were able to quickly source unmodified tail lights from Lil Red which worked great.  

The battery was dead so we used the jump pack to start the car and Susan drove it into the trailer and I tied it down.  It was a long day and we were both tired and cold when we finally went inside to finish the evening out with the pups.  

Sunday we were up with an alarm to begin the day.  We had our coffee and loaded up the last things from our list before heading off to King Soopers to get gas and lunch stuffs.  We arrived at the track early, parked in a good spot, and immediately checked in.  It was cold and windy so we sheltered in the trailer.  

Excitedly we unloaded Ralphie and idled it to warm up the motor.  We had noted that the motor was unhappy the day before in a bucking around sort of way.  It was at this point that I noticed that two of the coils were reversed.  Whoops.  When I put them in their proper places the car ran much better.  We were thinking things were going to go well from then on and I helped strap Susan in for the first stint.  

Susan attempted to pull away but something was still amiss.  It became apparent that the car wasn’t getting enough power to properly fire the cylinders.  When the jump pack was attached the engine ran as smooth as silk and when I unhooked the pack it misfired badly.  I helped Susan extract herself from Ralphie and we pulled the car back into the trailer.  Before we left I decided to try to see if bypassing the kill switch would help.  

It was a tight squeeze to work on Ralphie inside the trailer but I managed to do what I set out to.  Unfortunately, we had left our wiring box at home so I couldn’t verify that my efforts had accomplished anything.  Ralphie didn’t seem to run appreciably better so we finished packing up and went home, defeated.  

I backed the trailer into our driveway around 1:30.  Then I pulled Ralphie’s battery and put a charger on it before we went inside.  It was cold out and I wasn’t in the mood to spend any more time working on automotive-related things.  We ended up vegging on the couch with the dogs for the rest of the day and evening.  The weekend didn’t end up like we’d hoped but at least we got a lot of work done.  

New Year’s Eve

I didn’t get off work until pretty late so Susan made a trip to the store to buy some New Year’s Eve goodies.  She got some meats, cheeses, crackers, and chips – a nice spread.  When I finally did get home we sliced up meat and cheese and sat down at the kitchen table to play some games.  

We played a round of Tiny Towns and had a nice time.  It’s still pretty new to us but we can definitely see the potential.  Then we tried The Fox in the Forest.  This was our first time playing and we enjoyed it thoroughly once we figured out the rules.  It’s great Susan found some new games that we can play together.  

We stayed up for the midnight countdown to 2021 and went outside where I popped a bottle of Champaign at around the right moment.  It was relatively bright out from the almost-full moonlight and we popped some noise makers Susan had bought.  We ended up staying up until 1:00 with the dogs before calling it a night and yet.  

2020 was a weird year where too much of consequence seemed to happen.  We’re hopeful that 2021 has most things getting back to normal.